The study was dimly lit, smelling of old cigars and expensive indifference.
Aria didn't come in here often. The space was too… Xander. Every shelf, every whiskey glass, every leather-bound book screamed control freak with issues.
And yet, here she was.
On the desk sat a small velvet box. No note. Just sitting there like it had been waiting.
She opened it.
Inside was a necklace. Silver. Delicate. Familiar.
Her chest tightened without permission.
She couldn't even remember owning it—but the weight of it, the way it caught the light like it remembered something she didn't—it made her stomach knot.
She closed the box. Too late. The memory had already crawled under her skin.
"Didn't think you'd find that," came a voice from behind.
She didn't jump. She never gave him that satisfaction anymore.
Xander leaned in the doorway, sleeves rolled, hair a little tousled like he hadn't decided if he wanted to look formal or wrecked.
"You kept it," she said, not turning around.
He didn't answer right away.
"I thought it was all I'd have left of you."
She turned slowly to face him. Her eyes were cool, but her heart beat like a war drum.
"You don't get to say things like that," she said. "Not after how you treated me. You don't get to keep pieces of me for comfort."
"I know," he said. Quiet. Heavy. "I know I don't."
Something in her cracked. Not shattered. Just... cracked.
She put the box down.
"You should've let it go," she said, brushing past him.
But she didn't give the necklace back.
Not yet.