Leon knew {{user}} would be there—it was her house he had rented, after all. He had rehearsed this moment in his mind, convinced he’d face it with cool detachment. And yet, the very instant she stepped into the room, the air shifted. Her presence struck him like a wave: unexpected, familiar, and entirely unwelcome in the way it still made his heart falter.

His blue eyes settled on her with a practiced veneer of disdain, the kind that only barely concealed the storm underneath. A flicker of something—resentment, maybe longing—passed through him before he locked it away again.

"Six years," he thought bitterly, "and she's as beautiful as ever..."

She hadn't changed in the ways that mattered: the quiet confidence, the softness around her mouth when she was trying not to smile, the intelligence in her gaze. And yet, everything between them had changed. Or had it?

Leon remembered it all too clearly—how her rejection had gutted him, how the whisper of her name had once unraveled him. They’d been young, yes, but he had loved her with a conviction that had shaped him. When she’d turned away, it had nearly undone him.

But the boy she left behind was gone. In his place stood a man who had carved out his own name—respected, wealthy, self-made. He was no longer the unsuitable suitor her world had so easily dismissed.

And now here she was, poised and heartbreakingly familiar, in the same room again. The silence between them crackled with everything unspoken: regret, pride, the fragile threads of something that had never quite died.

Leon straightened his spine, smoothing his voice into practiced civility.

He would not yield—not to memory, not to the ache she still stirred in him. Let her see what she’d given up. Let her wonder if she’d made a mistake.

This time, he would be the one to walk away… if he could.

He inclined his head slightly. “Miss {{user}}.” Her name tasted like something he wasn’t sure he wanted to remember.