This is wrong.
This is too close.
This ishappening.
Then she’s gone.
Moving fast toward the stairwell at the end of the hall, heels clicking sharp and determined against the tile. No looking back.
And just like that, the distance I’ve carefully maintained for years collapses.
This isn’t observation anymore.
This is pursuit.
Hannah
“Hannah!” a voice calls out behind me.
I don’t slow.
I’m a woman on a mission.
Unstoppable.
In my peripheral vision, a man jogs up beside me, forced close by the narrow hallway. I spare him a glance, just enough to register who it is, and nearly stumble.
Nearly.
“Hannah, wait,” he pants, his arms pumping as he keeps pace.
I’ve wondered what his voice would sound like. The super-hot guy who lives down the hall. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time slowing my steps past his door, listening for any sound that might tell me what kind of man he is.
Now I know.
Low. Rough around the edges. Breathless in a way that feels…wrong. Or maybe right. I can’t tell.
I remember the first time I saw him. A week or two after I moved in. We opened our doors at the same time and froze, caught in the hallway like deer in headlights.
I stared. I couldn’t help it.
He was big, broad-shouldered and tall, muscles straining subtly against the sleeves of his shirt. The kind of body that makes your brain glitch before it catches up. But it wasn’t just that. It was his face. That sharp, almost too-straight jaw. Dark hair, slightly messy with an uneven edge, like he cuts it himself. A nose just crooked enough to feel real, like even nature didn’t trust him with perfection.
But his eyes.
They were what knocked the breath right out of my lungs.
Blue. Startling. Too intense.
They flicked to mine, and then he stepped back into his apartment and quietly shut the door without a word.
I’d stood there afterward, heat flooding my face, stomach dropping with embarrassment that made no sense. I hadn’t done anything wrong.Had I?What could I possibly have done in that split second to make him retreat like I was dangerous or, worse, damaged?
Now that same man, somehow even larger up close, is jogging beside me, saying my name with a strange intensity.
And is that…panic?
Just a flicker. Gone almost as soon as I catch it.
