I didn’t expect to see him.
Not here. Not now.
I didn’t even hear the door open—just felt the air shift around me, sharp and electric, the way the atmosphere feels before a storm breaks. A tremor in the quiet that made the back of my neck prickle before I even turned.
And when I finally did—when my eyes landed on Adrian standing in the hallway just beyond the art room’s threshold—my whole body went rigid. Like muscle and bone had locked themselves in place, bracing for impact.
He looked different than the version I kept clinging to in memory. More human. More tired. His jaw was tight, like he’d been grinding his teeth for days. His shirt was wrinkled at the collar, sleeves rolled as if he’d been pacing, waiting, wearing himself down. But his eyes—they found me fast. Scanned the room li
