Jealousy

Adrian’s POV

The second that hand touched Elias’s waist I was already moving. My boots hit the pavement hard as I moved towards them. People on the quad turned to look, but I didn’t care. All I saw was the easy way that brown-haired bastard leaned in, the soft smile on his face, and the fact that Elias still hadn’t stepped back. Why was he letting some rando touch him?

I stopped three feet away.

“Kane.”

Elias’s head snapped up and his dark eyes went wide for half a second before the shutters came down, while the other guy’s hand slid off his waist a beat too slowly for my liking.

“Vale,” Elias said, his voice deliberately flat, “what do you want?”

“Who the fuck is this?” I asked, eyes locked on the stranger as the ugly heat in my chest refused to settle.

The guy raised both hands as if the gesture alone could prove he was harmless. “Whoa. Easy. I’m just….”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Elias stepped between us with a sharpness that suggested he already knew how this was going to go. “His name is Caleb. He’s in my thermodynamics class. We were talking about the midterm.”

“Midterm,” I repeated, tasting the word like it was an insult, “with his hand on your waist.”

Caleb frowned and tried again. “It wasn’t like that. I was just…”

“Leave,” I said, the single word carrying every ounce of the jealousy that had ripped through me the moment I saw them standing that close.

Elias’s jaw tightened. “You don’t get to decide that.”

“Yeah, I do.” I looked at Caleb again and kept my voice low and final. “Walk away. Now.”

Caleb glanced at Elias, waiting for a signal, and Elias gave a short nod that looked almost reluctant. “It’s fine. I’ll text you later.”

Caleb hesitated for another second before he backed up and said, “Alright. See you in class,” throwing one last look over his shoulder as he left. The second he was gone Elias turned on me with enough anger to make the air between us feel charged.

“What the hell is your problem?”

“My problem is that guy’s hand on you like he owns you.”

“He doesn’t own me. No one does.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

Elias laughed once, the sound sharp and humorless. “You’re unbelievable. You fuck me once in a storage room and suddenly you’re territorial?”

“It wasn’t just once,” I said, stepping closer so that the space between us shrank to almost nothing. “You came twice. You clawed my back open. You said my name like it was the only word you knew.”

His cheeks flushed a deep red. “Shut up.”

“Why? Scared someone will hear the truth?”

“There is no truth. It was the drugs. That’s it.”

I shook my head slowly. “Keep telling yourself that. Maybe one day you’ll believe it.”

Elias’s voice dropped lower. “What do you want from me, Vale?”

“I want you to stop running.”

“I’m not running.”

“You ducked me after practice. You took the long way out of lecture. You looked straight through me this morning like I was invisible.” I tilted my head and held his gaze without blinking. “That’s running.”

He exhaled hard through his nose. “Maybe I just don’t want to talk to you.”

“Too bad. We’re talking.”

Elias glanced around the quad where a few students had already begun to watch, then muttered a curse and jerked his chin toward the side of the student center. “Not here.”

I followed him around the corner into the narrow alley between the building and the maintenance shed, and the second we were out of sight he spun around with his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

“Say whatever you need to say and then leave me alone.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because every time I close my eyes I feel you.”

Elias’s mouth opened and then closed again as he looked away. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Tell the truth?” I stepped in until our chests almost touched and the heat of him reached me through the thin space that remained. “You think I haven’t tried to forget? I kissed a girl last night. Pretty. Dark hair. Soft mouth. The second she touched me I saw you. I sent her away.”

His eyes flicked back to mine. “That’s not my problem.”

“It is now.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t stop wanting you.”

Silence stretched between us while Elias’s breathing went shallow and uneven.

“I hate you,” he said finally, the words carrying less conviction than he probably intended.

“I know.”

“I’ve hated you since the first day you showed up and took my lap times.”

“I know that too.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“Because hating you doesn’t change the fact that I woke up hard thinking about the way you sounded when I was inside you.”

Elias’s face went redder still. “Stop talking like that.”

“Make me.”

He shoved my chest with both hands, though I barely moved under the force of it.

“You’re an asshole,” he said.

“And you’re a liar.”

“I’m not….”

“You are. You can stand there and pretend last night meant nothing, but your body already told me the truth.” I lowered my voice until it was almost a murmur meant only for him. “You were tight. Wet. Shaking. You came so hard you almost blacked out. That wasn’t the drugs, Kane. That was you.”

His fists clenched at his sides. “You don’t get to use that against me. And it was just nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing.”

“To you it was. You fuck whoever you want. Girls. Guys. Whoever’s convenient.”

“You’re not convenient.”

Elias’s eyes snapped up to meet mine. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I can’t stop thinking about you.“

Elias looked at me for a moment. At that moment I saw something flicker in his eyes.

He shoved past me with enough force that his shoulder slammed into mine, the contact brief but electric. “Stay away from me, Vale.”

I caught his wrist before he could fully walk away and felt the way he froze under the simple pressure of my fingers.

“You can keep running,” I said quietly, holding his gaze without letting him look away, “but we both know how this ends.”

He yanked his arm free and kept walking, and I watched him go until he disappeared around the corner while my pulse continued to hammer in my throat.