He had always been mine のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 71 - チャプター 80

KILLIAN POV Three days of silence should have felt like relief.It didn’t.The block sat on my phone like a locked door I could point to if anyone asked what I had done. Brandon’s number went nowhere. No new messages. No private calls. No black car that stayed too long at the corner when I left the studio. The ordinary shape of the days returned—Leigh’s breakfast, the school corner, the studio, the train, dinner, bath, bed—and under every ordinary hour the quiet stretched tighter instead of looser.Maya watched me the way she watched the weather when a storm was supposed to have passed and the sky still looked wrong.“You’re still braced,” she said on the second night after I had blocked him. Leigh was asleep. The apartment was down to the low hum of the refrigerator and the occasional sound from the street. “He hasn’t contacted you. You said you’d tell me if he did. So either he hasn’t, or you’re back to deciding what counts alone.”“He hasn’t.”“Then why do you check the window bef

KILLIAN POV Leigh fell asleep halfway through the second book, mouth open, tiger crushed under one arm.I sat on the edge of the bed until her breathing evened out, then turned off the lamp and left the door cracked the way she liked it. The hall was dark. From the kitchen I could hear Maya moving a chair, the soft scrape of the notebook opening again. The Arts Council call was still sitting in the apartment like a third person who had followed me home and refused to leave.She had the list from before in front of her when I sat down. School. Studio. Building. Records. She had added a new line at the bottom in harder handwriting.*Indirect contact — document. Do not treat as coincidence.*“Elias shut it down,” I said. “Hard, the way I asked. There’s no viewing. No donor meeting.”“And the overlap with Hale?”“Real enough that Elias noticed it without me saying the name. Soft enough that no one can print it on a page and call it proof.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “Same style as the

KILLIAN POV Morning did not move the number the right way.Leigh’s forehead was hotter under my hand before the sun was fully up. She didn’t argue about getting out of bed because she didn’t try to get out of bed. She lay on her side with the tiger under her chin and watched me with eyes that looked too tired for someone her age.“Hey,” I said softly. “How do you feel?”“Bad.” The word was small. Final. “My chest feels funny when I breathe in deep.”Something cold settled under my ribs.“Funny how?”“Like tight. And I’m hot.” She swallowed. “Can I have water?”I got the water. I got the thermometer. 101.6. Maya appeared in the doorway while the display still glowed, took one look at my face, then at Leigh, and the decision happened without a meeting.“We’re going in,” Maya said. “No more waiting.”She called the pediatrician’s office as I helped Leigh into clothes that felt too heavy for her. The nurse on the line heard *fever overnight, climbing, chest feels tight, low energy, poor

KILLIAN POV Morning on the cardiology floor arrived without kindness.Leigh had slept in broken stretches, waking whenever a monitor changed pitch or a nurse came to check the IV. Maya had dozed upright in the second chair for two hours and then given up. I had not slept at all. Coffee from the machine at the end of the hall tasted like burnt plastic and did nothing useful.The overnight team said her fever was still present but not spiking the way it had at home. The first blood cultures were pending. Antibiotics were running on schedule. The valve still needed watching. No one used the word *stable* without putting another sentence behind it.Leigh asked for the tiger the second she opened her eyes. Maya put it under her arm. For a few minutes the bay felt almost ordinary—child, toy, parents, the false calm of fluorescent light. Then the resident came through on rounds and the ordinary fell away again under questions and notes and the quiet efficiency of people who were waiting for

KILLIAN POV The mirror held both of us for a second too long.Ambrose looked older than the version that lived in the worst parts of my memory, but not different enough. Same height. Same mouth. Same way of standing like a room belonged to him because he had decided it did. The years had put gray at his temples and a heavier line under his eyes. They had not taken the thing out of his face that made my body go wrong before my mind finished naming him.“Killian,” he said again, softer, like we had run into each other at a grocery store.The cold water still ran over my wrists. I shut it off without looking away from him. My hands found the edge of the sink and held on. The stall doors behind me suddenly felt too far away. The exit was behind him. The lock on the outer door was not a lock that mattered.“Don’t.” My voice came out thin. I hated the sound of it. “Don’t say my name.”He smiled a little, the careful version, the public version. “I didn’t know you still came to this side of