h4Chapter 403: Waiting/h4

    "Since you insist on sitting in the passenger seat, tell me, Cadence," Max drawled, his grin widening as he deliberately kept his eyes on the road, "do you have a thing for me? Is that why you keep trying to stop Elias from getting close to me?"

    The teasing lilt in his voice was enough to make Cadence’s jaw tighten. The man gritted his teeth, torn between firing back with a scathing reply and simply throwing Max out of his own car. In the end, the grin was what did it—the infuriating, self-satisfied grin that made Cadence’s patience snap.

    Muttering a few choice words under his breath, he yanked the door open and climbed out, mming it shut behind him with more force than necessary.

    Inside the hospital, the air was cooler, quieter, but it did little to settle his irritation. He stalked through the hallway and stopped outside the conference hall, pacing like a caged animal. For a few minutes, he debated barging in just to tell Elias to stay away from Max altogether, to make his point clear whether anyone liked it or not.

    But when the doors finally opened and he stepped inside, his footsteps faltered.

    Cadence froze mid-step, the words he’d nned to say dying on his tongue as his eyes found the man on stage. For a moment, everything else seemed to fall away-the audience, the low murmur of the crowd, even his own frustration. He had forgotten this side of Elias. How easily the man could hold a room. How naturally the spotlight seemed to belong to him.

    The years had buried that memory somewhere underyers, but now it returned all at once. Elias, standing there with his calm confidence. He was maic, the kind of speaker who made you forget the time passing as you listened. You would be enraptured and not bored.

    Cadence leaned back against the wall, arms folded, his anger disappearing. For the first time that day, he said nothing. He simply watched, listening to the lecture in silence, unwilling to admit even to himself that he was impressed all over again.

    On the stage, Elias kept hisposure, though his focus wavered more than once. It had been so long since he’d seen Cadence in the audience. Too long.

    He could feel the weight of that gaze on him, steady and unrelenting. It was impossible to ignore. Thest time he had stood here with Cadence present, the man had always been ready with sharp questions after the talk, challenges that pushed him to think harder, speak clearer.

    Unexpectedly, just as he began running through in his mind the questions Cadence might throw at him, the man got up and walked straight out of the auditorium the moment the lecture ended. No hesitation. No looking back.

    That made him tense instantly.

    How had he forgotten? Today’s case study had been about Melody. About how maniptive the human mind could be. About how easily emotions could be twisted until people didn’t even recognize their own reactions anymore.

    Had Cadence figured it out? Had he realized the lecture was about her?

    The thought hit like a jolt. If Cadence had put two and two together, if he even suspected that the examples in ss were pointing toward Melody... things would spiral out of control fast.

    He forced himself to keep speaking as thest few attendees asked their questions, but his mind was no longer in the room. He just wanted to get out there and talk to Cadence, though what exactly he nned to say, he had no idea. What exnation could even cover this?

    The moment he wrapped up, he didn’t wait. He practically rushed out of the auditorium, almost breaking into a run.

    And nearly crashed right into Cadence.

    He would have fallen if Cadence hadn’t caught him by the arm at thest second.

    Breathless, he opened his mouth to exin—to say something, anything—but Cadence spoke first.

    "Really?" The man’s tone was sharp, his eyes cold. "Are you that desperate?"

    Elias Jung felt his stomach drop. So, Cadence ihad/i figured it out. He was convinced Cadence med him for turning Melody into a case study, for standing there in front of everyone and dissecting her maniptive streak like she was nothing more than a textbook example.

    He opened his mouth to exin—to tell Cadence that Melody was a issic/i case, that the psychology world needed to see how far emotional maniption could twist a person—but before he could get a word out, Cadence’s hand closed around his arm.

    "Come with me," Cadence said, his voice clipped, dragging him toward the small office near the end of the hall.

    "Cadence, listen to me," Elias began, stumbling after him, still trying to defend himself. "This is necessary... and important to me-"

    "Important?" Cadence turned on him the second they were inside, the door shutting hard behind them. His eyes were stormy, his voice rising. "How is this important to you? Is it more important than me? Because I’m standing here, Elias, wondering why you keep doing this. You icould/i give it up. You icould/i just think about yourself for once."

    Elias froze.

    That stung, mostly because he didn’t understand why Cadence sounded so... odd.

    "Cadence," he said carefully, "I told you... studying is important."

    "Of all the people you can study, you want to study that specimen? What for? I mean anyone with eyes can see that all he wants is to get into your pants. He’s even bragging to his friends that he wants to do that! He’s even taking you out on a date, just because he wants to sleep with you. Not because he values you or anything! Max is nothing but a yboy!"

    Elias blinked, the words mming into him one by one until they finally sank in.

    Max. Cadence was talking about Max and not Melody.

    So all this time, while Elias had been scrambling to defend his research, Cadence had been furious about ithat/i?

    "I,wait. You think I’m... Cadence, it isn’t like that."

    "Oh, really?" Cadence snapped, pacing the small office now, shoulders tense. "Because every time I turn around, there he is—grinning like the devil—and there iyou/i are, acting like you don’t notice what he wants from you. What everyone knows he wants from you. He does not care about you!"

    Elias stared at him, finally realizing how badly he had misread the situation.

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