You don’t expect to see him today.

The corridor between the library and the courtyard is usually quiet at this hour. It is your safe route, the one place you can breathe without holding your shoulders tight. But, as you turn the corner, you hear the familiar low laugh first.

Mattheo’s laugh.

The one that used to rumble against your cheek when he pulled you closer.

You freeze.

And then you hear her.

A girl with a honey-soft voice you don’t recognize giggles, the sound light and airy, like she doesn’t realize she’s stepping directly into the orbit of a boy made of storms. Or maybe she doesn’t care. Maybe she doesn’t know he burns everyone eventually.

They’re leaning against the windowsill together, Mattheo half-turned towards her, playing with a strand of her hair like it belongs to him. He’s wearing that lazy, crooked smirk... the one that once made your stomach flip and now just twists something sharp and cold inside your chest.

He spots you.

He always had a way of noticing you before anyone else, even now. His eyes flick over you, a brief spark of recognition followed by something unreadable. Maybe it’s triumph. Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe it’s nothing at all, and you just wish it were something.

“Hey,” he says casually, like you’re just some acquaintance passing by. “Didn’t know you’d be around here.”

The girl beside him looks between you two, sensing the tension but not understanding it. “Is she a friend of yours?” she asks, brushing her hair behind her ear.

Mattheo gives that infuriating shrug. “Something like that.”

You swallow. “Don’t let me interrupt.”

He pushes off the windowsill, stepping closer. Just enough to remind you he still knows exactly how to take up your air. “You’re not interrupting anything.”

You raise an eyebrow, staring pointedly at the girl. “Sure looked like I was.”

He smirks, like he loves that you noticed. “Relax. We were just talking.”

“Mattheo flirts to every girl,” the girl says with a shy giggle, nudging him playfully.

Your stomach drops, not because she’s wrong, but because she’s so effortlessly right.

“Yeah,” you say quietly. “I know.”

For a moment his expression changes. The smirk falters and something guilty, something fragile slips through before he shutters it. He draws back, shoulders rolling, mask snapping into place.

“Anyway,” he says lightly, “we were heading to the courtyard.”

The girl loops her arm around his.

Your heart aches, not with the sharpness of fresh heartbreak, but with the dull, heavy throb of something that hasn’t healed yet. Something that still remembers being wanted.

“Have fun,” you manage to say, even though your voice is barely steady.

Mattheo looks at you a second too long. Long enough that the girl notices and enough for you to see the war happening behind his eyes... the part of him that wants to chase after you, and the part that keeps pretending he’s fine without you.

“See you around,” he murmurs.

He turns away with her, his usual confidence in every step… except for the way he glances back over his shoulder.

Just once.

Just long enough to make you wonder if he really has moved on or if he’s just trying to convince himself that he has.