HHWM | Chapter 23: What Remains Between Us

Selene did not arrive with the heat of a mistress or the fire of a jilted girl. She was simply composed. Controlled. The reckless girl from the storage room had been replaced by a woman who had outgrown her own chaos.

When her eyes finally locked onto Greg, her breath hitched, but her face remained a mask of professional poise. He looked much the same, though time had sharpened him. The exhaustion in his eyes only made his presence heavier, more magnetic. He had finally shed the suffocating image of the “perfect man” he used to perform, and in its place was someone dangerously authentic. Selene had always known their paths would cross—they moved in the same professional circles—but accepting the possibility was worlds away from facing reality.

She had endured therapy. She had rebuilt the architecture of her life. But the longing she felt for him had never truly faded; it had merely gone dormant, a quiet ache beneath her skin. She regretted nothing. She harbored no self-loathing. The darkness they shared was a part of her, and she had grown beyond it. No bitterness. No rage. Just the cold, clear truth.

Greg spoke first, his voice hushed, as if careful not to disturb the miles of silence they had placed between them.

“Are you happy now, Selene?”

She paused, looking at the man who had haunted every dream for three years. “Do you still think you ruined my life? We were both a mess back then, Greg. But I’m not that girl anymore.”

The words landed like a blow to his chest. Selene was the only person who had ever seen his ugliest truths, just as he was the only witness to her darkest hours. Between them, there was no room for apologies. Neither of them regretted the sin—only the price they had to pay for it.

“Miss Fortabel, I just need your signature here, please.”

A staff member interrupted the silence. Selene nodded, her hand steady as she signed the document. When the staff member left, the silence returned, thicker and more pressurized than before. Around them, the world continued its frantic pace. Between them, time had stopped.

“You didn’t get married?” Greg asked, his voice betraying a flicker of uncertainty.

Selene offered a fleeting, sharp glance. “I was never engaged to begin with. It pains me to know you didn’t even care enough to ask about me.” There was no malice in her tone, only a lingering, jagged trace of hurt.

“I was the one who chose to let go,” Greg replied, “so I let you go completely.” After their final encounter at the hospital, he had assumed she would vanish from his life forever.

“Is that what you still want? For me to go?”

Greg didn’t answer. Their gazes held—a long, agonizing bridge across the years. In the space between his question and his silence lay every confession he wasn’t yet ready to make. Selene was the first to look away, wrapping her arms around herself as if the climate-controlled hall had suddenly turned to ice.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, staring at the floor to hide her disappointment. “I didn’t ask if you already have someone else.”

Silence stretched. Selene took a half-step back, preparing to retreat. “I should go.”

Greg didn’t reach out to stop her with his hands. Instead, he took off his coat and draped it carefully over her shoulders. The weight of it was immediate—the chill on her skin replaced by a familiar, masculine warmth.

“I’ve been alone,” Greg said. It wasn’t an explanation. It was a period at the end of a very long sentence. “The entire time.”

She didn’t turn around immediately. She took a breath, letting his scent fill her lungs, and gave a small, slow nod.

“I know.”

Finally, they looked at each other without the masks. For the first time, in a room full of people, Greg allowed himself to look at her with everything he felt. Selene felt a surge of emotion so heavy it burned her throat.

“I waited…” she whispered.

Greg reached out, his thumb grazing her cheek, tracing the line of her skin as if confirming she was real. “And not once,” he said softly, “did I forget a single thing about us.”

Their foreheads met. No one hurried. No one pulled away. Greg cupped her face, his touch enough to still the rotation of the earth.

When their lips finally met, it wasn’t the violent collision of the past. It wasn’t desperate or hesitant. It was a kiss of recognition—slow, deep, and heavy with everything they had never said. It was an acknowledgment of who they were then and who they had become now.

They breathed together, foreheads still pressed close, unwilling to break the spell.

“I tried,” Greg whispered, his voice sounding weary but finally at peace. “But I always failed at the end.”

THE END.