Chapter 50 Adrian
I’ve learned something very useful over the last few weeks.
People don’t look up.
Not in the city.
Not in the rink.
Not in the hallways.
Not when they’re laughing or scared or clinging to three hockey players like she did today.
They watch the ground.
They watch each other.
They watch their phones.
Not the shadows.
Not me.
I slip through her building’s stairwell as easily as water down a drain. No one passes me. No one questions the hood, the gloves, the clipboard I carry like I belong to maintenance.
All it takes is a uniform and a bored expression to become invisible.
I’ve always been good at that.
Third floor.
Second door on the right.
Her door.
My fingers itch. Not with violence — that’s too blunt, too messy — but with anticipation.
She came home tonight.
Finally.
I let her.
I watched her fight for it, watched her stand on that sidewalk with those three men orbiting her like moons around a planet that didn’t even know it was made of fire. I watched her lift her chin and say she’d sleep alone.
Every one of them went still.
I almost laughed.
They think they’re protecting her.
They think she belongs to them now.
Kael with his calm, commanding voice.
Finn with his pathetic, lovesick stares.
Atlas with his fists he calls hands.
Three of them.
One of her.
It should make me worried.
It doesn’t.
Because I know her.
I know that stubborn streak. I know that need to feel strong, to feel in control, to prove she’s not the shaking little thing she used to be when she’d cry into the bathroom tile because I didn’t like who she texted or how she breathed.
She always breaks the rules to prove she’s stronger than me.
It’s cute.
And predictable.
That’s why I let her go home.
She thinks tonight is her victory.
It’s mine.
I wait until her apartment is dark for twenty minutes. Until the building quiets. Until the street noise thins. Until the men who walked her home drive away — yes, I watched them — two cars, a rotation, laughable in its predictability.
Then I move.
Her door is easy.
A worn latch.
An older bolt.
A maintenance bar installed incorrectly.
A breath.
A shift of metal.
A small click.
And I’m in.
The apartment smells like her.
Citrus.
Clean linen.
Warm skin.
Fear, faint but present — like she’s lived with it so long it’s soaked into the walls.
I breathe it in, slow and deep.
My heartbeat slows.
Mine.
Her jacket sits on the chair where she dropped it earlier. I trail two fingers down the sleeve. Touching the fabric is enough to make my pulse jump.
She hasn’t been home long.
I hear the shower running.
Perfect.
I walk through her apartment without rushing. I’ve been here before — not in body, but in study. Photos. Angles. The way she organizes things. The way her shoes line up by the door.
Everything she thinks she chose freely, I’ve already memorized.
Her bedroom is small.
Too neat.
Sheets tucked with obsessive care.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
The water stops.
I smile.
She thinks she’s alone.
She thinks tonight is hers.
She thinks she’s brave.
Footsteps pad softly.
A light clicks off.
The door creaks.
She emerges in a towel, hair dripping down her shoulders, skin flushed from heat, breath soft.
She freezes when she sees me.
Oh.
There it is.
That look.
That beautiful, silent, breaking look she used to give me whenever I’d tell her to stop, to behave, to remember who she belonged to.
Fear.
Recognition.
Memory.
And under it all—
Something else.
Something she doesn’t want to admit.
“Hello, Wren,” I say softly.
Her breath catches.
She doesn’t scream.
She doesn’t bolt for the door.
She doesn’t reach for her phone.
She stands there — trembling, wrapped in cheap cotton, looking at me like she’s seeing a ghost she hoped was buried.
A ghost who never stays dead.
“You look good,” I murmur. “Boston suits you.”
She grips the edge of the towel tighter. “Get out.”
I tilt my head. “You’re home.”
Her lower lip trembles. “Adrian, get out.”
“You told them you wanted to be alone tonight.” I let a small smile curve my mouth. “I’m giving you that.”
She shakes her head, small and terrified and trying not to show it. “I’m calling Kael.”
Ah.
The captain.
I laugh quietly.
“You think he can get here in time?”
Her chest rises and falls too fast.
I stand — slowly, deliberately — and the room shrinks around her.
“You’re braver than I remember,” I say. “But bravery won’t save you, Wren.”
Her breath turns to shards.
“If you could just listen,” she whispers, voice cracking.
I step closer, into her space, into the humidity left from the shower, into the warmth she tries to keep from me.
“I have been listening,” I say. “To every laugh. Every breath. Every word you say to those men. Every time they touch you.”
Her face drains of color.
“You think I’m jealous?” I ask, quiet and lethal. “I’m not.”
That’s a lie.
A beautiful lie.
“I’m simply... correcting something.”
She stumbles back a single step.
Just one.
I follow.
“Now,” I murmur, “why don’t you get dressed? We have things to talk about.”
She opens her mouth — maybe to scream, maybe to plead, maybe to fight — and I smile wider.
Because I know her.
And she’s finally, finally exactly where I want her.