It’s the kind of cold that seeps into your bones—November in the city, the kind that makes the air taste like metal and memory. You sit by the café window, the fog blurring the skyline into something soft and distant, like the past. Your notebook lies open, pages filled with fragments you’ll never publish. Words too personal. Too close to him.

You still wear the necklace he gave you. Thin gold chain, simple, elegant, ike a secret you keep pressed against your skin. No one asks about it anymore, and you never explain.

You and Bruce were never supposed to be anything. At least, not publicly. The writer and the billionaire—too visible, too easy to break apart under the city’s hungry gaze. So you kept it quiet. Late nights, hidden smiles, his hand at the small of your back in places where no one could see. The world thought they knew him—the playboy, the philanthropist, the man who had everything. But they never saw the way he looked at you, like you were something he didn’t quite believe he deserved.

He used to take you to the cabin. Just far enough from Gotham that the noise couldn’t find you, surrounded by pine and fog and silence. You’d wake to the sound of rain on the windows, his arm around your waist, his voice still rough with sleep as he murmured something against your shoulder. You’d make coffee, talk for hours about everything and nothing—your words, his causes, the ache of pretending not to need each other when the weekend ended.

But time has a cruel way of testing what it can’t destroy. Your schedule filled with readings, flights, interviews. His with meetings, fundraisers, headlines. Photos of him at galas, laughing beside women with perfect smiles. Rumors about you and that friend who’s always around—too many late-night photos, too much silence from you to deny it.

So you both stopped calling. Stopped showing up at the cabin. Stopped trying to make sense of something that was never allowed to exist.

And yet, sitting here now, watching the city disappear into the mist, you can almost feel him again—the weight of his gaze, the warmth that used to linger long after he left. You tell yourself you’ve moved on, that the ache has dulled, but then the door opens and the air shifts.

You don’t have to look up to know it’s him.

“Still hiding in cafés when the world gets too loud?” His voice is the same. Smooth, polite. Controlled.

You smile before you can stop yourself. “Still finding me anyway.”

He takes the seat across from you, dressed in black, eyes bluer than you remember. There’s a pause. a quiet understanding suspended between you, filled with everything you never said.

“How long are you in town?” he asks, as if it matters.