Chapter 23
Adrian
The weight room is empty when I arrive, the air cold and still, thick with the smell of rubber and iron.
It’s not even dawn. The sun is a lazy coward, still hiding below the horizon, but I couldn’t sleep.
The restless, coiled energy from last night still buzzes under my skin, a low-grade fever that refuses to break.
Every time I closed my eyes, I was back on that dark path with her, the space between us charged and electric.
Her sharp “You’re crowding me” still rings louder than the clang of iron.
I don’t bother with a warm-up. I go straight to the bench, loading the bar with more weight than I should, chasing a burn that might cauterize the wound she’s leaving in my head.
The knurled metal tears at my palms as if it wants blood.
I push through the first set, my movements fueled by a raw, unfocused aggression, my mind a relentless replay.
Her, standing outside the café, bathed in the sickly yellow glow of the lamplight.
The way her body went rigid with fear when she first saw a shadow, and the way that fear just changed shape when she realized it was me.
Her fear wasn’t rejection. It was recognition. She already knew who owned her pulse.
“How would you know what I usually do?” The accusation in her voice.
“I notice things.” The possessive truth in mine.
I had her. For the entire walk back to her dorm, she was caught in my gravity, off-balance and hyper-aware.
Every time her sleeve brushed mine, I felt the jolt arc through her.
When my shoulder pressed against hers, I felt the war in her body—the recoil of terror and the traitorous lean of attraction.
I saw all of it. I cataloged every tell, every hitched breath, every flicker of defiance in her stormy eyes.
It should feel like a victory. Like winning. It should taste like blood and triumph. Instead, it tastes like rust. Why do I feel like I’m the one losing control? Why does it feel like she’s prying the blade out of my hand?
I rack the bar with a clattering roar that shatters the silence, my arms trembling. I sit up, chest heaving, and that’s when I see him.
Declan is standing by the racks, methodically wrapping his hands.
He moves with a quiet, deliberate grace that is the complete opposite of the chaos churning in my gut.
He must have come in while I was under the bar.
He doesn’t look at me, but I know he heard the angry clang of the weight.
I know he’s been watching. His silence is different from the team’s—theirs is empty, waiting to be filled with noise.
His is analytical, heavy with observation.
It puts me on edge more than any shout from Addison ever could.
We don’t speak. We work. He moves to the squat rack, his form perfect and economical, a study in controlled strength.
I move to the deadlifts, pulling weight off the floor with a raw, ugly force that has more to do with anger than technique.
Every rep is her name, every slam of metal a vow.
The silence between us isn’t empty; it’s a conversation.
He’s waiting. I’m pretending I don’t know it.
Finally, as I’m stripping plates from my bar, he speaks. He doesn’t even turn around.
“Saw you outside the café last night.” His voice is flat, an observation with no judgment, which somehow makes it worse.
A muscle in my back tightens, a defensive reflex. My hands still on the cold iron. “So?” My teeth grind so hard I taste iron.
He finishes his set, racking the bar with a soft, controlled thud. He turns, leaning back against the rack, and fixes me with that steady, analytical gaze that sees right through my bullshit. “You looked like a wolf circling a rabbit,” he says, his voice still quiet. “It was sloppy.”
Just one word, and it hits like a fist to the gut.
Sloppy. The one thing I am never allowed to be.
The dirtiest word in my language, worse than weak.
It’s a direct attack on my control, my precision, the very foundation of my identity.
A hot, defensive rage flares in my chest. I have to physically clench my jaw to keep from snapping at him.
“I was walking her back to her dorm,” I bite out, my voice a low growl.
“No,” Declan says, his voice unyielding. “You were hunting. There’s a difference. You were backing her into a corner on a public path. You were feeding on her fear.”
He doesn’t know the half of it. Fear wasn’t all I fed on. She leaned. For a second, she leaned.
“I didn’t touch her.” The denial sounds weak even to my own ears, the memory of my shoulder pressing into hers flashing hot and immediate in my mind.
“You didn’t have to.” He takes a step closer, his presence a quiet, immovable force as the rubber floor creaks under his weight.
“You’re treating her like a rival player you’re trying to shut down on the boards.
She’s not. She’s a girl already carrying the weight of the whole goddamn world on her shoulders.
” He stops in front of me, his eyes dark and serious.
“You keep pushing her like that, you’re going to break her, or she’s going to break you.
Either way, the team loses. And Adrian—others noticed. You weren’t invisible last night.”
His words hang in the air, a brutal, undeniable truth.
He didn’t come at me with emotion; he came at me with strategy.
He framed my obsession as a liability to the one thing I am sworn to protect: the team.
It’s the only argument I can’t counter. My mind flashes with an image of Clara’s face, shattered.
Then another of me, completely unraveled, losing every last piece of the control I cling to.
For the first time, this game I’m playing with her doesn’t feel like a hunt. It feels like a risk. A real one.
My first instinct is to lash out, to tell him to mind his own fucking business.
But it’s Declan. The one person whose loyalty I’ve never had to question, who has never wanted anything from me but for me to be better.
And he’s right. I’m being reckless. I’m losing control.
Clara is the one who will pay the price for it.
I don’t answer him. I just turn back to the weights, my movements stiff, my jaw locked so tight it aches. Silence sits in my throat like broken glass.
Declan doesn’t wait for an apology. He just gives a single, almost imperceptible nod, as if to say, You heard me. He picks up his water bottle and walks out, leaving me alone in the ringing silence. The door hinges groan, leaving the room hollow with his absence.
I turn back to the bench press, my muscles coiled with a useless, frustrated energy.
I lie down, grip the bar, and try to push.
The strength is gone. My focus is shattered.
Declan’s words have scraped me clean, leaving nothing but the ugly truth.
I can’t even lift the bar. With a curse, I let it settle back into the cradle.
The bar won’t budge. Neither will the thought of her.
I stand there for a long time, a cold iron dumbbell in my hand.
The energy I came here to burn off is still there, a toxic sludge in my veins, tangled with the poison of Declan’s warning.
It rots in me, black oil coating every vein.
I’ve been called out by the one person I can’t dismiss, and he didn’t do it for judgment. He did it out of loyalty.
He’s right. I’m going to break her. Or she’s going to break me. The thought is a self-fulfilling prophecy, a countdown clock that just started ticking in my head.
I have practice in a few hours, and my head is a mess. For the first time, I’m not just worried about controlling her. I’m worried about controlling myself. Control is slipping, one finger at a time.
And the fall is coming.