I should go home. Leave them to their milk and eggs. But my feet are already moving before my brain decides otherwise. Hoodie up, head down, I follow them into the store.
Which officially makes me a stalker. I know it. I accept it. I’ve made my peace with it.
And I’m disturbingly okay with it.
Because watching Willow do something as mundane as pushing a shopping cart feels like watching a lion drink from awater bowl. It doesn’t fit. It shouldn’t exist. And I want to see every second of it.
I keep my distance, ducking behind displays like some half-assed spy. I nearly knock over a pyramid of toilet paper at one point, catch the top few just in time, and hiss at myself like an idiot.
Meanwhile, Willow is… just grocery shopping. Like a normal human. Tossing spinach and chicken breasts into the cart with surgical precision. And, kind of to my surprise: protein powder. I didn’t really notice it at first, but after watching her drive off with that body to take care of on her own… Willow is actually kind of ripped. I confirmed it by watching half of her videos again, for the eleventh time. At first glance, Willow looks like a very average woman, thin, pretty. At second glance, she looks like she’s training to play a sword-wielding romantasy lead.
I watch her and Opal debate cereal. Willow suggests granola. Something that has fiber.
Opal grabs Lucky Charms.
I smirk at that.
And that’s when it hits me—how absurd all of this is. Me, crouched behind a tower of twelve packs of Coke cans, watching a woman I should probably report to the police, but instead want to know everything about her, down to the brand of cereal she buys.
I’m watching a serial killer shop for cereal, and I’m enthralled by every damn second of it.
I’m not going to fix this about myself.
I don’t want to.
And the more I see, the more I’m convinced: I need to know all of her. Even if it kills me.
Twenty minutes later, I hang back as Willow and Opal exit the store. They both load the groceries into the back of her truck,and then I hustle back to my car when Willow climbs in her vehicle and rolls toward the exit.
It’s… unnerving how familiar all of this feels. Tailing someone. Stalking them. Picking apart their life. Not letting them out of your sight. I haven’t done this kind of thing in years. I left this behind. I burned that version of myself to ash.
And yet here I am, shadowing a woman who murders predators like she’s checking items off a to-do list.
Ilikeit.
I like watching her. I like seeing where she goes, what she does, how she tilts her head when she’s thinking, how she chews her lip when she’s annoyed.
I like knowing she’s not perfect—that she can’t decide on cereal, that she taps the steering wheel to whatever song’s on, that she never answers a text right away when they come in, but she’s always aware that they’re there.
She’s methodical. Careful. But she’s human.
And I can’t stop thinking about her.
Every warning bell in my head is blaring. Every instinct says to walk away, to delete the videos, to scrub what happened out of my brain and pretend she never existed.
But I can’t.
Because in a city built on illusions, she’s the only thing that feels real to me.
My resolve, my rules, my carefully constructed life—it’s all crumbling, brick by brick. And I know exactly how this ends.
Not with me walking away.
But with me walking straight into her fire.
chapter five
WILLOW
