ONLY EVER MINE

CHAPTER 3

*KAYDEN'S POV**

Kayden was warm.

That was the first thing he registered before anything else. Not the grey light coming through the curtains or the distant sound of someone's alarm down the hall. Just warm. Solid, breathing warm.

He opened his eyes.

Oh.

Adrian's chest. Adrian's arm around him like it had every right to be there. Adrian's heartbeat slow and steady under his cheek like it had been doing that all night and had absolutely no plans to apologize for it.

Kayden lay there for a second.

Then he got up, grabbed his towel and walked to the bathroom like that was a completely normal thing that just happened. Because it was. Obviously it was. They were just cold and it was a cold room and that's all that was. He's not thinking about it. He's already not thinking about it.

He turned the shower on.

Stood under it.

Fine. He was fine.

He came back into the room. Adrian was sitting up in bed reading. Jacket already on. Hair perfect. Looking like a person who had definitely not spent the night with his arm around someone and his face in their hair.

Kayden sat on his bed and reached for his phone.

Six oh three.

"You're late," he said.

Adrian turned a page.

"Six oh three Adrian."

"I heard you the first time."

"The bet—"

"I heard you." He closed the book. Put his slippers on. Stood up. Picked the book back up and tucked it under his arm like he was going somewhere nice.

"Kitchen's third floor," Kayden said. "Left at the—"

"I'll find it."

He walked out.

Kayden sat there and looked at the empty doorway for a moment. Then he looked at Adrian's side of the bed. The duvet was neat. His side was less neat. From the cold. Obviously from the cold.

He looked at his phone.

Six oh four.

Adrian came back eight minutes later and put the coffee on his nightstand without looking at him. Then picked up his towel and his change of clothes.

And his book.

"I'm taking a bath," he said.

Kayden stared at him. "Now."

"Yes."

"Adrian we have practice in forty minutes."

"Then I suggest you start getting ready."

"You're taking a bath."

"Yes."

"With your book."

"I enjoy reading Kayden."

"It's six in the morning!"

"Time is a construct." He looked at the coffee. "Drink that before it gets cold."

"I didn't—"

He was already gone.

Kayden sat there.

He picked up the coffee.

It was perfect. Exact temperature. Exactly how he liked it without him ever saying that out loud. Not once. He'd never told Adrian how he took his coffee.

He drank it slowly and didn't think about that either. He's very good at not thinking about things.

---

The dining hall was loud and Kayden was in the middle of it the way he always was. Tray loaded. Emeka on his left already talking with his mouth full. Davide across from him doing his usual thing of eating like he had somewhere to be.

"—I'm telling you Russo got taller," Emeka was saying. "Look at him. That's not natural."

"People grow Emeka."

"Not like that. Not that fast."

"He's seventeen—"

"He was already seventeen when we left—"

"Then he turned more seventeen—"

"That's not how age works Davide—"

Kayden wasn't listening.

He was listening. He just also wasn't because Adrian was at the next table eating like he was at a restaurant that required a reservation and had a dress code and probably a waiting list. Back straight. Napkin on his lap. Cutting things properly. Drinking his water at specific intervals like there was a correct way to hydrate and everyone else was doing it wrong.

He said something to the person across from him and the corner of his mouth moved. Not a full smile. Just the almost one. The one that meant he found something quietly funny but wasn't going to give it the satisfaction.

Kayden had a whole catalogue of that face. He'd been collecting it since he was four years old without meaning to and he really wished he'd stop.

He watched Adrian lift his glass.

Watched his throat move when he swallowed.

Looked at his own food so fast he nearly knocked his tray over.

"Kayden." Emeka was looking at him.

"What."

"You good?"

"Fine."

"You were staring at the law table."

"I was thinking."

"About the law table."

"About the Gatti case study. It's in that direction."

Emeka looked at Davide. Davide looked at his plate like it had personally begged him to stay out of this.

Kayden ate his breakfast.

He didn't look at the next table again.

He looked once more.

Stopped.

He is so fine.

---

First class they sat on opposite sides of the room and Kayden ignored him with complete and total commitment and it was fine. Normal. He was not aware of Adrian sitting twenty feet away from him at all. Not even a little bit.

Second class was Gatti's class that one class that seems to woke up every morning and chose violence.

He was mid case study when he just stopped. Looked around the room slowly. His eyes found Kayden. Moved to Adrian. Came back to the front with the expression of a man who had been waiting for this exact moment.

"Mensah. Cole." He gestured to the front. "Please."

Kayden looked across the room.

Adrian was already closing his notebook.

Of course he was.

They stood at the front on opposite sides. The class went the specific kind of quiet that meant everyone had just decided this was more interesting than the lesson. Gatti leaned back in his chair and looked like a man who had made excellent life choices.

"Cole prosecuting. Mensah defending. Thirty seconds."

Kayden read the case on the board.

Looked up.

Adrian was looking at him. Waiting.

"The defence," Adrian said, calm and even like he was discussing the weather, "is asking the jury to disregard documented evidence. Which isn't a legal strategy. It's optimism."

"The prosecution," Kayden said, "is asking the jury to trust documentation obtained without proper authorisation. Which isn't evidence. It's paperwork that believes in itself a little too much."

Someone in the back made a sound.

"Three independent witnesses signed that documentation," Adrian said.

"Three independent witnesses who were there at the prosecution's personal invitation," Kayden said. "Interesting definition of independent."

"Their presence doesn't compromise their testimony."

"Their presence raises a question about their objectivity which is literally my entire point and you know it."

"You're confusing process with outcome."

"You're confusing confidence with being correct." Kayden tilted his head. "Which honestly seems to be a recurring thing with you."

Adrian looked at him. That steady look. The one he used when he was deciding exactly how to dismantle something.

"The defence," he said, "has a very fast mouth."

"The prosecution," Kayden said, "has a very cold face. Neither of those is a legal argument so I'm not sure why you brought it up."

The class exhaled collectively.

Gatti started clapping from his chair. Slowly. Like a man who had been proven right about something. "Both of you. Thursday after class." He looked genuinely delighted. "This is exactly what I'm here for."

They walked out separately.

Got to the staircase at the same time.

" Be prepared am watching you" Kayden sais with a smirk playing on his lips. He number into Adrian and went directly down the stairs.

---

Practice destroyed Kayden. Two hours of Coach deciding suffering was character building and by the end of it his shoulders were locked, burning and filing a formal complaint every time he moved. He was face down on his bed. Adrian was at his desk. Laptop open. Working. On the first evening back.

Kayden genuinely did not understand this man.

He rolled his shoulder. Winced loud enough to be heard.

"My shoulders are dead," he announced.

"Rest them," Adrian said without looking up.

"I need a massage."

The typing stopped.

"No," Adrian said.

"The bet—"

"Kayden—"

"Every request. No complaints. No renegotiating." Kayden turned his head to look at him. "You shook on it. With that hand. That exact hand right there."

Adrian looked at his own hand.

Then at Kayden.

Then at the ceiling like it owed him something.

He closed the laptop.

He came and sat on the edge of Kayden's bed with the energy of a man who had accepted his fate and wanted it on record somewhere that he hadn't done so willingly. He looked at Kayden with that flat expression of his.

"Shirt," he said.

Kayden pulled it off and dropped it on the floor and laid back on his stomach. Arms folded under his chin. He felt the mattress dip. Felt Adrian look at his back for a second.

Then his hands came down.

Cold. Kayden sucked in a breath.

"Cold hands."

"They'll warm up."

They did. Fast. And then he started working and Kayden's brain went somewhere quiet and warm and completely unhelpful.

His thumbs pressed in either side of Kayden's spine — slow, deliberate, finding every knot from practice like he had a map. The first one released and a sound came out of Kayden before he could stop it. Low and involuntary and he pressed his face into his arms immediately.

Adrian kept going.

"Here?" He pressed into a point just below Kayden's left shoulder blade.

"Yeah." It came out lower than intended. "Right there."

He worked it out slowly. Kayden stopped trying to manage his breathing because it clearly wasn't taking instructions from him anymore. His whole body was just — giving up. Sinking into the mattress. Going warm in a way that had nothing to do with the room temperature.

*This is the bet,* he told himself. *This is just the bet. He's annoying. He stole your window bed. He took your top shelves. He—*

His hands moved up to the base of Kayden's neck and something that was dangerously close to a moan came out of him.