Author's Preface
[Five Years Ago]
[Kai]
I already know the rhythm of her hands before I ever know what it feels like to hold them.
She sits across the narrow wooden library table, her dark hair half-pinned back, though a few loose strands inevitably fall forward whenever she leans over her corporate strategy textbooks.
To anyone else, it is an ordinary study session.
To me, it is a masterclass in details I have no business memorizing.
I know the exact angle she tilts her head when she is stuck on a complex valuation model.
I know she holds her pen too tightly, her knuckles whitening whenever a case-study deadline looms.
I know she keeps a small, chipped ceramic mug of chamomile tea at her right elbow, sipping it only when it has gone lukewarm because she is too deep in her financial spreadsheets to notice the steam fading.
And I know the sound of my own name whenever she loses patience with me.
"Kai, you haven't even finished the first module," she says, tapping her pen against the margin of her case notes. "Stop jumping ahead to the advanced restructuring segment. You need the foundation first."
She looks at me with that mild, exasperated frown—the one meant for an unruly junior whose only reason for sitting at this table is that Henry asked her to help me keep up with my studies.
She has no idea what she is doing to me, I think, staring down at my own notes while my pulse hammers a frantic, silent rhythm against my ribs.
Not melodramatically.
Just privately.
She treats me like an obligation.
A frustrating freshman tagging along because Henry asked her to help me.
She is a final-year senior, untouchable and miles ahead, and she has no concept of the distance between how she looks at me and how I look back.
[ *** ]
Later that night, trapped in the quiet dark of my room, I dream about her.
The dream does not feature any grandiose settings or impossible scenarios.
But what haunts me about it is how terrifyingly normal it feels while I am in it.
In the dream, she is not across a library table.
She is close—so close I can smell the faint scent of chamomile and clean cotton.
She looks at me differently, her eyes softening in a way they never do when we are arguing over market entry strategies.
And I kiss her.
I wake up suddenly, breath catching in my throat, my hand instinctively reaching out into the empty dark.
For a few terrifying seconds, I am convinced it has happened.
I can still feel the phantom warmth of her mouth against mine.
Then reality slams back down.
I am alone in the dark.
The frustration clawing at my chest is not simply physical; it is the sickening realization that my own mind has fabricated an entire reality I know I can never have.
Annie would never look at me like that , I tell myself, staring up at the shadowed ceiling.
And then, the harsher, more nauseating thought that follows right behind it: She already had someone else in mind. James.
[ *** ]
The restraint is not an accident; it is a daily exercise in survival.
There are moments—agonizing, fleeting seconds—when the proximity becomes almost unbearable.
Once, during a late-night cram session in the corner alcove, Annie reaches across my side of the table to grab a reference binder.
Her bare forearm brushes against mine.
The contact is light as a feather, but my entire body goes rigid.
For half a second, my mind fractures, wandering into dark, dangerous territory.
I imagine what it would feel like to close that narrow gap between us, to touch her without pretending it was accidental, to know whether her lips would feel the way they did in my dreams.
Months earlier, I allowed myself to imagine what it would feel like to hold her without the case studies, without the table between us.
Another time, staring at the way the light catches her hair, I wondered what it would be like to bury my hands in it.
But I always stop myself.
I have to.
Because to Annie, I am just Henry's annoying junior who happens to be around.
Someone she tolerates because Henry asks her to.
Not a man she could want.
Not a man who had already become far too attached to her.
And she has a remarkable talent for making it worse without ever realizing it.
Two weeks before semester exams, after we have dragged ourselves through a grueling six-hour financial modeling marathon, she packs up her highlighters, flashes a bright, approving smile, and delivers the executioner's blow with total innocence.
"You're actually improving, Kai. Henry will be pleased."
She smiles at me—warm, sisterly, entirely devoid of anything resembling romance.
Sitting there across from her, I realize with crushing clarity that she has no idea I do not care what Henry thinks.
She does not know that every late night is not about the grades or the degree.
Or worse, when she casually pats my shoulder and calls me: " a good kid. "
That word anchors itself under my skin like a splinter.
It is her definition of me.
A neat little box with a label she will never peel off.
And I know, with absolute certainty, that I cannot change it.
Not then.
Not while I am the freshman trying to catch up to her final-year shadow.
So, I make a private rule.
I can want her.
I can think about her.
I can even dream about her.
But I will never make her uncomfortable by letting her know.
That is the architecture behind my silence.
I do not keep my distance because I do not want her; I keep it because I want her so badly it hollows me out, and I know she does not feel the same way.
[ *** ]
On the very last night before I leave—the final study session we will ever share—the air is thick with the quiet melancholy of endings.
Annie sits across from me, entirely comfortable, entirely unaware of the storm raging beneath my skin.
She casually drops hints about her upcoming corporate placements, her interviews, the trajectory of her life mapped out ahead of her while I am still stuck navigating my first year.
I look at her—really look at her—realizing this is the last time I will ever sit across this table and watch her tuck her hair behind her ear.
Every instinct in me screams to tell her.
To lay it all bare before I leave.
I open my mouth.
But I look at her trusting, easy expression and swallow the words back down.
She has no idea I'm about to disappear from her life.
Instead, I say something entirely ordinary, shielding behind the mask I have worn for months.
"You should get some sleep, Annie. You have early classes tomorrow."
She offers that soft, familiar smile, gathering her bag. "You too, Kai."
And that is it.
She turns and walks out of the library, leaving me alone in the fluorescent-lit silence.
She has no idea that this is the last time I'll watch her walk away.
And she certainly has no idea why.
[ ********** ]
[Present Day]
I stand in the dim, warm entryway of her apartment, the ghost of those university library tables pressing heavily against the edges of my mind.
My knuckles are still raw and throbbing from where I hit Oliver—a violent, primal reaction that proves just how thin the veneer of my lifelong control really is.
Annie is right in front of me, her fingers warm and trembling where she has pulled me past my defenses, erasing six years of carefully constructed walls in a single, desperate breath.
I remember the boy I was back then—the silent, brooding freshman sitting across the table, convinced Annie would never look at me as anything more than Henry's annoying tag along.
I was wrong about a lot of things.
Six years ago, I thought wanting Annie was something I would eventually outgrow.
I was wrong.
I only became better at hiding it.
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