The Softest Kind of Ruin
Nicole Evans never asked to be followed. She never asked for eyes in the dark, for a man like Vane to orbit her life with silence and devotion sharp enough to wound. But obsession doesn’t ask permission. It waits. It watches. It becomes inevitable.
What began with missing men and shadows on rooftops soon unraveled into something far more intimate—an assassin who couldn’t let go, and a woman who, piece by piece, stopped trying to make him. As friends vanished and her world narrowed, Nicole found herself drawn toward the very thing she feared most—not out of love, but recognition. In his violence, there was something terrifyingly tender. In his silence, something that listened more closely than anyone else ever had.
Theirs is not a love story in any ordinary sense.
It’s a descent—a long, slow collapse into dependency, into surrender. A story told in bruises and shared tea, in blood and in stillness. A quiet unraveling that doesn’t end in escape, but in a house by the sea, where memory lingers and echoes never fade.
Some stories don’t ask to be understood. Only remembered.
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Chapter: Still YoursIt wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Blood glinted under the streetlight, painting the sidewalk in blurred halos. William’s jacket was soaked, clutched to his side, his breath a ragged whisper. Still alive. Barely.The world tunneled around her. Someone was screaming.It took a moment to realize it was her.It had been weeks since she last saw Vane.After that night in the city—his voice, his eyes, the terrible clarity—he vanished. No texts. No sightings. Not even that hum she’d grown used to, the sense of being watched.And that was the most terrifying part. Because she missed it.The silence.The weight of being known.It had wrapped itself around her like a second skin.Then came the message. No envelope. No note. Just a photograph slipped into her coat pocket, though she had no idea when or how.Vane—bloody, unconscious, barely alive. A sterile hospital floor. A shallow pool of blood. A single caption scribbled on the back in blocky, decisive handwriting: "Still yours."He had
Last Updated: 2025-04-26
Chapter: The Lullaby“I always knew it would end like this.”She hadn’t meant to stay late. But lately, time didn’t behave like it used to. It slipped sideways—soft, ungraspable—folding her days into fog. Hours bled into each other like spilled water, and she drifted through them with the quiet precision of someone performing a life they no longer owned. Smiling. Nodding. Pretending.Everyone thought she was healing. She let them. Wore normalcy like a coat two sizes too big—awkward, heavy, impossible to shrug off.The city tonight felt suspended. The kind of quiet that doesn’t soothe—it warns. Silver light pooled beneath flickering streetlamps. Leaves skated down gutters. Somewhere, music spilled faintly from an open window, but even that felt far away. Disconnected. Like the world was holding its breath.She walked.Not hurried. Not slow. Just enough to feel in control. Her fingers curled around her keys, the jagged metal biting into her palm—a small pain, a sharp reminder: You’re awake. You’re here. The
Last Updated: 2025-04-25
Chapter: The One Who WaitsShe stopped hiding. But not all at once.There was no grand turning point—no moment where the fear cracked open and light poured in. No montage of recovery. Just silence. Slow. Heavy.It began with forgetting. Forgetting to check the back door. Forgetting to pull the curtains. Forgetting to flinch at the sound of her own name whispered on the street. Not because she wasn’t afraid. But because being afraid all the time had become exhausting.She had unraveled quietly. Each day peeling away another layer of vigilance until only the echo of fear remained—too worn to scream, too stubborn to disappear.So she stitched herself back into her old routines. She got up with the alarm. Brewed coffee. Caught the train. Walked past the corner where she once thought she saw him, and didn’t pause. Not anymore. She returned to work. Laughed at the same jokes. Wrote receipts with steady hands that only trembled after closing.It was all pretend. But sometimes pretending was easier than explaining why
Last Updated: 2025-04-24
Chapter: Nowhere Is SafeShe didn’t pack much.Just what she could carry. No note. No plan. She left the apartment before dawn, long before the city stretched awake. No calls. No goodbyes.A friend owed her a favor—an old classmate with a cabin two towns over. No cameras. No neighbors. Just trees and wind and the kind of silence that might let her think.Nicole didn’t stop until she saw the gravel road. Until the signal on her phone dropped completely. Until she was so deep in isolation it should’ve felt like safety.But it didn’t.Because the fear had followed her.It lived in the way she checked the windows. The way she kept her phone off but still covered the camera. The way her breath caught every time a floorboard creaked, or an animal rustled outside.She knew better now.Distance didn’t matter.Vane — Steady, focused. She’s scared.Good.Fear sharpens her. Makes her real.But it’s not about fear, not really. It’s about connection. Intimacy.She's running through places she thinks I can’t reach—but I’v
Last Updated: 2025-04-24
Chapter: No EvidenceShe didn’t want to go to the police.But she had to.The moment she stepped inside the station, a coldness settled in her chest. The fluorescent lights, the buzz of low conversation, the smell of coffee gone bitter in the pot—it all felt too ordinary for what she was about to say.She waited her turn. Fingers wringing in her lap, heart in her throat.When they finally called her forward, the officer—middle-aged, half-tired—tilted his head as she spoke.She told them everything.The packages. The messages. The social media hacks. The photos taken without her knowledge. The sense—constant, crawling—that she was being watched.She didn’t say his name. Because she didn’t know it.She didn’t say he’d hurt her. Because he hadn’t.Not physically.Not yet.The officer was polite. Professional. But his expression shifted the longer she spoke—from mild concern to something like doubt.“There’s nothing specific we can pursue,” he said gently. “No threats. No physical harm. It could be a pran
Last Updated: 2025-04-08
Chapter: The Violet UnfoldsChapter: Vane — Whispering in ThoughtShe’s beginning to feel it.That quiet static beneath her skin. The breath that catches for no reason. The sense that the shadows have begun to lean in just slightly when she isn’t looking.Good.She needed to.For too long, I was gentle. A ghost at the edges of her life. I kept the chaos from touching her, held the storm at bay with fingers I never let her see.I let her live in a fiction of safety. Let her wake without worry, sleep without shivering. I made sure every locked door stayed locked.Even when I could’ve opened them. Even when I stood just inches beyond.She thought peace was her right. But peace is earned. And she— She never earned it.Then she went on that date. Laughed for him.Not just a smile. A laugh.Teeth and dimples and head tilted back.The kind of laugh she used to save—For me. Even if she didn’t know it yet.In that moment, she made a choice she didn’t understand. But I understood. I always do.So now I have to show her.N
Last Updated: 2025-04-08
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