My footsteps are heavy with dread as I walk farther down the porch so that I can look into the larger window with a view into the living room.
My landscapes cover the walls. There must be a dozen of them crowding the small room.
Fear tingles down my spine.
This isn’t right. I don’t understand what’s happening, what this means.
A wild, reckless impulse overtakes me, and suddenly, there’s a rock in my hand. It smashes through the rectangular window beside the front door. I reach through the jagged hole I made and unlock the door from the inside. Broken glass scores my wrist, but I barely feel the sting of the cut.
I feel like I’m floating outside of my body, like this is happening to someone else.
The front door swings open, and I walk through the house in a daze, taking in my familiar style that’s mounted on every single white wall. Otherwise, the space is unfurnished except for a small kitchen table.
And the bedroom.
The cramped space is dominated by a king-size bed, but I can’t focus on that. More of my paintings hang on the walls. They’re all images of storms.
That’s why you favor the storms.
Dane knew so much about my work when we talked on the beach that day.
How did he know?
I sink down onto the mattress as my knees give out. My fists tangle in expensive sheets, as though I’m desperate to cling onto something solid, something real.
Because none of this seems real.
It can’t be.
I suck in three deep breaths and force myself to think. There’s nothing tying Dane to this place. Franklin thinks he’s seen him in the neighborhood, but that’s not proof that Dane lives here.
I grip the sheets more tightly, and my fingers clamp down on something soft and familiar.
A soft cry of pure horror bursts from my lips when I see my paint-splattered camisole in my fist. The one I thought I’d lost in the laundry.
Desperation claws at my insides, and I surge to my feet. A sort of fevered madness overtakes me, and I start tearing the room apart, as though I’ll uncover some secret that will make sense of everything.
I wrench open the nightstand drawer, and my heart skips a beat. My fingers tremble as I reach out to touch the black wool. Part of me hopes it’s a hallucination, but the material is all too real in my hands.
I stare down at the macabre skull that’s painted onto the black ski mask.
My brain blanks. My body goes numb.
I can’t process this. I can’t accept it.
“You shouldn’t be here, little dove.”
I whirl, and Dane is standing behind me. He’s covered in mud and something crimson that makes my stomach turn.
The man I love has blood on his face.
He’s here. In this awful shrine to me.
Little dove.
He’s never called me that before.
That’s GentAnon’s nickname for me.
