The calm in her delivery only sharpened the aggression rising in mine.
“You think this is a coincidence?” I asked, my voice dropping, controlled and edged with a feral sharpness. “You think this is fate playing a joke and I’m just going to nod politely and disappear back to Washington like some obedient ex-lover?”
A humorless breath left me.
“I spent five fucking years trying to bury you,” I continued, the curse leaving me without apology. “Five years building a life that was supposed to look stable, to convince everyone, including myself, that I was over it.”
I held her gaze.
“It didn’t work.”
Silence filled the corridor again, heavier now, irreversible.
“You can’t decide this alone,” my voice softer, but far more dangerous. “You walked away once. That was your choice. But do not stand here and tell me I am expected to accept it again.”
“That is exactly what I am telling you,” she answered.
Then she stepped around me. This time I did not block her. Control meant knowing when to hold and when to calculate. She walked down the corridor without turning back, her posture upright, measured, unwavering, until she disappeared around the corner and the echo of her footsteps dissolved into the distant hum of the congress.
The space she left behind felt colder than London ever had. I remained there for several seconds, staring at the empty corridor, allowing the reality to settle without rushing after her, because chasing her impulsively would only repeat the mistakes of the past.
Five years ago she had vanished. London was no longer temporary.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened the confirmation email for my return flight scheduled for the following morning. Then I canceled it.If she believed I wouldlet her disappear again, she had underestimated the man I had become. I was not leaving London.
Not now.
Not while she was here.
Chapter Two
Edwina
Ididn’tknowwhenI woke that morning that by evening the distance I’d kept so carefully between my past and present would collapse in a single breath. The day had started simply. I followed the same routine I’d built over the last five years, the one that kept everything in place, everything under control. London felt familiar beneath my feet, its autumn air cool but easy to move through, the gray sky settling over the city in a way that never quite bothered me.
I went over my presentation again in the stillness of my apartment, adjusting a few citations, changing phrasing where it felt off, making sure the transitions between slides held together. The work grounded me, clear and dependable in a way I needed. In that space, things made sense. Work stayed where it belonged. Feelings didn’t get in the way.
I had believed that was enough. Changing my surname had been one of the first decisions I made after leaving Washington, and it had never been driven by sentiment or impulse, nor by any need to assign meaning to the act itself. The choice had come from necessity, shaped by the understanding that some parts of a life had to be left behind entirely. Carter carried the weight of who I had been, traces still easy to follow, and paths leading back to a version of myself I could no longer afford to inhabit. It kept me exposed in ways I had spent years learning to avoid. Rhodes gave me distance. It stood apart from everything that had come before, untouched, unclaimed, something that belonged only to me. It created a separation I could live within, a boundary between the life I had built and the man who had once known it too well.
I changed it so he would not find me.
And yet he stood there.
When I heard his voice behind me in that narrow corridor, my body reacted before my mind allowed recognition to settle. The papers slipped from my hands, scattering across the floor in a chaos that felt embarrassingly symbolic, and for a second I could not reconcile the image in front of me with the reality I had constructed so carefully.
Hayden looked older, not aged, refined in a way that suggested time had sharpened him rather than softened him. A few strands of gray had appeared at his temples, subtle and impossible to ignore, and there was a leanness to him now, as if the years had stripped away anything unnecessary and left something harder beneath. The restless intensity I remembered had become contained, held behind a restraint that unsettled me far more than anger ever could have. His presence filled the space without effort. His gaze carried weight.
Seeing him did not bring a single emotion, it brought a collision of them, shock arriving first and cutting througheverything else, followed by a slower, heavier sadness that rose from a place I had kept buried for years. Anger surfaced with it, contained yet unmistakable, shaped by the memory of what loving him had cost me and the silence that came after. Beneath it all lingered a familiarity I could neither ignore nor fully understand, making him feel far more dangerous than he should have.
Over the years, I had imagined this moment more times than I cared to admit, constructing conversations in which I remained collected, clear, untouched by anything he might say or do. The reality unraveled that certainty with ease, my pulse rising despite every effort to keep it from showing, his voice still carrying the same power to disrupt whatever balance I had built.
When my phone rang, I took the interruption without hesitation, letting it pull me away from him before the moment could stretch any further. The name on the screen anchored me at once, drawing me back into the life I had built here, into the present I had chosen.
I heard the softness in my own voice when I answered, heard the warmth that had once belonged to him and now belonged somewhere else, and I felt no need to explain it.
“Yes, baby,” I said, turning slightly away, unwilling to let that tenderness exist between us. “I just finished. I know. I miss you too.”
I felt Hayden’s gaze on me without needing to meet it, aware of the shift in my tone and certain he would recognize the intimacy there. Something in me allowed it, perhaps even wanted him to hear it, to understand that my life had not remained untouched, that affection had found its place elsewhere.