All Chapters of My Best Friend’s Brother Is My Professor—And He Wants Me: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

Elena CarsonSaturday morning arrives quick. I zip the last corner of my bag while Nora argues with a sandal in the doorway, hopping on one foot as she tries to force the strap into place. The apartment smells like the coffee she insisted we drink before the road and the citrus lotion she put on too much of. “If this shoe dies on the way down the stairs,” Nora says, “I’m billing Killian for emotional damages.”“He upgraded the room. He has already paid enough.”“That was hospitality. This is suffering.”She wins the fight with the sandal. We lock the apartment, drag our bags into the hallway, and take the elevator down with the shared energy of people who have officially escaped. In the car Nora connects her phone before I even finish buckling my seatbelt. The first song is one we both know too well. She turns it up until the bass makes the cup holders vibrate.We sing.Badly. Enthusiastically. Without any of the self-consciousness that has followed me across campus for a week.

Killian DavenportI end the call and sit in the quiet of the office for a moment longer than necessary.Elena’s voice is still in my ear. I miss you. But I’m okay. The words leave a lighter residue than I expected. She is at a lounge with Nora, wearing a dress, calling me because she wanted to, not because she was falling apart. That distinction matters more than I am ready to examine in a company parking lot.I take my jacket and head down.Ronald is waiting by my car with his hands in his pockets and the expression he wears when the evening still has obligations in it.“Derek’s at the mansion,” he says. “He hasn’t been in the office for a few days. He wants a face-to-face.”I unlock the doors. We get in. The city moves past the windows in clean streaks of light while Ronald adjusts the vent like it has offended him.“You fine?” he asks.“I’m fine.”“You miss her?”“Obviously. She can still have a life that doesn’t include me standing in the middle of it.”Ronald glances over

Killian DavenportSunday sits differently when she is on her way back.The board decision is still scheduled for tomorrow. The possibility of a suspended license is still sitting in the back of my mind. None of it touches the sharper fact that Elena’s trip from the weekend ends today and the penthouse will stop feeling oversized the moment she walks through the door. I want our evening to be right. I also know her well enough to understand she may not want a spectacle after two days of brightness. So I prepare for both.The reservation downtown is confirmed for eight, private corner table, the place with the view she once mentioned in passing and then forgot she had mentioned. At the same time the living room has been transformed. A decorator handled most of it before noon: low lights, arrangements of white and deep red roses. Crystal. The good cutlery. Candles. A private chef is due in an hour. Elena is due in two. If she wants to stay in, the night is already built. If she want

Elena Carson I do not know how long I have been here.The concrete does not offer clocks. The barred window is the only measure I have, and even that lies by degrees. The light is shifting, thinning, changing color without ever giving me a number I can trust. Earlier the rectangle of sky was hard and bright. Now it has softened into the lower gold of late day. Sunset, or close to it. Hours, then. Unless I slept without noticing and the light is lying about the date as well.Nora will have come back to the garden by now. She will have seen the bags. She will have called my name in that sharp, annoyed way she uses when she thinks I am playing a joke, and then the annoyance will have broken when I did not answer. She will have called Killian. The thought of his face receiving that information is almost worse than the room. He will not stay still. He will tear through every option available to him with the same cold precision he brings to everything that threatens what he consid

Killian DavenportThe warehouse comes into view as a low black shape against the tree line near the stream.No signage. One service door lit by a dying exterior bulb. A van idles near the side ramp with its engine off. The guard who knows the roads cuts our lights early and rolls the last stretch on momentum. Ronald’s voice is already low in the passenger seat, diverting the rest of the team into a wider net around the building. Ian stays in the car with the laptop. The rest of us move.The air outside smells of wet concrete and river mud. My pulse is too loud in my ears. I force it down into the same narrow channel I use for everything that cannot be allowed to shake. Fear does not help her. Precision might.We breach through a side access. The interior is a grid of stacked pallets and sheeted machinery, dark except for emergency strips along the floor. Two figures break from cover near the back corridor. One raises a weapon. The suppressed shot from Ronald’s man drops him scre