* Present *
Three weeks of this. Three weeks of turning corners and finding him there.
It’s getting ridiculous, really: I know it’s unprofessional (from both of us), but I just… can’t. Every time we’re near we fall into our usual dynamic, and every time we do that, something stirs inside me.
Something dangerously close to my college crush.
He’s at my favorite coffee shop. At my desk, near the cooler asking some stupid questions. In elevators, lingering after my meetings with that expression that says he knows exactly what he's doing.
I've started taking the stairs. Different lunch hours. Anything to avoid the weight of his attention. The hell he wants from me anyway?
It’s not like we were friends or something back in Columbia and it’s his opportunity to nostalgia ‘good old days.’
Tonight, the office is a tomb. Just security downstairs and the fluorescent hum of my desk lamp. I'm deep in spreadsheets when I feel him before I see him. My body apparently registers his presence like a shift in atmospheric pressure.
When I look up, he's leaning against my doorway. Sleeves rolled to his elbows, tie loosened, looking like he just stepped out of some fantasy I've never let myself have.
No. That's a lie.
I've had those fantasies. I just don’t like to admit it was about him.
"Working late, Vale?" He pushes off the doorframe, moving into my office with that predatory grace I remember from Columbia.
"So are you, apparently." I don't look up from my screen, even though every nerve ending is tracking his movement. "Did you need something, or are you just checking if your employees are sufficiently miserable?"
"I prefer 'dedicated.'" He's closer now.
I can smell his cologne now. Still woodsy and expensive, triggering something in my hindbrain that feels like déjà vu.
"Though you've always been dedicated, haven't you? Even at Columbia. Studying while everyone else partied."
"Some of us didn't have trust funds to fall back on."
"There it is." He sounds almost pleased. "That particular edge in your voice. I've missed it, siren."
I want to physically recoil from him. The nickname stirs my memory, and I try to suppress it while he’s that close. "You've had three weeks of it in meetings."
"In meetings, you're professional. Careful." Another step closer. "This… this is the real you."
I finally look at him, and it's a mistake.
His eyes are fixed on me with an intensity that makes my stomach drop. Not angry. Something else. Something dangerous that makes me want to stand up and step back.
Except that would be retreat. And I've never retreated from him.
"What do you want, Rothwell?"
"Cas." He perches on the edge of my desk. Too close, invading my space in a way that feels like a dare. "You used to call me that, remember? When you were too angry to be polite."
"I'm still too angry to be polite."
"Good." The word comes out rough and breathless. "I'd be disappointed if seven years had softened you."
The tension between us is suffocating. I should ask him to leave. Should stand up and walk out. Maintain the professional distance that's kept me sane these three weeks.
Instead, I lean back in my chair, meeting his gaze with everything I've got.
"Is there an actual purpose to this visit, or are you just nostalgic for humiliating me?"
"Humiliating you?" Something flickers across his face. "That's what you think I was doing?"
"What would you call it?"
"Keeping you sharp." He shifts, and suddenly he's moving around my desk with deliberate slowness. "You were brilliant, Serena. Terrifying, actually. I'd watch you demolish people. But I'd also watch you watch me..."
My breath catches and he’s behind my chair now. Before I can react, his hands grip the armrests and he spins me to face him. The sudden movement makes my stomach drop, and then he's there—leaning down, caging me in with his arms braced on either side.
"Don't." The word comes out breathless, nothing like the command I intended.
"Don't what?"
His face is inches from mine, close enough that I can see the dark flecks in his gray eyes. Smell that damned cologne that makes my head spin.
"Don't mention how you used to stare at me during practice? How your eyes would follow me across the lecture hall?"
His hand leaves the armrest, and I think he's pulling back, but instead his fingers catch a strand of my hair. Slowly, deliberately, he tucks it behind my ear. His fingertips grazing my skin just enough to send heat racing down my spine.
"You liked our rivalry, Serena. But you liked something else too. Something you never let yourself admit."
My pulse pounds so hard I'm sure he can see it in my throat. "You're delusional—"
"And you can't keep running from me." His voice is so close to my face it vibrates through my entire body. "We have unfinished business."
"The acquisition—"
"Fuck the acquisition."
The words come out guttural. He leans closer, and his breath ghosts across my cheek, making me shiver visibly.
"You know that's not what I mean. Seven years, Serena. Seven years of you in my head. Of wondering what would have happened if you hadn't run that night."
What night?
My mind scrambles, but my breathing has already gone shallow. Some part of me, the part that's kept me safe, kept me armored, is screaming at me to end this.
But another part, a part I've buried for seven years, wants to know what happens if I don't.
"Get out of my office." The words barely make it past my lips.
"Make me."
It's our old game. Push and pull. Challenge and retreat. The same dynamic that made Columbia feel electric and dangerous and alive.
But this time, I'm not twenty. I have more to lose than my pride.
I surge up from the chair, needing space, needing air, but he doesn't move back. We're pressed together for one electric second, my body flush against his, and I feel him inhale sharply.
His hand comes up like he's going to touch my face, cup my jaw, something—
Then he freezes. His gaze locks on something over my shoulder, on my desk, and his entire body goes rigid.
"Where did you get that?" His voice has changed completely—amused, almost teasing, but with an edge underneath I can't read.
I turn, following his line of sight to my keychain. The vintage Columbia debate team medallion hangs from it innocently. Scratched and worn from seven years of being carried everywhere.
The only evidence I have of Aria's father.
"It's mine." The lie is automatic, protective.
He reaches past me and plucks it from the keychain with casual ease. Hold it up to the light, and I watch his expression shift from confusion to recognition to something that looks almost triumphant.
"No, it's not." He's grinning now, turning it over in his fingers. "See the initials on the back? C.A.R. Caspian Alexander Rothwell. Lost this years ago. Graduation night, actually."
The room tilts when realization hits me as he twirls the medallion, smirking.
“What, siren, steal it as a trophy? Still bitter I beat you in the final debate?” He laughs, like it’s a joke, just another round in our rivalry. “And valedictorian, god, you hated that. Stealing my medal is a new level of—”
I can’t breathe.
Pieces slam together: the medallion in my sheets. A voice in the dark saying he’d wanted me for years. That cologne.
The stranger wasn’t a stranger. It was Caspian.
My rival. My undoing. He’s Aria’s father.
“Serena?” His laugh dies. “Hey, I’m just fucking up with you. It’s a stupid medal, you can keep it—”
I shove past him and run. Not walk, run. Heart exploding, vision tunneling, hands shaking so hard I barely snag my bag.
“What the hell? Serena!” His voice follows, baffled. He has no idea why his joke just split my world in two. "It was a joke! Christ, I don't care about the fucking medallion!"
But I’m already at the elevator, jabbing the button. As the doors close, he stands in the hall, my office door open, holding that medallion like it’s nothing.
Like it isn’t the only thing tying him to his daughter.