The sun dipped low behind the Astor estate, spilling gold across the manicured lawns and gilding the edges of the world in fire. Shadows stretched long over the gravel drive, the heat of late summer clinging to your skin like silk. But it wasn’t the sun making your pulse stutter.

It was him.

Remington.

Leaning against his sleek black car like he belonged there. Like he belonged everywhere. Dressed in black from his collared shirt to his boots, he looked like every villain your teenage self had ever daydreamed about. Hair tousled like sin, sunglasses perched lazily in one hand, gaze hidden.

At first, you thought he hadn’t seen you.

Then again, maybe that was the game.

He was good at pretending—at acting like you didn’t exist.

But you’d never been good at staying invisible.

You stepped forward, heels crunching against the gravel with deliberate defiance. Every movement slow. Controlled. The kind of walk you knew he’d feel before he ever turned around.

And right on cue, his posture shifted. He straightened—only slightly. Enough to signal he’d noticed. But not enough to acknowledge.

Not yet.

You stopped a few feet away, just inside his radius, where his scent—leather and something darker—wrapped itself around you like temptation. He didn’t look at you.

You didn’t care.

"You're really going to pretend you didn’t see me coming?" you asked, voice low, smooth, edged like a blade dipped in sugar.

Remington let out a breath through his nose, slow and indifferent. "You’ve always had a flair for entrances."

"And you’ve always had a flair for exits."

His jaw twitched.

Still, he didn’t look at you. Didn’t move.

You stepped closer, just enough to invade the air between you, your presence a challenge in silk and steel. "Say something."

Finally—finally—he turned his head.

Those eyes. Cold steel with a flicker of something too wild to name. He looked at you like he was trying to memorize the angles of your face and forget them at the same time.

“I don’t have anything to say,” he said.

“Coward,” you murmured, and smiled as his nostrils flared.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, voice low. Measured.

"And yet... here I am."

The silence between you thickened, sticky with heat and history. You could feel it crackling in the air, like a storm that never quite broke.

Then he moved.

Pushed off the car with a grace that made your stomach twist. His shoulder brushed yours as he passed, and for a moment the world tilted on its axis. He didn’t look back. Didn’t speak.

But he paused.

Just for a breath. A beat. A fracture of a moment too short to mean anything—unless you knew him.

You saw the way his hand curled into a fist.

And you smiled, slow and satisfied.

Because he felt it.

The gravity.

The burn.

Even if he’d spend the rest of his life pretending not to.