Alle Kapitel von He had always been mine : Kapitel 21 – Kapitel 30

KILLIAN POV I stayed under the shower until the water ran cool.When I finally stepped out, dried off, and pulled on a pair of sweatpants, the apartment was quiet. Leigh’s door was cracked the way she liked it. The living room lamp had been turned off. A thin line of light showed under our bedroom door.Maya was already in bed when I pushed it open, sitting up against the headboard with a book open on her knees. She looked up and smiled the second she saw me.“Hey. Feel better?”“Yeah.” I closed the door softly behind me. “Water helped.”She closed the book and set it on the nightstand. I walked over and sat on the edge of the mattress. The raw anger from the restaurant was still sitting somewhere under my ribs, but the shower had burned the worst of the shaking out of me. Maya reached out and brushed her fingers along my forearm, ordinary and warm.“You were quiet when you got home,” she said. “I didn’t want to push. But if the dinner was that bad, you can tell me.”“It wasn’t bad.”

FLASHBACK - BRANDON POV 17 YRS OLDThe scissors made a soft, steady sound in the quiet bathroom.Killian sat on the closed lid of the toilet with an old towel draped around his shoulders, head tipped slightly forward the way I had told him to. Afternoon light came through the frosted window in a dull white square. The rest of the house was empty—my parents were still at the office, the way they almost always were on weekdays. It was just the two of us and the quiet metallic whisper of the blades.“Hold still,” I said.“I am holding still.”“You’re talking. That’s not still.”He made a small, annoyed sound but stopped moving. I set my fingers against the side of his head to steady him and made another careful pass with the scissors. His hair had gotten long enough to fall into his eyes again. He hated that. He always pushed it back with the heel of his hand when he was drawing, leaving graphite smudges across his forehead. Today he had shown up at my door after school with it sticking

KILLIAN POV I woke up to the sound of small feet in the hallway.For a few seconds I didn’t move. The apartment was still dim. Maya’s arm was warm across my waist, her breathing slow against the back of my shoulder. The pillow smelled like her shampoo. Everything about the moment was ordinary and safe, and my mind stayed exactly where my body was—inside the quiet of our bedroom, inside the life we had built on purpose.No restaurant. No expensive table. No calm voice across from me.Just home.Leigh’s feet stopped outside our door. There was a short, dramatic pause, then the door creaked open and a small voice whispered, “Is it breakfast time?”Maya made a sleepy sound against my back. I reached back without looking and rested my hand on her hip.“I’ll get it,” I murmured.I got up, pulled on a T-shirt, and stepped into the hallway. Leigh was already waiting in her mismatched pajamas, hair sticking up on one side, the official expression of a child who had been awake and patient

KILLIAN POV “You’re quiet,” Brandon said.I kept my eyes on the glass of water in front of me. The private room at the back of the gallery was smaller than I expected dark wood paneling, one narrow window with the blinds half-drawn, a table that felt too intimate for what this was supposed to be. The air still carried a faint trace of polish and old paper. Mr. Lang had left us alone five minutes ago with a smile that made my stomach turn, murmuring something about professional opportunity and future acquisitions before closing the door with a soft, final click.Brandon sat across from me the same way he had at the restaurant: calm, composed, perfectly at ease in a space designed for quiet conversations that went exactly the way he wanted them to. His suit was dark and precise. His hands were still. He watched me like he had all the time in the world and no intention of wasting any of it on pretense.“I don’t have much to say,” I answered. My voice came out flatter than I meant it to.

BRANDON POV The restaurant my father had chosen was exactly the kind of place he preferred for these performances quiet enough for private conversation, expensive enough to signal importance, and full of the sort of people who noticed who sat with whom. Soft lighting. Heavy linen. The low murmur of carefully measured voices. I arrived five minutes early, gave my name, and was shown to a corner table that offered a clear view of the room without putting us on full display.I sat with my back partially to the wall and waited.My father’s words from the private call still sat under my skin. *A man in your position is expected to present stability. Continuity. A household.* He had not raised his voice. He never needed to. The same quiet authority that had ordered an eight-year-old boy never to say certain things out loud again was the same authority that now expected me to sit across from a suitable woman and look like I belonged in the life he had designed. I wanted his approval more th