The Live-Action Glitch
[Jay's POV]
The air in the Watson Estate felt like it was made of lead. I had spent the last hour upstairs, staring at the walls of the Blue Suite, trying to reconcile the warmth of Keifer's hug with the coldness of that photograph. My mind was a battlefield of conflicting data. My heart remembered the way he trembled when he held me, the ragged desperation in his voice when he apologized. But my eyes... my eyes kept seeing that frame of him and Kiara.
I couldn't stay in that room anymore. The silence was beginning to scream.
I descended the staircase, my footsteps muffled by the thick carpet. Downstairs, the scene looked like a portrait of a family in stasis. Pappa Keizer was in his armchair, the rustle of his legal documents the only sound in the room. Mamma Serina was in the kitchen; I could hear the faint clink of porcelain as she prepared tea.
And then there was Keifer.
He was sitting on the long velvet couch, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He looked... haggard. His hair was messy, and he was staring at nothing, his eyes clouded with a dark, heavy thought process. I felt a pang in my chest—a sharp, sudden urge to go to him—but I suppressed it. I moved toward the foyer, my body operating on a self-imposed autopilot.
Ding-dong.
The doorbell echoed through the house, sharp and intrusive. I was closest to the door, so I moved to open it. I felt the air behind me shift; Keifer had stood up instantly. I could feel his presence looming behind me, a protective shadow that I was still trying to ignore.
I reached for the handle and pulled the heavy mahogany door open.
The winter air rushed in, but it wasn't as cold as the person standing on the porch.
Kiara Chen.
She was dressed in a pristine white coat, looking every bit the "Ice Queen" of the Engineering Department. Her eyes didn't land on me—not at first. They flicked past me, locking onto the man standing at my shoulder.
"Keifer," she breathed.
Before I could even process the breach of protocol, before I could ask what she was doing at the Watson Estate, Kiara moved. She didn't walk; she lunged. She pushed past me with a calculated urgency and threw her arms around Keifer's neck.
"I couldn't stay away," she cried, her voice carrying a theatrical tremor that made my blood run cold. "Everything is falling apart, and I knew you were the only one who would understand. Please, Keifer..."
I froze. My hand was still on the doorknob, my body turned into a pillar of salt. It was happening again. Right in front of me. The photo was coming to life in 3D, high-definition reality. The woman who had tried to destroy my peace was now physically anchored to my fiancé in the middle of our home.
I waited for the sound of his arms wrapping around her. I waited for the final confirmation that I was the surplus variable.
But the sound never came.
Keifer stood like a statue. I watched his hands—they were balled into tight, white-knuckled fists at his sides. He didn't lift them. He didn't pat her back. He didn't even lean into her. His entire body was arched away, his jaw locked in a grimace of pure, unadulterated revulsion.
The clock on the wall ticked sixty times. One full minute of Kiara clinging to him like a parasite while Keifer remained a wall of unyielding granite.
Then, with a sudden, decisive movement, Keifer grabbed her shoulders. He didn't do it gently. He shoved her back, breaking her grip with enough force that she stumbled. He didn't stop until there were exactly two feet of empty air between them—a physical barrier of "Absolute Zero."
"What are you doing here?" Keifer's voice wasn't the one he used with me. It wasn't the "Chill Prince" voice. It was a low, vibrating growl of a man who was one second away from a total system meltdown.
I stood by the door, watching the two feet of space between them. For the first time in twenty-four hours, my brain began to re-calculate the data. The photo had shown a hug. But here, in the real world, the hug was a weapon. And Keifer wasn't the wielder; he was the target.
I looked at Kiara, whose hair was slightly disheveled from the shove, and then I looked at Keifer. He was breathing hard, his eyes fixed on her with a hatred so deep it was almost beautiful.
He wasn't looking at me, but he was fighting for me.