Chapter One: The Coffee Shop

“You’re in my seat.”

I looked up from my phone. The guy behind the counter had already started steaming milk for someone else’s order, and the only open table in the whole place was the one by the window. The one I was sitting at.

“There’s no name on it,” I said.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t even blink. Just stood there with a book under his arm, no cover on it, spine cracked so many times the pages had gone soft at the edges.

“I sit here every day at this time.”

“Congratulations.” I turned back to my phone. “Today you sit somewhere else.”

For a second I thought he’d argue. Instead he pulled out the chair across from mine and sat down anyway, like I’d invited him. Up close I could see a thin white scar cutting through his eyebrow, old enough that it had faded to nothing but a line.

“You’re Rhea Santiago.”

“And you’re annoying. We’re even.”

That got something out of him. Not a laugh, just a breath through his nose, quick and short. He set the book on the table, face down, so I couldn’t read the title.

“I’m only here for the money,” he said.

“What money?”

“The interview. Your label sent me.”

I set my phone down. “Nobody told me about an interview.”

“They wouldn’t. Not this kind.” He glanced toward the door, then back at me, and something in his face changed. Tighter, careful. “I owe somebody. This is how I pay it back.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No. It’s not.”

I studied him while he studied the table. He had the look of someone who hadn’t slept properly in a long time, but he sat like a man who’d trained himself not to show it. I bit at the edge of my thumbnail, a habit my mother used to slap my hand for and he noticed. His eyes dropped to my hand and came back up, and I saw him clock it, file it away.

“You’re doing the thing,” I said.

“What thing?”

“Reading me. Like I’m one of your articles.”

“Force of habit.”

“So you are a reporter.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

He picked his coffee up, black, no cream, no sugar, and drank like it had gone cold a while ago and he didn’t care. I hated that I noticed that. I hated that I was still sitting there instead of walking out, but something about him made me want to keep pulling at the thread until it either broke or led somewhere.

“Ask your question,” I said. “Whatever it is you came here for.”

“Why do you still sing?”

I laughed, short and disbelieving. “That’s it? That’s the big interview question?”

“You could’ve quit two years ago. After what happened with your last label. Most people would have.”

“Maybe I’m not most people.”

“Maybe.” He turned the coffee cup slowly on the table, a quarter turn, then back. “Or maybe you don’t know how to stop.”

“Careful. You’re starting to sound like you actually care about the answer.” I said while sipping coffee

“I don’t get paid to care.”

“Then why ask?”

“You don’t strike me as the type who does anything without a reason,” I said.

“Everybody’s got a reason. Doesn’t mean it’s a good one.”

“That supposed to be deep?” I said.

“It’s supposed to be honest.” He finally looked at me straight on. “I don’t do honest much. Figured I’d try it once.”

“And how’s it working out for you?”

“Ask me in an hour.”

The corner of my mouth twitched before I could stop it. I pressed my lips together and looked out the window instead, because the last thing I needed was to like a man who showed up uninvited claiming to work for people who’d already burned me once. I pulled my jacket tighter around my shoulders even though the coffee shop wasn’t cold.

“You said you owe somebody,” I said. “That’s not nothing. People don’t usually say that to strangers.”

“You’re not exactly a stranger. Everyone in this city knows your face.”

“That’s not the same as knowing me.”

“No,” he said. “It’s not.”

He didn’t answer that one either. Instead he reached into his jacket and set a phone on the table between us, screen dark. “I’m going to tell you something, and you’re not going to like it.”

“Try me.”

“Your next single. The one nobody’s heard yet. It’s already out there.”

My stomach dropped. “That’s impossible. Only three people have that file.”

“Four, apparently.”

I grabbed for my own phone, hands not as steady as I wanted them to be, and pulled up my socials. It took four seconds to find it, a clip, fifteen seconds, my own voice coming out of somebody else’s account, already at twenty thousand shares and climbing while I sat there staring at it.

“Who told you this.”

“Nobody told me. I follow things. It’s what I do.”

“You said your name was” I realized he never had. “You never told me your name.”

“Cole.”

“Cole what?”

“Just Cole. For now.”

I stood up so fast the chair scraped hard against the floor, loud enough that the barista looked over. “I don’t know who you are or what you actually want, but I’m done sitting here playing twenty questions.”

“Rhea”

“That’s not your interview voice anymore.”

“It was never an interview.” He stood too, slower, like he wanted to give me room to leave if I wanted it. “I told you. I owe someone. This was supposed to be the easy part.”

“Owe who?”

He looked at me for a long moment, long enough that I almost asked again, and then he shook his head. “Not yet.”

I walked out. I didn’t look back to see if he followed, though some small, stupid part of me wanted to. By the time I got back to my building the leak had tripled its numbers, and I spent the elevator ride up scrolling through comments calling it my best work yet, not knowing it wasn’t supposed to exist.

That night my phone buzzed on the counter. Unknown number.

I’m sorry about the song. It wasn’t me. But I know who it was.

I didn’t answer. I set the phone down and walked out onto the balcony instead, needing air, needing something that wasn’t a screen. The city stretched out below, lit up gold and white, and for a second I let myself breathe.

Then I saw it. A shadow, standing still on the rooftop across from mine, too far to make out a face but close enough that I knew, I knew it was watching me.

I stepped back inside fast, heart slamming, and that’s when I saw the glass door. Someone had written on it from the outside, in what looked like lipstick, the letters smeared but legible.

I SEE YOU.