Edwina Five years ago, Hayden Stone was the man who changed everything for me.
He was my professor, the one person I should never have crossed a line with, yet somehow the only one who ever saw through every wall I built around myself.
What began as resentment and defiance slowly turned into something neither of us could control, something dangerous enough to destroy both our lives. Loving him was never simple.
It was intense, consuming, and filled with secrets we should never have kept. And when the truth finally came between us, it shattered everything we had.
Walking away from him was the only choice I had, even if it meant carrying a secret that would change my life forever.
Now, five years later, the past I tried so hard to bury stands in front of me again.
Hayden is still the same man who once held my heart in his hands, the same man whose presence makes every carefully built wall around me begin to crack.
But he has no idea what those five years have hidden. He does not know the truth I have been protecting. He does not know what part of my life belongs to him.
And when that truth finally comes to light, it will not only reopen the wounds we tried to forget. It will force us to face everything we once destroyed, and everything we might still lose.
Hayden Five years should have been enough to move on.Enough time to rebuild the life that fell apart the moment she walked out of it.
Enough time to convince myself that losing her was inevitable, that what we had was destined to end the way it did. But forgetting Edwina Carter was never something I wanted.
For five years, I searched for her in places I knew she would never return to. In crowded streets, in unfamiliar cities, in quiet moments when memory refused to leave me alone.
I looked for traces of the girl who walked into my classroom and slowly unraveled every rule I had spent my life living by. Edwina Carter was never meant to matter to me.
Yet the more I tried to keep my distance, the more she found ways to break through the walls I had built around myself. What we became was reckless and unforgivable.
And when the truth finally surfaced, it destroyed everything we had before either of us could stop it. But some things refuse to fade.
Now she stands in front of me again, no longer the girl I once knew. Edwina Carter no longer exists. The woman before me is Edwina Rhodes, carrying a new name and shadows I cannot yet understand.
The distance of five years has not erased the pull between us, and every instinct in me warns that getting close to her again will only reopen wounds that never truly healed.
Yet walking away from her a second time feels impossible. Because there is something about Edwina that still belongs to me, something I sense every time our paths cross.
And the closer I come to the truth she is hiding, the more I realize that the past we tried to bury is not finished with us. Not even close.
