"Are you really okay?" Ariana asked softly, her fingers gently threading through his hair.
They had decided to skip dinner. Adrian didn't want to be anywhere else but here, and Ariana hadn't needed a second to agree.
She had never been bullied before—not the way Adrian had. But there were moments… moments when fear had wrapped around her like a vice.
Like that one time she went to the market alone, and a group of thugs cornered her.
She could still recall the paralyzing sense of helplessness. The cold dread in her veins. How small and powerless she had felt in that moment—like a fragile thing that could be broken, tossed aside, and forgotten.
But Adrian had been there.
He came for her that day.
If he hadn't, she would have remembered that incident for a very different, far more terrifying reason.
He was always there.
