He had always been mine のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 141 - チャプター 150

KILLIAN POV Maya was already home when I opened the door.The apartment smelled like garlic and the soap Leigh preferred. Shoes were by the wall in a small disorderly line. Leigh ran at me before I had fully crossed the threshold, a drawing in one hand and the tiger under the other arm, talking already—school, a boy who had said her cape was wrong, a demand that I look at the drawing before I took my shoes off. I looked. I praised the red. I said the cape was exactly right. Over her head Maya stood at the counter with a wooden spoon and a face that had received my afternoon message and filed it without softening.*I saw him. His office. He knows about the two weeks. I’m coming home.*She had replied: *Ok.*One word. No question. The kind of receipt that meant the conversation was only postponed until the child was out of the room.I hung my jacket. I washed my hands. I sat at the table while Leigh explained the drawing in greater detail and Maya set plates down with movements that we

KILLIAN POV Day three passed without a message from Brandon.The absence was worse than the orders. I went to the studio. I worked. I came home on time. I told Maya there had been no contact and watched her receive the information like a stay of execution that still counted against the total. Leigh asked again about the pillow. Maya said, “Soon,” and did not look at me when she said it.On day four the silence broke from a different direction.I was at the front of the studio checking a delivery of stretchers when Lang touched my arm and nodded toward the street. Through the glass I saw him—Harlow, coat collar up, standing on the opposite sidewalk as if he had been there long enough to become part of the scenery. He did not wave. He did not cross. He only met my eyes, held them for a second, and then turned and walked away at an unhurried pace.Polite. Persistent. Not gone.I went outside. The sidewalk was empty by the time I reached it. No car waiting. No second approach. Only t

KILLIAN POV The message arrived while I was mixing paint I would scrape off an hour later.Harlow has been warned in person. If he surfaces again, I want it the same hour. Day five. You’re still counting. So am I.I read it twice. Brandon and Harlow in a room together. A warning delivered in person. The half-brother who had stood on the sidewalk and the man who sent cars finally occupying the same air. I wiped my hands, stepped into the stairwell, and forwarded the substance to Maya before I could talk myself into waiting until dinner.Brandon messaged. He met Harlow in person and warned him off. No contact with either of them beyond that message. Home by six.The reply came a few minutes later.Ok.Same word. Different weight every time.I went back to the easel and forced the afternoon into something that looked like work. Lang asked once if I was expecting anyone. I said no. He left it there. At five-thirty I washed the brushes, locked the station, and walked home through streets

KILLIAN POV Day seven arrived like a hinge.Half the time Maya had given me was gone. Half remained. I lay on the sofa in the early dark and listened to the apartment breathe—the refrigerator, the pipes, the soft sound of Leigh turning in the small bed, Maya’s stillness on the mattress beside her. Seven days of reports. Seven days of telling the truth about where I was and who had messaged and what I had forwarded. Seven days of not lying and still not choosing. The honesty had become a routine. The routine had not become a decision.I got up before them and made coffee. When Maya came into the kitchen she stopped at the sight of me already dressed, already present, and something complicated moved through her face—surprise, then wariness, then the tired acceptance that had settled over everything between us since the night I had finally given Brandon a name.“You’re up early.”“Couldn’t sleep.”She poured coffee into the cup I had left for her. The gesture was practical. It was also

KILLIAN POV Day nine began with a silence that felt different from the others.Maya was already in the kitchen when I woke on the sofa. The light through the window was thin and grey. She had made coffee. She had set out Leigh’s cereal. She had not turned on the radio the way she sometimes did to fill the room with something other than the fact of us. When I appeared in the doorway she glanced at me once and then back at the counter.“You’re up,” she said.“Couldn’t sleep much.”“Neither could I.”Leigh arrived before either of us could say anything that belonged to the countdown. She wanted the tiger at the table. She wanted to know if we were still figuring it out. Maya said yes. I said yes. The double yes sat over the cereal bowls like a weather system neither of us could clear. I tied Leigh’s shoes. Maya packed the bag. At the door Maya paused with her hand on the frame and her eyes on a point somewhere past my shoulder.“Six days left after today,” she said. Quiet. For me only.