Christopher
Christopher had been invited to teach at the university by pure chance, a temporary replacement for an old mentor. He had nearly declined, uninterested in the world of academia. But then he had seen her. And just like that, the carefully constructed control he had spent years perfecting began to fracture.
He had spent years perfecting the art of control, keeping his emotions in check, and making decisions based on logic rather than impulse. But right now, as he sat in his office, staring at nothing in particular, he felt dangerously close to unraveling.
She looked exactly like her.
His fiancée had red hair. But it wasn't just the hair, it was the way Claire carried herself, the fire in her eyes when she challenged him, the sharp intelligence behind her every word. For two years, he had convinced himself he had buried it all, but the moment he saw Claire again, something in him cracked.
For two years, he had kept his distance. Watched from the shadows. But distance had done nothing to silence the gnawing feeling in his chest.
He had thought about her before. Not constantly, but often enough that it annoyed him. She was the one person he had tried to avoid after taking this position, yet he had still kept tabs on her. It was reckless, something he had no business doing. And yet, here he was.
Why?
Because some part of him needed to know.
Something had happened back then-something that had forced him to walk away, to erase a future that had once seemed certain. And maybe, just maybe, seeing Claire again was a cruel twist of fate meant to remind him of what he could never fix.
His jaw clenched as he leaned forward, rubbing his temples. She wasn't her. That much he knew. Claire wasn't supposed to matter. And yet, every time he was near her, his control slipped.
He hadn't planned on confronting her that night at the hotel, but the sight of her with another man had hit him in a way he didn't expect. She had turned to leave, dismissing him as if he were nothing more than a past inconvenience, and for a split second, he had wanted to tell her everything to make her understand why things were the way they were.
But he hadn't.
Because what good would it do?
Claire, on the other hand, was determined to ignore whatever this was. She was good at convincing herself that emotions were nothing more than distractions, that what had happened between them or what almost happened was meaningless.
But if it was meaningless, why had she felt a shift the moment she saw him again?
Why did she feel his presence before she even turned around?
She refused to entertain it.
Whatever she thought she had sensed in his eyes that night was irrelevant. Whatever almost left his lips wasn't her concern.
And yet...
She hated the way her mind circled back to him. To his voice. To the way his gaze lingered just a second too long as if searching for something in her that he didn't want to find.
She wanted to let it go.
He couldn't afford to.
Because deep down, Christopher knew that some things refused to stay buried.
And Claire was about to find out that she was one of them.
Claire's fingers hovered over her phone, Xavier's words still ringing in her ears.
"Do you even realize what he's doing to you? You're a replacement."
She had scoffed at the accusation at first, unwilling to let it burrow into her thoughts. But now, alone in her apartment, with silence pressing in around her, it was clawing at her defenses.
Christopher had been distant, unreadable. And yet, his presence had an undeniable weight, like a gravitational pull she couldn't escape. He had looked at her with something raw and unspoken, something that made her pulse quicken even as she fought to ignore it.
But was Xavier right?
Was she just a stand-in for the woman Christopher had been engaged to?
She exhaled sharply, shaking her head. It didn't matter. It shouldn't matter.
Her phone vibrated. A message from Christopher
"I found some footage captured around the school, you will have to come in early tomorrow to identify the suspects in the footage"
Claire frowned. The club. The people who had followed them. A strange chill crept up her spine. She hadn't thought much of it at first Xavier had been there, Christopher had been there. It could've been a coincidence. But the unease was growing, curling around her thoughts like smoke.
She nodded to the message without replying.
Christopher
He hadn't been able to focus since Xavier's words.
"Does she even know? That you only want her because you can't have the real thing?"
The accusation had struck a nerve.
He had no intention of explaining himself to Xavier, but the confrontation had made something painfully clear-he wasn't hiding his emotions as well as he thought. Worse, he wasn't sure if he wanted to anymore.
His fiancée had left. Claire had stayed.
That didn't mean she was a replacement.
But what if she was?
Christopher ran a hand through his hair, exhaling slowly. He was losing his grip, and he knew it. Being near Claire had unraveled something in him that had been tightly wound for too long. He had spent years living in restraint, avoiding anything that made him feel.
Yet, here he was.
Losing control over the one person he wasn't supposed to want.
His phone rang.
Unknown number.
His instincts flared.
He answered but said nothing.
A low, distorted voice crackled through the speaker.
"What have you dragged an innocent girl into? Stay away from her, else she gets harmed"
Christopher's jaw tightened.
"Who are you and what do you want with her?"
A dry chuckle. "I tried to warn you."
The call ended.
Christopher stood there, unmoving.
The people from the club.
It hadn't been random. That wasn't paranoia. And now, Claire was in danger.
He grabbed his keys.
He had already gone too far with her. Now, there was no turning back.