Love Diaries : The Good Girl

Chapter 12 : The Heir Returns

The days after the kiss in Spain passed faster than Elle wanted them to. One moment, she was standing in the middle of a crowded street, watching Adrian disappear after kissing her. The next, she was back home, preparing for the final stretch of her senior year and trying to convince herself that she wasn't waiting for him.

But she was.

Every morning, Elle checked her phone. Every night, she checked it again, hoping his name would finally appear on her screen. Nothing came. No message, no explanation, and not even a simple apology.

She kept telling herself that Adrian had never promised to contact her. He had never said that he would explain the kiss or tell her what he was feeling. Still, after everything that had happened between them, Elle couldn't understand how he could simply disappear.

She also had something she desperately wanted to tell him.

She liked the kiss.

The first kiss at the ball had been confusing, mixed with anger, jealousy, and everything they had refused to admit about each other. But the second kiss in Spain had felt completely different. There had been no competition, no argument, and no audience. She had felt how much she had missed him, even though she had never admitted that she missed him at all.

Elle wanted to ask him why he had kissed her again. She wanted to know if he felt the same thing she did. More than anything, she wanted to clear everything up between them.

Instead, Adrian gave her nothing.

The school year continued without him, and Elle quickly discovered that university was incredibly boring without her favorite rival.

There was no Adrian challenging her answers in class, no sarcastic comments when the professor returned their papers, and no competition whenever grades were announced. She still studied hard and remained at the top of the class, but the victory didn't feel the same.

When graduation finally arrived, Elle graduated as the top student of her class.

With Adrian gone, Ethan finished second.

Everyone congratulated Elle. Her parents were incredibly proud, her friends celebrated with her, and she smiled through countless photographs while accepting her awards. She should have been completely satisfied.

Instead, she kept thinking that the one person she wanted to see wasn't there.

She tried asking Adrian's friends about him whenever she had the chance, but they didn't have much information either. Jason admitted that Adrian had barely spoken to anyone after leaving and that none of them knew which university he had transferred to.

“Nothing?” Elle asked, frustrated.

Jason shook his head. “Nothing. He just disappeared.”

Elle tried contacting Adrian herself. His old number no longer worked, and when she searched for him online, she discovered that all of his social media accounts had been deleted.

She stared at her phone in disbelief.

“He changed his number too?”

Mia glanced at her. “Apparently.”

“So that's it? He just disappears?”

“Maybe he has his reasons.”

Elle dropped her phone onto the table. “He messed with my mind and then vanished. How am I supposed to understand what happened between us if he won't even talk to me?”

She knew she sounded angry, but underneath the irritation was something she didn't want to admit.

She missed him.

After graduation, however, she had little time to dwell on it. Her family expected her to begin working in their hotel business, and she was about to step into the world she had spent years preparing for. There would be meetings, property inspections, business trips, and eventually bigger responsibilities.

Elle welcomed the distraction.

Ethan, strangely enough, seemed to have his own way of dealing with graduation.

After they finished school, he suddenly stopped talking to her.

There had been no argument and no obvious reason. One week, they were still exchanging messages and talking like friends. The next, Ethan became distant. When they happened to meet, he remained polite, but there was a coldness in the way he treated her.

Elle couldn't understand it.

“Did I do something to Ethan?” she asked Sofi one afternoon.

Sofi shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

“He's acting like he's mad at me.”

“Maybe he is.”

“For what?”

Sofi laughed. “That's something you'll have to ask him.”

Elle decided not to bother.

She already had one missing person she couldn't figure out.

She didn't need another.

Thankfully, she still had her friends. Even though their lives were becoming busier, Elle continued seeing Mia, Claire, and Sofi whenever their schedules allowed. She especially spent time with Sofi because their families were involved in one of the biggest hotel developments in the south.

Their parents were business partners in the massive project, which was expected to become one of the family's most important properties. Because of that, the girls often found themselves attending meetings, dinners, and events together.

One afternoon, the four girls met at a café after one of those meetings. They were halfway through their drinks when Mia suddenly looked up from her phone.

“Did you hear the news?”

Claire frowned. “What news?”

“The Cole family.”

Elle paused at the name.

Mia continued, “Apparently, their heir is coming back to the country.”

“The older brother?” Sofi asked.

“Yeah.”

Everyone knew the Cole family. They were one of the most powerful business families in the country, with major investments in hotels, real estate, and other industries. Their eldest son had been running an important part of the business overseas for years, while the rest of the family handled their operations in the country.

Elle listened quietly.

The heir was coming back.

For one brief moment, an impossible thought crossed her mind.

*Could it be Adrian?*

She immediately dismissed it.

There was no reason for her Adrian to have anything to do with the Cole family. Besides, she didn't even know where he had transferred.

“What’s his name?” Sofi asked.

Mia smiled mysteriously. “You won't believe it.”

She reached into her bag and pulled out a magazine.

“I bought this earlier.”

She placed it on the table.

The girls leaned closer.

Elle barely glanced at the cover before her entire body went still.

She knew that face.

She knew those eyes.

She knew that expression.

Her heart began pounding.

“No way,” Sofi whispered.

Claire stared at the magazine in disbelief.

Mia looked between them, confused by their reactions.

Across the cover was a photograph of a man in a perfectly tailored suit, standing confidently in front of one of the Cole family's properties.

The headline stretched across the page:

**THE COLE HEIR RETURNS: ADRIAN COLE AND HIS UNFINISHED BUSINESS**

Elle couldn't breathe.

She reached for the magazine with trembling fingers.

**Adrian Cole.**

The boy who had disappeared from university.

The boy who had changed his number.

The boy who had deleted every social media account she knew.

The boy she had spent an entire year trying to find.

He wasn't simply Adrian anymore.

He was the heir to the Cole family.

And he was coming back.

Elle stared at his photograph, unable to look away. She finally knew where he had gone, but that only created more questions.

Why hadn't he told her? Why had he disappeared? And why was he coming back now?

Most importantly, what would happen when Adrian finally came back into her life? For the first time since Spain, Elle realized that whatever had happened between them wasn't finished.

Not even close.