Chapter 2 – The Equation Shifts

At twenty-six, Cordelia Hart was the kind of woman who seemed untouchable.

Her colleagues at the publishing house admired her precision, her calm, the way she could dissect a manuscript without flinching. At family gatherings, relatives praised her independence, her good job, her quiet elegance. To strangers, she was composed, self-possessed, the picture of someone who had life neatly balanced.

None of them knew how carefully she’d built those walls.

The mask was long gone, but something invisible had replaced it. Cordelia’s armor was silence when she didn’t trust her words, wit when she needed to deflect, and an almost clinical detachment when conversations brushed too close to her heart. The girl who once scribbled in journals about wanting to be noticed had taught herself instead how to disappear in plain sight.

Yet sometimes, late at night, when she curled up with a novel and let herself drift into fictional romances, a quiet ache stirred. She still wondered: what does it feel like to be truly seen—and wanted—for who you are?

Her mother, however, had grown impatient with such questions left unanswered.

“Cordelia, you’re not getting any younger,” Mrs. Hart said one Sunday morning, setting a steaming plate of idlis in front of her daughter. “It’s time you considered settling down. There’s a boy your aunt knows—good family, stable career. Why not meet him once?”

Cordelia sipped her coffee, hoping the bitterness would mask the twist in her chest. “A blind date? That’s not really my style.”

“Meeting someone over dinner is hardly blind,” her mother countered briskly. “Besides, it’s just one evening. What harm could it do?”

Plenty, Cordelia thought. But saying no felt like admitting she was afraid. And she hated the thought of her mother looking at her with disappointment, the same way Cordelia often looked at her own reflection.

“Fine,” she said finally, setting her cup down. “One dinner.”

It was a decision she regretted almost immediately, but the wheels were already in motion.

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The restaurant her aunt had chosen was elegant but not intimidating—soft lighting, polished wood, the faint hum of jazz in the background. Cordelia arrived a few minutes early, as she always did, her dress simple yet carefully chosen. She checked her reflection in her phone screen one last time, smoothing a stray strand of hair.

When the host approached, leading her toward the reserved table, Cordelia rehearsed polite smiles in her head. She was ready for awkward small talk, for forced laughter, for the kind of stilted evening she could later file away as “an experiment that failed.”

She was not ready for him.

Adrian Anderson stood as she approached, buttoning his blazer with the same easy confidence she remembered from a decade ago.

For a moment, the air left her lungs. It was like being sixteen again—rows of desks, the hum of ceiling fans, and that careless smirk slicing into her self-worth. The word ugly thundered in her ears.

Her grip on her purse tightened. This had to be a mistake.

“Cordelia?” His voice was deeper now, smoother, but unmistakably his. His eyes flicked over her face—not cruelly, not mockingly, just with recognition. “I can’t believe it. It’s been… years.”

She forced her lips into a smile, the kind that looked polite but never reached her eyes. “Adrian. What an… unexpected surprise.”

Unexpected was an understatement. Fate, it seemed, had a wicked sense of humor.

They sat, the clink of cutlery around them filling the silence that stretched between their polite words. Cordelia kept her posture perfect, her voice measured, every defense honed over years rising to the surface. But beneath it all, her pulse hammered with the collision of past and present.

He had hurt her once. He had made her vow never to unmask herself again. And now, of all people, he was the one fate had chosen to place across the table, under warm restaurant lights, as though nothing had ever happened.

Cordelia lifted her glass, steady hands betraying none of the storm inside. “Well then,” she said softly, meeting his gaze. “Shall we see what this evening has in store?”

Adrian’s smile—genuine, unguarded—was not the smirk she remembered. And that, more than anything, unsettled her.

Because for the first time in years, Cordelia felt the faintest crack in her armor.

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