The campus courtyard was loud the way only mornings could be clusters of students laughing, rushing, dragging bags, complaining about deadlines.
In another life, I had walked through this chaos like a ghost. Now, every step felt like reclaiming territory. Except my knee still hurt, and my heart still stuttered like it didn't know which past it belonged to.
I kept telling myself I imagined Kaelen's reaction yesterday. That his eyes didn't really darken. That he wasn't studying me like a puzzle he didn't remember assembling.
I should have known better.
Kaelen Rourke had always been a master of analysis.
He didn't need memory.
He only needed a reason.
And apparently, I had become one.
I pushed open the studio door and froze.
He was already there. Sitting in my seat. Not near it. Not beside it.
Directly in it.
His long legs stretched casually, one hand resting on my desk like it belonged to him.
My classmates whispered, not even pretending to be subtle.
"Why is Rourke here?"
"Did he switch sections?"
"No way …he hates this place."
"Is he waiting for someone?"
He was. Me.
His gaze lifted the moment I stepped in, as if the whole room disappeared and he was only waiting for a single variable to enter his equation.
I exhaled once, slow, steady. I had survived him before. I could walk up to him now.
So I did.
"What are you doing in my seat?"
His eyes moved over my face with that same infuriating precision—slow, deliberate, soaking in details I didn't want him to have.
"You sit here?" he asked, voice deceptively mild.
"You know I do."
His head tilted the slightest degree. A habit I remembered far too well his version of curiosity sharpening.
"But I didn't," he said softly.
A past-life wound tugged inside me.
He didn't know. He wasn't supposed to know.
And yet… he acted like something about me was familiar.
"Get up," I said.
A flicker of amusement crossed his face. The kind that meant he was deciding whether to obey or test me.
"You spoke very confidently yesterday," he murmured.
"I'm not repeating myself twice," I said.
A pause.
Then, slowly—defiantly—he stood, but not before leaning closer than necessary.
Close enough that I felt the warmth of his breath on the side of my neck. Close enough that the old fear clawed at my ribs.
"I didn't take you for someone who gives orders," he whispered.
"I didn't take you for someone who follows them," I replied, sitting without waiting.
His jaw flexed.
Good.
Let him feel the imbalance for once.
He didn't move far.
Instead, he chose the seat directly beside mine. Of course he did.
The studio filled, and our professor entered with assignment sheets, but Kaelen didn't look away from me.
Not even once.
His attention was a weight I remembered.
A chain. A cage.
But now…. I wasn't the same girl he married.
I opened my sketchbook. He leaned in slightly.
"Your lines are steadier today," he said.
It wasn't a compliment.
It was an observation.
"You watched me draw yesterday?"
"I watched you walk away," he corrected.
My stomach knotted.
The old version of me would have shrunk at that. But this time, fear wasn't my first instinct.
Anger was.
"You have a problem with that?"
His lips twitched—a shadow of a smile he never used in public.
"Not at all."
It unsettled me more than outright cruelty.
The professor clapped to start the briefing, and Kaelen finally shifted his attention forward. Only then did I allow my breath to leave my lungs.
But peace lasted all of ten seconds.
"Pair assignment," the professor announced. "Rourke, Venn—since you're both strongest in concept work, you'll present together next week."
My pen almost slipped.
Kaelen didn't even blink.
Of course he didn't.
He simply turned his head toward me.
Calm.
Unbothered.
Waiting.
"I don't work with strangers," I said under my breath.
He answered without moving his lips.
"But I'm not a stranger, Aria."
My hand went cold.
He didn't mean it literally.
He meant it in that arrogant, observational way of his—as if knowing how a person breathed was enough to claim familiarity.
But I felt an irrational chill crawl up my spine.
Because he had known me. Just not in this lifetime.
I didn't respond. I couldn't.
The class continued, words blurring into background noise.
Kaelen didn't push further.
He didn't need to.
He simply existed beside me like a storm pretending to be weather. When the bell rang, I packed quickly.
Too quickly.
I could sense him rising as soon as I did.
"Don't follow me," I said under my breath.
"I'm not," he said. "We're headed the same way."
Liar.
We weren't.
He knew it.
I knew it.
The corridor was empty except for us, the echo of our footsteps too loud.
"What do you want from me?" I asked finally.
He stopped walking.
"I don't know yet."
I swallowed.
"And when you figure it out?"
His voice dropped — low, almost careful.
"I'll let you know."
That shouldn't have scared me. But it did.
Because Kaelen Rourke never wanted anything lightly. And in my last life, his desire was the beginning of my ruin. I turned to leave, but his next words froze me.
"Aria."
I shouldn't have turned. But I did.
"There's something about you," he said quietly. "I can't place it."
My heartbeat stuttered.
He took one step toward me.
"Did we meet before this semester?"
My breath caught sharply in my lungs.
He wasn't supposed to sense it.
He wasn't supposed to feel anything.
"No," I said.
He studied my face like he could dissect truth from my skin.
"I don't believe you"
And before I could respond, he walked away first. Leaving me standing there with a truth he didn't remember holding— and a past I could no longer run from.