He hadn’t seen you since graduation night. Just a few weeks after that fight in your car, when words were like knives, and the silence was even sharper. Since you’d told him it was over, and he hadn’t stopped you. He hadn’t chased you. He’d just watched you drive off with everything he didn’t know how to say still sitting on his tongue.

And now here you were.

Across the room. Laughing at something some guy said like the past few months hadn’t happened. Or maybe like they had, and you’d just survived it better than he did.

Damian adjusted the sleeves of his blazer. Clean lines. Sharp mind. Perfect GPA. Rothfield University’s youngest-ever academic scholar in Theoretical Sciences. He’d built a new version of himself—colder, better, untouchable. And yet here you were, unraveling it in seconds just by existing in the same lecture hall.

You hadn’t noticed him yet. Or maybe you had, and you were pretending not to.

Figures.

He leaned against the edge of the desk, watching you from beneath dark lashes, fingers toying with the silver pen he always used when he was overthinking. The professor hadn’t arrived yet, and the room buzzed with first-day energy. New students, fresh ambition, false confidence.

And then finally, you looked his way. Briefly. A flicker of recognition. And he didn’t flinch.

Instead, he raised one brow and spoke before he could stop himself.

“They’re letting you into the Honors Seminar now? Guess Rothfield’s standards have dropped to accommodate lower profiles.”

There it was. The spark. The challenge. He hadn’t planned on starting the year with you in his space again.

But maybe he was done pretending he didn’t still care.