It happened on an ordinary afternoon. No storm. No chase. No sound of boots or gunfire this time. Just the hush of wind through the trees and the whisper of leaves brushing pavement.Nicole had just closed the shop early. The rain had driven most customers away. She walked the long way home, umbrella tucked under her arm, boots echoing on wet cobblestone. And then—She saw him.He was across the street. Older. Paler. The scar along his jaw deeper now.But his eyes—those eyes—were still the same.Her breath caught. Time didn’t stop. It just bent slightly, curling around the two of them like smoke. She didn’t move. Neither did he.Then— A step.He approached slowly, reverently, as if he didn’t believe she was real.As if she might disappear if he blinked.She didn’t speak. She couldn’t. He stood before her now, drenched from the rain, trembling in a way she had never seen.“You’re here,” she whispered. His voice broke. “I shouldn’t be.”“But you are.”He looked down. Shame pooled in his
The end didn’t come quietly.It came with headlights cutting through the trees. With boots crunching gravel. With the silence between them thick as blood.They had been happy. Or something close to it. A crooked version of happiness, made of stolen mornings and whispered names, of shared breath and locked doors. But nothing built on ruin lasts forever.He felt it before she did—the shift in the air. They were closing in.Keiran had stood in the kitchen, hands trembling for the first time in years. Nicole had found him there, frozen, knife still in hand, the sound of her voice barely reaching him.“They found us, didn’t they?” He didn’t answer. Just looked at her like she was already slipping away.When she tried to follow him out the door, he stopped her. Gripped her shoulders. Hard, like he was trying to memorize the shape of her. “You don’t go with me,” he said.Her voice cracked. “I’m not letting you—”“You have to.”She shook her head, eyes wild with refusal, with grief. “I stayed
The house was small.Just three rooms and a crooked porch that moaned with every passing breeze. It sat on the edge of a coastal town where the fog rolled in like memory—soft and heavy, blurring the edges of everything.Nicole stood barefoot on the porch, a chipped mug warming her hands. The tea had long gone cold. She wasn’t waiting for anything. But she watched, always. The ocean stretched out before her like a wound stitched in salt and silence. Behind her, the house creaked—settling, shifting. Breathing.Or maybe it was him.She didn’t flinch when the patio door opened. Keiran moved behind her, quiet as always. But she knew his presence now the way one knows the weight of their own shadow. He didn’t speak. He never did in the mornings. Instead, he stood close. Let their silence touch. Let the wind carry whatever hadn’t been said.They had been there three months. Maybe four. No phones. No internet. No names. At the edge of town, the locals called them the quiet couple. She someti
The kettle whistled softly.Nicole stood at the stove, one hand curled around the handle of a chipped mug, the other resting absently against her stomach. Steam curled up and fogged the small kitchen window, turning the city outside into a smear of grey. The air smelled like jasmine—and something sharper. Metallic.Behind her, Keiran moved without sound. He always did. But she felt him there. The way the temperature shifted when he entered the room. The quiet tightening in her spine when his gaze lingered too long.She poured the tea. Two cups. She didn’t ask if he wanted one anymore. He always drank it, even if it sat cooling in his hands for hours.There was a rhythm now. A routine stitched together from silence and strange comfort. He slept on the edge of her bed. Sometimes on the floor. Always close. She never asked where he went when he left the apartment. She didn’t ask about the blood she occasionally smelled on his coat, or why the knives in the drawer were always rearranged.
She let him in.And after that, she never truly closed the door.He remembered the first night—how her fingers trembled when they brushed against his coat. How her eyes lingered, searching for something she couldn’t admit wanting. Not yet. But she would. She always did.Every time he left, he told himself not to return. That space would be mercy. That maybe—just maybe—she would forget him, and he could go back to being nothing. But forgetting wasn’t in her nature. And letting go wasn’t in his.He watched her from the shadows. Always had. He stood across the street from the clinic where she met with the psychologist, noting how she hesitated at the door. Sometimes she didn’t go in at all. She was trying.Her shoulders were straighter now. Chin higher. Like she believed she still had control over her own story. But she didn’t. Not really.Kieran had already threaded himself too deeply into her life. Her rituals. Her silence. Her fear. He saw himself in the bruises she no longer covered.
She didn’t remember the collapse—only the cold tile beneath her knees, the smell of blood that wasn’t hers, and William, gasping beneath her hands—pressure applied too hard, too late, like trying to stop time with fingers and breath.Then… silence.The doctors called it shock. Dehydration. Acute stress response. Words that circled the truth without touching it. Words that didn’t come close to what it felt like to break.Yvette found her. Three days later. Curled on the bathroom floor. Her body hollowed out, her voice gone. William had already been rushed into surgery. The apartment reeked of old copper and something worse—something missing.There were bandages on her hands—scrapes from broken glass, maybe. A bruise darkened her ribs. A stitched cut on her shoulder she didn’t remember getting.She never asked how Yvette found her. Never asked who called the ambulance. There were bigger things to understand.She spent two nights in the hospital. The walls didn’t feel sterile. They felt