“That,” she said, sliding her phone back into her coat pocket, “doesn’t fucking concern you.”
The possessiveness that had never fully left me sharpened with uncomfortable clarity, no longer reckless as it had once been, but controlled and far more dangerous because of it.
“Your baby, huh?” I said slowly.
Her chin lifted slightly.
“Yes.”
The confirmation was simple.
Mine was not.
She gathered the fallen papers slowly, stacking them with the same composure she had displayed on stage, restoring order to the scattered pages as though nothing in the last several minutes had disrupted her equilibrium. When she rose, the version of her that had answered the phone was gone entirely. What stood in front of me now was restraint shaped into discipline.
“As you can see, Professor Stone,” she said, her tone formal, stripped of tremor, “a lot of things changed.”
She held my gaze without softness.
“I changed. You changed.”
Her voice carried no accusation now, only a calmness that left no room for denial. “I’m not that naive girl anymore.”
The words were not defensive, they struck with the weight of a truth she had already made peace with and no longer needed to explain.
“We should go our separate ways,” she continued, adjusting the strap of her bag over her shoulder with measured calm. “As before.”
Before.
The word landed with cruelty.
“You can return to your fiancée, or your wife, or whatever arrangement you’ve constructed for yourself. I neither know nor particularly care.”
The indifference in that sentence was impossible to miss.
“I will return to mine.”
Mine.
The ownership in her phrasing struck deeper than the earlier phone call. For a second I said nothing, because anger required control if it was to be effective, and the control I possessed now was far more dangerous than the volatility I once carried. She stepped to move past me.
“No,” I said.
She did not stop. “Edwina!”
Her hand brushed the edge of my coat as she attempted to pass.
“Fuck no!”
The words were low, rough, stripped of polish.
She paused then, caught by the tone even if she hadn’t meant to stop. I moved in front of her again, blocking her path and forcing her attention, leaving only a breath of space between us.
“I found you five years later,” I said, the restraint in my voice thinning into something darker and far less civil. “Do you honestly believe I am going to watch you walk away again?”
Her expression hardened.
“This is not about you wanting something,” she replied evenly. “This is about me choosing not to.”
