All Chapters of Loving Him For 30 Days: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The Lion’s Den bus arrived at half past ten and Eli was on the lake path when he heard the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway he didn’t turn around immediately because he was looking at the lake and the water was doing something interesting with the morning light that he wanted to finish looking at first.Then he turned around anyway, fifty Lion’s Den students came off the bus, for people that were all majoring in political sciences or law, they seemed very quiet and calculating. Lucien was among them, with a bag over one shoulder, jacket collar up against the cold and the light did something with his red hair, it looked more profound. He found Eli without appearing to look for him, their eyes met across the driveway and Eli raised his coffee cup slightly, with a warm smile.Lucien’s expression did the thing, the almost smile, and he turned toward the lodge entrance where the Westhaven staff were directing arrivals, and Eli turned back to the lake, that was enough for now.The we

Lucien lasted twelve minutes.That was how long he stood in that room beside his father, nodding at the right moments, answering questions that weren’t really questions, letting the cameras take what they needed.Twelve minutes before he stopped listening.“…and Saint Aurelius continues to produce…Lucien?”Lucien blinked once.Everett Vale was looking at him now, with expectation that had shaped most of Lucien’s life.“Are you with us?” his father asked.Lucien straightened slightly.“Yes.”“Good,” Everett said, satisfied. “You’ll walk with me.”Lucien didn’t respond, his attention had already shifted to the door. He noticed that Eli hadn’t come back in.He excused himself two minutes later, “I’ll join you shortly,” Lucien said and started walking away.Everett studied him for a moment, like he was deciding whether to push then he didn’t because Lucien didn't bother asking for his permission.“Don’t take too long.” he said and Lucien nodded once and walked away.The porch was empty a

Mira Solene had been running @saintaurelius_confessions for two years and in that time she had developed an instinct for when something was about to happen. Not a premonition exactly, more like the awareness of someone who had spent long enough watching a campus full of people with secrets to recognize the energy of a secret under pressure.She felt it on day three of the Westhaven trip, sitting at the long breakfast table with her laptop open and her coffee going cold beside it, reading through the research she’d been compiling for six weeks.The Hargreaves file, this was her gold mine, to go beyond Saint Aurelius campus, she her eyes set on something and this story is meant to be the big break she deserved.Not the conduct review, that part of the story was already published, already public, already doing its damage. This was the other file, the one underneath that she didn't know about till Lucien pointed her in the right direction. It had taken her three weeks of careful diggin

“You looked up training programs,” Eli said.“I was curious about the methodology.”“You looked up my event’s training programs.”“The biomechanics are interesting.”“Lucien.”“The periodization structure alone,”“You looked them up because of me,” Eli said.Lucien wrapped both hands around his coffee cup. “The periodization structure,” he said again, with great focus, “is genuinely interesting from an academic standpoint.”Eli looked at the ceiling briefly and smiled at it.“Okay,” he said.“I’m serious.”“I know you are,” Eli said. “That’s the best part.”Lucien looked at him with the expression that kept escaping his control lately, warm and slightly helpless, and Eli looked back and neither of them said anything for a moment.The loaves came out an hour later, Eli’s was good. He knew it was good before he cut it, the color, the spring, the way it sounded when

Three days back at Saint Aurelius, things were taking shape.Not a relationship exactly, not yet, but something with the texture of one, Lucien showing up places he had reasons to be and some he didn’t, Eli letting him, both of them existing in a middle ground of two people who loved where they were.It was Tuesday when Eli found out, and it was not from Noah or from anything dramatic, he found out from his mother.She called from the rehab facility, an actual call, not a text, her voice was clearer than it had been in two years, she said the intake process had gone smoothly and the facility was good, that someone had arranged everything so efficiently she didn't have to worry about a single logistical thing, and the debt was being handled, she said, by some kind of arrangement she didn’t understand but that the facility’s financial coordinator had explained and it was all taken care of, and she just wanted Eli to know she was okay.Eli sat on his bed after the call and stared at the