Chapter Five #2
“And?”
“And I have no fucking idea whether there’s someone else standing beside her in it.”
Elias exhaled.
“You’re not exactly known for giving up easily.”
“No,” I said, my jaw tightening. “I’m fucking not.”
“That’s what worries me.”
After the call ended, I leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling while the weight of five lost years settled over me.
The truth was simple, and that made it cruel.
If she had built a life without me, I had walked back into it anyway, and I wasn’t sure either of us would survive what came next.
Edwina
Monday arrived too quickly. The weekend had passed in a strange mix of comfort and unease, with pancakes in the morning, Helena’s laughter filling the apartment as she showed Gwen and Aster the drawings she had made at kindergarten, and my friends’ voices drifting through the screen during our video call.
For a few hours, I let myself stay inside that small circle of normalcy.
Gwen talked about wedding venues while Zayn appeared in the background with his usual sarcastic comments, and Aster rolled her eyes as she insisted she still had not met a man worth all the patience she had wasted waiting for one.
They were my anchor to the life I had once known.
And yet even during those moments of laughter, a restlessness lingered at the edges of my mind. Because Hayden was now part of my present again.
By the time Monday morning arrived, the tension I had tried to ignore throughout the weekend returned with full force the moment I stepped through the gates of the university.
The campus looked exactly the same as it always did at the beginning of a new week.
Students moved between buildings with the familiar mixture of energy and exhaustion that came with early lectures, coffee cups appeared in almost every hand, and the low murmur of conversation filled the courtyard as though nothing unusual had happened at all.
Only I knew how different everything had become. I had hoped—perhaps foolishly—that the distance between the Foreign Languages Department and the dean’s office would allow a certain level of professional separation.
That hope lasted less than two hours. The first message arrived shortly after my morning lecture ended, an administrative request from the dean’s office asking me to stop by about exam schedule changes.
I stared at the email longer than I should have, my fingers resting against the keyboard as I considered the chance that it might be genuine, then remembered who had sent it.
Hayden Stone had never done anything without a reason.
Refusing would have drawn more attention than going, so I went, and the meeting lasted less than ten minutes.
He sat behind his desk as if the position had always belonged to him, asking questions about course structures and departmental responsibilities that could have been handled through email.
His tone stayed polite and professional, which made the way his gaze lingered on my face after every answer feel even more inappropriate.
I noticed the faint smell of smoke on him when he leaned back, subtle in a way I might have missed if I had not once known him too well, and it unsettled me because Hayden had never smoked before.
I did not know when he had started, or what had driven him to it, and I hated that part of me wanted to ask.
I left the office the moment the conversation ended.
The second request arrived shortly before noon. This time it concerned a research grant application that required clarification regarding one of my previous publications.
Again, it was technically a reasonable question. Again, it required my presence in his office.
By the third time his assistant appeared outside my lecture hall that afternoon, even the professors began to notice.
“Professor Rhodes,” the young woman said once class ended, “the dean would like to see you again.”
She was beautiful, with amber hair, long legs, and a narrow waist beneath her coat. She looked younger than me, and the thought that crossed my mind was ugly and made me still.
Was he feeding her the same lies he had once fed me?
Jealousy rose before I could stop it. A ripple of curiosity passed through the room as several students gathered their belongings.
I closed my notes slowly, already feeling the familiar tension tightening in my chest. The walk to the administrative wing felt longer than usual.
Every step down the hallway carried the uncomfortable awareness that I had become part of some strange, unspoken game neither of us had acknowledged openly.
Hide and seek.
Except Hayden was not trying particularly hard to hide.
I knocked once before opening the door.
He looked up as soon as I entered, as if he had been waiting.
“Professor Rhodes,” he said.
“Dean Stone.”
The title felt strange on my tongue. His mouth twitched as he leaned back in his chair, a cigarette resting between his fingers again, the faint smell of smoke clinging to the room.
“You don’t have to sound so cold every time you say my name.”
“I’m maintaining professional boundaries.”
“Bullshit.”
He said it under his breath, almost amused, which somehow made it worse.
“You asked to see me,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And the reason?”
He leaned back in the chair, watching me with the same focus that had followed me through every encounter since last week.
His cigarette rested in the ashtray now, smoke curling between us, and he picked up his eyeglasses from the desk, turning them once between his fingers before setting them down again.
The gesture should not have affected me.
It did. Something low in my stomach fluttered, unwanted and humiliating.
“Curiosity,” he said.
“That’s not a professional reason.”
“It is when the dean asks.”
I crossed my arms. “If you called me here just to satisfy your curiosity, I have other responsibilities.”
“Relax,” he said. “You’re not the only person I’ve been meeting today.”
“Then maybe you should go back to them,” I said, the words leaving my mouth before I could soften them. “Or spend more time with your pretty new assistant. What was her name again?”
His smile appeared slowly, and I hated how much I noticed it.
“What?” he asked. “Are you jealous?”
I stiffened. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
Hayden’s gaze dropped to my mouth for a second before returning to my eyes. “Careful, my little Flare.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“There is no woman equal to you for me,” he said, voice rougher now. “Not her. Not anyone. So if you’re going to be jealous, at least be jealous for the right reasons.”
My silence answered him. He watched me for a moment longer before speaking again.
“You know this is getting exhausting.”
“What is?”
“This,” he said, gesturing between us. “The amount of effort you’re putting into pretending we don’t have a past.”
I forced my voice to stay even.
“We do have a past.”
“And?”
“And that is exactly where it belongs. In the past”
His gaze darkened.
“You really believe that.”
“Yes.”
He stayed quiet for a moment, his eyes moving over my face as if he were searching for something he expected to find there. Then his voice dropped.
“You can keep moving around this building trying to avoid me if it makes you feel better,” he said. “But you should know something.”
“What?”
“I’m patient.”
The words unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.
“And patience,” he continued, “usually wins these kinds of games.”
The office felt too small again. The tension between us had grown with every encounter that day, and the thought of this becoming a pattern settled heavily in my chest. Avoiding Hayden Stone inside the same university was already beginning to feel impossible, and something told me he had no intention of making it easier.
I tightened my fingers around the door handle, ready to leave before the conversation turned into something neither of us could control. Every second in that room made the composure I had been holding onto since last week feel thinner.
I turned back toward him, searching for something to say, anything that might end the conversation.
Then my phone rang. The sound cut through the office, and my body tensed before I reached for it. The screen lit up as I pulled the phone from my bag, and the moment I saw the name, my breath caught.
Helena.
For a split second I froze.
There was a brief, silent exchange of glances between Hayden and me. His eyes flicked toward the phone in my hand, curiosity appearing there before I could stop it. My gaze moved quickly between him and the glowing screen, the hesitation in my movements impossible to hide.
The air between us grew heavier.
Answering meant letting him hear.
Not answering meant something might be wrong.
My fingers tightened slightly around the phone and stepped back before I lifted it to my ear.
“Hi, baby,” I said softly.
And the moment the word left my mouth, I felt Hayden’s attention sharpen.