“Do what,” I asked softly, though I knew exactly what she meant.
“Whatever this is.”
I studied her face, searching for evidence of happiness, confirmation of a life that had flourished without me, and any sign that the name Rhodes belonged to a man waiting for her somewhere in this building.
“You changed your name,” I said, unable to restrain the question that had been burning since the moment I read it. “Is he here?”
Her expression closed entirely.
“That is none of your business.”
The absence of denial ignited something raw and irrational inside me, something possessive and unrestrained that five years had not extinguished but merely buried beneath discipline. London was merely a city. The congress was merely an event. But the woman standing in front of me was the axis around which the last five years had silently revolved. And seeing her there, alive and composed and carrying another name, made one truth unavoidable.
Time had passed.
Nothing else had.
I moved closer then, unhurried and calm, certain in a way that left no room for doubt, reclaiming the space between us step by step until the corridor narrowed around us and I could see the faint rise and fall of her breathing, the tension settling across her shoulders beneath the composure she still held.
“Edwina—” I said, allowing her name to settle fully between us, unhurried and heavy. At that exact moment her phone rang.
The sound fractured the charged stillness in a way neither of us had anticipated, and I watched her expression change with careful attention as she lowered her gaze to the illuminated screen in her hand. The shift was immediate. The anger she had been directing at me dissolved into something else entirely, something softer and far more unsettling. There was hesitation, then unmistakable concern. Her fingers tightened slightly around the phone before she turned her body away from me, instinctively shielding the display as though I had not already seen enough in her reaction alone. She answered.
“Hey, baby,” she said, and her voice transformed so completely that for a moment I felt as though I were witnessing a version of her I had no right to recognize.
It was not the composed academic tone from the stage, nor the restrained anger she had just used with me; it was warmth, unguarded and instinctive.
“Yes… I just finished,” she continued gently, pacing two slow steps away, her back partially turned to me as though creating a boundary where none existed. “I know, I know… I miss you too.”
The words were soft, familiar in a way that struck somewhere deep and unprotected inside my chest.
Fuck.
Fucking fuck.
She laughed quietly at something the voice on the other end must have said, the sound low and intimate, and I realized with a sharp clarity that I had not heard her laugh like that in years, not even in memory, because the version of her I carried had been frozen in a different timeline.
“Yes, my love,” she murmured, the phrase effortless. “I’m coming soon, I promise.”
My jaw tightened, the muscle jumping beneath the strain as I kept myself still, fighting the urge to reach for her and demand the name of the man who had earned that tone, the man allowed near the softness she once guarded so carefully. Some fucker had taken my place in her voice, and the realization hit with a force that was anything but distant. It settled in my chest as a territorial ache I couldn’t ignore, a line I had never agreed to cross.
“Of course I’m okay, baby,” she said. “I’ll call you when I’m on my way back.”
On my way back.
The words sank deeper than they should have, pulling at something sharp and unwelcome.
Back towhere? Back towho?
When she ended the call, she didn’t look at me right away. She stood there for a moment, her breathing steadying, her posture shifting as she pulled herself back together piece by piece. When she finally turned, there was nothing left of that softness. The warmth was gone.
“You were saying something,” she said, her voice even now, almost indifferent.
I studied her in silence for a long moment, my gaze fixed on her, refusing to shift, letting the jealousy I kept off my face settle into something colder beneath the surface.
“Who was that?” I asked, the restraint in my tone costing more than I let on.
She held my gaze without flinching.
