10
~Velma’s POV
The sounds of the airport thinned out until they barely reached me. Wheels rolling. Announcements overhead. People laughing, arguing, rushing past. All of it dissolved into a low, distant hum. Like I had been dropped underwater. Or like I was dreaming and hadn’t realized it yet.
Or worse. Like I was being punished for believing I had escaped.
“Velma?”
My name cut through everything.
It sounded wrong in his mouth. Too familiar. Too careless. Like something that belonged to a past life he no longer had the right to touch.
I lifted my head slowly.
He was standing right in front of me.
For a second, my mind refused to place him. As if seeing him here broke some unspoken rule of reality. He looked much the same as I remembered, maybe even more handsome somehow. His shou
