Placed dead centre like a trophy.
Another fucking note.
No envelope.
No seal.
Just a square of white paper resting exactly where I’d see it.
My pulse rockets.
Fucking hell.
I snatch it up with shaking fingers, flip it open, and the words hit me like a fist:
You’re awake now.
Good.
I like you better angry.
—K
A sound tears out of my throat—not fear, not shock, but pure, blistering rage.
“Oh, fuck you.”
It echoes off marble.
He was here again.
He broke in again.
While Noah slept.
While I was upstairs trying to hold myself together.
While I was tucking letters behind towels like a coward.
He was HERE.
In THIS room.
My hands shake so violently the note trembles in my grip.
“You want angry?” I hiss through my teeth. “You want me lit the fuck up?” I crumble the note in my fist. “You’ve fucking got it.”
I’m moving before my mind even catches up.
I grab the back door handle, wrench it open, and the cold early-morning air slams into me like a slap. Dew slicks the grass. The sky is bruised blue, the horizon bleeding light—but not enough to soften anything.
I walk.
Fast. Hard. Barefoot.
The gravel bites into my feet but I barely feel it.
Behind the house lies a strip of woodland—a curated patch of “nature” Noah insisted on because a forest view “raises property value.”
