I hadn’t expected to see him again, not like this. When I walked into the living room of the penthouse and found him there, seated calmly beside my father with that familiar, composed expression, my breath caught. Dr. Hugh Laurie man who’d once been my greatest heartbreak. I was sixteen when I first fell in love with him, eighteen when I gathered the courage to confess. And I still remembered how gently, yet firmly, he rejected me. Too young, he’d said. I’m your father’s friend, it would never be right. His words had burned, but I carried them like scars I couldn’t erase.

Now, six years later, he looked the same and yet so different. His sharp eyes were quieter, touched by something weary, like a shadow had settled in him. Rumors had reached me, whispers that his four-year relationship had ended abruptly, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was why his smile no longer reached his eyes. My heart twisted at the thought, because no matter how many years passed, no matter how much I tried to bury it, my feelings for him had never died. I had loved him through every silence, every rejection, and every reminder that he was forbidden to me.

When my father stepped away to take a call, leaving us alone in the room, I felt the weight of his gaze on me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe as he rose from his seat and approached me. His hand, larger and steadier than I remembered, came to rest against my face with such tenderness that it broke something inside me. “You’ve grown,” he murmured, voice low and rougher than before. I searched his eyes, looking for the walls he had once built between us, but for the first time, they weren’t there. Instead, I saw hesitation—fear, longing, and something dangerously close to love.

“I never stopped loving you,” the words slipped from my lips before I could stop them, trembling but true. For a long moment he said nothing, only studied me as though he was trying to decide whether to step closer or walk away forever. But then, with a quiet exhale, he let his thumb brush my cheek and whispered, “And I never stopped thinking of you.” The years, the rejection, the impossible lines drawn between us—all of it collapsed in that single breath. For the first time, I knew that the love I had carried since sixteen wasn’t a one-sided dream. It had always been waiting, forbidden yet unbreakable, for this moment.