The door closed behind me before I realized I hadn't spoken.
I just walked out.
No response. No pause. Just the same blank face I'd practised in the mirror that morning.
Now I stood in the hallway like someone had knocked the wind out of me, but in slow motion.
He said my name.
He remembered.
He remembered and waited until after the meeting after I'd passed him after I'd lied to his face—to say one word.
And then: "I wasn't sure. Now I am."
What the hell was I supposed to do with that?
The hallway was too quiet. I could still feel the conference room's air clinging to my skin—cool, filtered, corporate. Like none of what just happened was real.
It was real.
His voice was real.
His stare was real.
His presence—calculated, poised, powerful—more real than I was ready for.
I started walking. Didn't care where. Just needed to move.
The stairwell door opened easier than I expected. I took the stairs down one floor, then leaned against the railing, hands shaking harder than they had any right to.
Lucien.
I couldn't call him that in my head yet. Not without it tasting wrong.
But he wasn't Lucien anymore. Not the boy who kissed me under the bleachers or whispered dreams between math classes.
He was... something else.
Something sharper.
I pulled out my phone and opened a blank notepad app. I didn't know why—muscle memory, maybe. The need to type it out before the moment slipped through my fingers.
He remembered me.
He said my name like it still meant something.
Like it still belonged to him.
I stared at the words for a full minute.
Then I deleted them.
I slid into my desk chair like I hadn't just run from something.
Like my legs weren't still shaking.
Like my throat wasn't still closing around every breath.
Isla glanced up from her screen.
She didn't say anything.
She didn't need to.
She just looked at me.
And when I didn't meet her eyes, she sighed and typed something with a little more force than necessary.
I opened my laptop. Pretended to work. The screen stared back, judging me with its empty email draft.
I typed three words. Deleted them. Typed two more. Backspaced again.
"Was it him?" Isla asked softly, still not looking over.
I froze.
She didn't press.
Just waited.
After a long beat, I said, "Yeah."
That was all I had.
Yeah.
She nodded like that was enough. "Did he say anything?"
I hesitated. "He said my name."
Silence stretched.
Then she turned toward me fully. "How'd it feel?"
"I don't know."
"Try."
I looked at her now.
And it hit me how rare it was—how foreign it felt—to be looked at without judgment. Without fear. Without that edge of curiosity, people get when they know something's wrong but don't want to get their hands dirty.
Isla was different.
She didn't want the gossip. She wanted to carry a little of it, maybe. Just a corner of the weight.
I leaned back in my chair.
"He looked at me like he never forgot," I said. "Like I was a chapter he'd paused mid-sentence."
Isla exhaled. "But you forgot him?"
"No." I laughed once. Bitter. "I tried."
She nodded again. "So… now what?"
"I do my job."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know."
We didn't talk after that.
She didn't pressure me.
And I didn't lie.
The room emptied fast.
They always did when he was there.
Lucas remained still, one hand resting on the back of the chair, the other wrapped loosely around the edge of the tablet. The screen had long gone black.
He wasn't reading it anyway.
He was thinking about her.
Mia.
The name hadn't left his mouth in a decade, but it had waited just under his tongue as it belonged there.
He'd said it too softly for anyone else to hear. He knew that.
But she heard.
He saw it in the way she froze mid-step. On the way her back stiffened, just slightly. Like someone had reached through her spine and pulled.
She didn't turn right away.
And when she did, her face was a mask. One she hadn't worn back then.
She didn't look surprised.
She looked... tired.
Lucas let go of the chair and stared at the window. The skyline was the same as always—polished, sharp, distant.
So was he.
He'd built a world where no one knew what he was. What he'd done. What he'd become.
But now she was here.
And she remembered.
He didn't know if that was a good thing.
But he knew one thing, clear as the burn in his chest when she said she didn't know him:
She lied.
She still knew him.
And worse?
He still wanted her.
He didn't deserve to.
But he did.
And if she was here, if fate had pulled her back into his orbit after everything—there had to be a reason.
The problem was, he wasn't sure if she'd come closer...
Or run again.
The email came through at 5:41 p.m.
I almost missed it.
Most of the office had already cleared out. Isla had waved goodbye twenty minutes earlier. Even the intern—Oliver, I think—had packed up and gone.
I was the only one left in our row, light from the hallway buzzing behind me. I was just about to shut down my laptop when the message blinked in.
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: FILE FWD: INTERNAL SUPPORT NOTES
ATTACHMENT: onboarding_notes_final.pdf
It looked standard. Nothing special.
But something about the sender felt… off.
No name. No department tag. Just a string of nonsense.
Curious, I clicked.
The document opened with my name at the top.
Mia, Hart
Logistics Support, Intake Group 7
Orientation Summary: Behavioral Notes
Behavioural Notes.
I frowned.
Beneath it, in neat, clinical bullet points were notes I'd never seen. Never written. Never signed off on.
"Tends to observe before speaking."
"Notably composed under pressure."
"Avoids deep eye contact with supervisors."
"Background check: surface clean. Recommend deeper inquiry—flagged for prior trauma markers."
What?
I scrolled down, my heart racing.
There was more.
Page 2: Note from L.V.
Personal observation: "She hasn't changed. Still folds her arms when she's uncomfortable. Still watches exits when she feels threatened. Recommend no direct engagement—yet."
I stopped breathing.
L.V.
Lucas Vale.
He wrote this.
He watched me.
Not today. Not just during the meeting.
Before.
Before I walked in on Day One.
Before I handed over my ID badge.
Before he ever said my name out loud.
He knew I
was coming.
He prepared for it.
The screen blurred as my vision swam.
I clicked the close button, but it didn't help. The words were already burned into me.
He's been watching.
He's been planning.
This wasn't fate.
This was a trap.
And I walked right into it.