Chapter 14 I Missed You
London should have distracted her.
That’s what Shopia kept telling herself as she stepped out of Heathrow Airport into the cool morning air, that the city’s noise, the crowds, the bright taxis and impatient drivers, the rush of people with places to be should’ve been enough to pull her mind back to reality.
Instead, every step she took only made the last 24 hours echo louder.
She checked into the small hotel near her campus program, dropped her bags, splashed cold water on her face, and told her reflection firmly.
Get over it.
Because the moment she lay on the hotel bed, the sheets cool beneath her, the memory of his body against hers washed over her like a physical ache. His mouth on her skin. His breath in her ear. Shopia groaned, covering her face with both hands.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered, echoing words she didn’t know Alex had spoken on the plane.
She sat up again, forcing herself to move.
“New city, new focus. He’s miles away. You’re fine.”
She brushed her hair, put on mascara, and smoothed her shirt. She even practiced her smile, the bright, easy one she used when she wanted people to believe she was untouchable.
By noon, she had walked to campus for her orientation.
The buildings were old and elegant, with ivy crawling up stone walls and students sipping coffee on benches, laughing, chatting, and leading simple lives.
She felt a sharp twist in her chest.
She should’ve been one of them. Light. Free. She wasn't thinking about Alex Maxwell, an older, impossibly complicated, and devastatingly intense man who had no place in her plans for London.
She slipped into the main hall just as people were taking their seats. A guy with curly hair and glasses smiled at her.
“First day nerves?” he asked.
"Something like that," she replied, her smile too wide and practiced.
The lecture began. She tried to listen. She actually did.
But every time the professor mentioned, her mind turned against her. She remembered Alex pinning her wrists against the wall. His voice was low and rough, uttering her name like a confession. The way he looked at her afterwards was not cold or careless, but something far worse.
As if she had any importance. Her pulse quickened. She clenched her pen and scribbled nonsense in the margins of her notebook. The girl sitting next to her leaned over.
"Are you drawing knives?"
Shopia blinked. “What? No. That’s, that’s a flower.”
It was very much a knife.
By the end of the session, her head was pounding. She walked out into the courtyard, breathing deeply, trying to ground herself.
‘He’s gone for two days. You should be relieved. This is your chance to breathe.’
Her phone buzzed. Her heart lurched before she even looked. Of course it wasn’t him. Just a campus notification.
She exhaled shakily, annoyed at herself, annoyed at the stupid flutter in her chest. A group of students walked past laughing loudly, arms linked. One girl bumped into her accidentally.
“Sorry!” she said brightly.
“No problem.” Shopia smiled automatically.
She watched them go, feeling suddenly, achingly alone.
Then she whispered under her breath, a truth she didn't want but couldn't avoid.
"I missed him."
Paris, midnight.
Alex should've been exhausted. He'd spent hours in meetings, shaking hands, French executives praising his expansion strategies, champagne toasts he didn't want, and camera flashes he barely noticed.
By all logic, he should have collapsed the moment he arrived at his penthouse suite overlooking the Seine.
Instead, he stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, tie off, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and a glass of dark bourbon unfinished in his hand.
Paris glowed beneath him, golden and romantic, impossible to ignore.
And he could only think about her.
Shopia was laughing along with her friends.
Shopia dances in his absence.
Shopia's lips on another man.
Jealousy churned within him like a wild beast. Alex exhaled slowly as his jaw hardened.
"This is ridiculous," he muttered, repeating the phrase for the fifth time in the last hour.
He downed the drink in one swallow, wincing as it burned down his throat. The burn wasn’t enough.
Nothing was.
Because every time he shut his eyes, he saw her that red dress slipping over her thighs, her lips parted on a shaky breath, her eyes rolling back when he pushed into her this morning.
"Fuck," he groaned, dragging his hand across his face.
He wasn’t supposed to care this much.He wasn’t supposed to care at all. Relationships were inconveniences. Attachment was a liability. Emotions were weapons.
He’d lived his whole life with those rules carved into his bones.
But instead, he'd taken her against the wall, in the shower, and under the sheets, as if he needed her in ways he didn't dare to admit.
Paris should’ve been an escape.
Yet standing there, staring at the glittering skyline, he had never felt more trapped inside his own body. He checked his phone.
Nothing. Not a text, not a missed call. Not even a message accidentally sent to the wrong person.
She was giving him exactly what he told himself he wanted. He set the empty glass aside and paced the suite, tension radiating off him in sharp waves. Every woman he passed today smiled at him. One in the elevator slipped him her hotel card. At lunch, the French liaison practically begged for drinks later. He ignored all of them. Because none of them was her.
He stopped pacing and braced his palms against the table, head bowed.
Alex checked his phone again.
Still nothing.
“Damn it, sweetheart. Why are you the only thing I can’t get out of my head?” he whispered.
Finally, Alex picked up his phone and called Sophia. The phone rang once, twice, three times. Alex’s pulse hammered in his throat, louder than the city below.
Sophia jolted awake in the dark, the shrill ring slicing through the hush of her dorm room. She fumbled for the phone on the nightstand, squinting at the screen.
Her heart lurched. She hadn’t expected him to call. Not after the silence. Not after she’d forced herself to stop checking every five minutes.
She swiped to answer, voice thick with sleep and something rawer.
“…Hello?”
“Sophia. Did I wake you?” His own voice came out rougher than he intended, scraped raw by bourbon and want.
She sat up, the sheet slipping to her waist, cool air kissing the bruises on her collarbone. The room was pitch-black except for the faint glow of her phone.
“No,” she lied, then softer, “Yes. But I don’t care.”
Alex pressed the phone harder to his ear, eyes fixed on the Seine glittering like spilled diamonds.
“I can’t sleep,” he admitted.
“I’m standing here in a fucking penthouse suite that costs more per night than most people make in a month, and all I can think about is how you looked when I left. How you tasted. How you felt.”
Sophia’s breath hitched. She shifted, thighs pressing together, the ache between them flaring back to life.
“Alex…”