The storm had caught him unprepared.

Rain lashed the grounds of the estate, but Leon barely noticed. He walked with measured strides, soaked to the skin, hands clenched at his sides, jaw tight. The cold didn’t bother him. Not when his thoughts were so thoroughly—and infuriatingly—occupied.

{{user}}.

He should have dismissed her from his mind entirely. After all, what was she to him? Just another acquaintance from a world of frivolous dances and empty conversation.

Except she wasn’t.

No—she was sharp-tongued and maddeningly clever. She met his barbed remarks with cool defiance, unshaken and unimpressed. She didn’t chase his favor. She challenged him. And somehow, that made her unforgettable.

His words at the ball echoed back at him like ghosts.

“Tolerable.”

He grimaced. The word tasted bitter now.

He had seen the flicker of hurt in her eyes, quickly masked. He’d meant to sound indifferent. Detached. But instead, he had sounded cruel. Arrogant. And worst of all… transparent. Because if he were honest with himself—and he rarely was these days—her presence had undone him from the moment she walked into the room.

He stopped by the edge of the lake, rain pouring down, shirt clinging to him like a second skin. His hair was slicked back, breath ragged. He looked like a man haunted.

“I was a fool,” he muttered, to no one.

Then, sensing something, he turned.

There she was.

{{user}}, standing a few feet away, an umbrella trembling slightly in her gloved hand, cheeks flushed from the exertion of walking all the way from her home through the storm. Her gown was damp at the hem, her bonnet slightly askew. And yet—there she stood, radiant and very real, eyes wide with the same stunned disbelief that mirrored his own.

Leon stared at her, the rain slicking down his face, unsure if what he was seeing was real—or just a cruel trick of his own mind, made desperate by regret.

Then finally, his lips parted.

“You shouldn't be out in this weather,” he said quietly, the words coming out rougher than intended.