Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Edwina
The moment he turned away, the air in the library shifted.
Cold seemed to seep beneath my skin, threading through me until it settled just beneath the surface.
I stared at the space he’d left behind, the outline of his presence still imprinted in the quiet.
My pen remained between my fingers, though the page before me was untouched, the ink waiting for words that refused to come.
Professor Stone.
I repeated the name in my mind, as if repetition could impose order on something that refused to make sense.
But nothing about today followed reason.
Neither the coffee, nor the class, nor the way he had looked at me.
I tried to steady my breathing, to reclaim composure, to find safety again in the act of control.
Yet the silence around me no longer felt like refuge.
It had turned heavy, suffocating, filled with thoughts I couldn’t silence.
I closed my notebook harder than I meant to, the sound too sharp in the stillness, then slipped it into my bag and stood.
I couldn’t stay. The tension humming through me wasn’t entirely his doing.
It was something older, something buried, the restless ache that always rose when I felt too exposed beneath someone else’s gaze.
My boots struck softly against the polished floor as I walked out of the library and into the cold.
The air outside bit into my lungs, fierce and immediate, the kind that carved awareness back into the body.
Washington in winter was all iron-grey skies and wind that wound around the throat with quiet persistence, leaving the skin raw but awake.
I tightened my scarf as I crossed the main path of Greystone University.
The familiar sprawl of red brick and climbing ivy stretched around me, its beauty disciplined into symmetry, its calm deceptive.
The campus always appeared serene in the cold, but I knew better.
Beneath its surface, it pulsed with ambition, fear, longing—the quiet chaos of people trying to make sense of who they were.
It was why I had come here. My choice, my escape.
I pulled out my phone and opened Aster’s chat.
Edwina:
Leaving the library. Needed air.
A few seconds passed before the typing bubbles appeared.
Aster:
Is this about the coffee-shop asshole/professor/man with eyes that could set paper on fire?
Edwina:
Maybe.
Aster:
Tell me everything later. Gwen and I are going for drinks tonight. Join us?
Edwina:
I’ll see.
I tucked my phone away and kept walking, the glow of the screen fading into the steady rhythm of my footsteps.
My apartment was only a few blocks from campus, a quiet space I had found during my second year, when the dorms had begun to feel too crowded with voices, too heavy with other people’s expectations.
It wasn’t much, small, spare, and often too still, but it was mine.
I used to tell myself I preferred solitude, that I needed the silence to think.
But sometimes, I suspected I had simply learned how to survive it.
Inside, the air greeted me with its usual stillness.
I hung my coat on the rack, kicked off my boots by the door, and sank onto the couch with a sigh that felt heavier than twenty-one years should allow.
The quiet pressed against me, soft yet absolute, and for a moment, I just let it.
Still, there were times I couldn’t quite grow used to the absence of sound. Not after the home I had left behind.
My family lived in New York, in one of those towering glass penthouses that caught the sun during the day and reflected the city’s lights at night.
A name on the building polished enough to make people smile with practiced admiration.
We were the kind of family others admired from a distance.
Well-known, well-dressed, well-behaved. On paper, it was perfection.
But perfection is only a well-rehearsed performance, and I had been performing since childhood.
My mother had trained me in it. She believed affection was something to be earned, that approval came in exchange for accomplishment.
I was the eldest, which meant I had to be the model, the pattern everyone else followed.
My younger brother, Elliot, was spared from that pressure.
Two years younger, he moved through life untouched by the sharpness of our mother’s expectations, while I lived beneath her constant, unspoken scrutiny.
Be pleasant. Be polished. Be perfect.
My father, quieter and gentler, existed on the periphery of her storms. He managed the family business and rarely intervened in the emotional wars my mother waged.
He asked about my studies, offered the occasional word of encouragement, and listened when I spoke, but his silence was its own kind of complicity.
So I left. I chose Greystone precisely because it was far enough, because its anonymity offered the illusion of freedom. I wanted distance, space, a place where I could breathe without feeling my mother’s voice dictating every decision.
Even my car—a sleek black Audi parked beneath the building—stood as a silent reminder of the life I had been trying to escape.
I hadn’t driven it in three years. Not since the accident.
It had happened the week after my eighteenth birthday.
A chain collision on a frozen stretch of highway.
I remembered the sharp scent of gasoline threading through the cold, the metallic taste of fear in the back of my throat, the seatbelt biting into my ribs until breathing had felt impossible.
I remembered the chaos, the distant wail of sirens, the world collapsing into shards of glass and the frantic pulse in my chest. And then, through the blur, a man had appeared.
Not one of the firefighters, someone who had stopped before them.
He had forced the door open, his voice low but composed, cutting through the noise with quiet certainty.
You’ll be okay. Just that. Nothing more.
His hands had been cold against my skin, trembling slightly, yet his presence had carried a strange calm that kept the panic from consuming me.
I had never seen his face clearly. Only fragments lingered, dark hair, a coat dusted with snow, the glint of a watch catching the weak light as he reached for me. When they had pulled me out, he was gone. No one had ever mentioned him afterward, and eventually, I stopped asking.
I told people I stopped driving by choice. For convenience, or simplicity. But the truth was quieter, more stubborn. I couldn’t. The thought alone twisted something in my chest.
Sometimes I wondered if that was the real beginning of my unraveling, not the move to Greystone, not the distance from home, but that moment of helplessness. The realization that no matter how tightly I held control, some things would always slip from my grasp.
Just as they had begun this morning. Just as they had with him.
I didn’t know what he saw when he looked at me, only that his gaze seemed to strip the air of warmth.
It left traces, marks that pulsed long after he was gone.
I didn’t want to be seen, not through that cold precision of his, yet invisibility no longer seemed possible.
He had noticed me, and something about that simple fact unsettled the balance I had so carefully constructed.
I drew my knees closer and sank deeper into the couch, the soft hum of the city spilling in through the half-open window. The lights outside painted quiet patterns on the wall, slow and shifting, until the room itself felt suspended between thought and silence.
Maybe tomorrow would bring calm. Maybe the world would right itself again.
Or maybe it was already too late for that.
The phone on the cushion beside me buzzed once, the sound small yet startling against the stillness.
Aster:
Come out. Gwen and I are going for drinks. You need something stronger than overthinking.
I stared at the message for a moment, the glow of the screen washing pale light across my hands. The day had settled over me in layers, a weight I couldn’t quite shake, pressing at the edges of thought.
Me:
You’re unbearable.
Fifteen minutes.
The response felt inevitable.
I pushed myself off the couch and went to the bedroom.
My cardigan still carried the faint scent of paper and nerves, a reminder of the library’s quiet unease.
I slipped it off and dressed deliberately, high-waisted black trousers, sharp and fitted, a small reclamation of control; an emerald satin blouse with a line of delicate buttons glinting down the front.
The cuffs closed neatly around my wrists, the fabric whispering with every movement.
My hair, still loose from the morning, I gathered into a soft twist, a compromise between care and defiance. Gold hoops. A dark plum lip.
When I finally looked in the mirror, I lingered longer than I meant to. Some nights, the woman staring back seemed like a well-written character I hadn’t fully grown into.
The bar sat on a narrow side street, half-hidden behind a florist’s shop. Inside, warmth replaced the cold, the low hum of laughter, amber light spilling across polished wood, conversations dissolving into the rhythm of clinking glass. It felt like stepping into a held breath.
Gwen saw me first and waved with the enthusiasm of someone already several sips in. She looked stunning, as always, dark brown curls falling around her shoulders, her lips painted a decadent red that made her smile dangerous. The chocolate wrap dress she wore seemed tailored to adore her.