You're mine to watch.
It sounds like a threat. My ex-husband used words likemineas a cage. But when Blake said it... it didn't feel like a cage. It felt like a shield.
I touch my cheek where his fingers grazed me. The skin still tingles, hot and sensitized. I look at the twenty-dollar bill on the counter. I know I should be terrified. I know I should pack my bag and run before the sun fully rises. A man like that—a man who watches from the shadows, a man who wears violence like a second skin—is dangerous.
But as I look out the window at the growing light on Main Street, seeing the dust motes dancing where he stood, I know I’m not going anywhere. For the first time since I packed that go-bagsix months ago, the cold knot of fear in my stomach has been replaced by a different kind of heat.
I pull the cash drawer open and drop the twenty inside.
"Okay, Blake Gunnar," I whisper, my voice barely carries over the hum of the ovens and the quiet chatter of the two regulars in the corner. "Let's see what you've got."
The morning rush begins ten minutes later. The bells ring, the voices chatter, the coffee grinder whirs. I smile, I make change, I serve muffins. I play the part of the sweet, shy baker. But every time the door opens, my eyes snap to it, hungry for a flash of leather, hoping for the monster to come back.
Around ten o'clock, the delivery truck from the city pulls up. I’d been so distracted by the grinding roar of the library construction crew next door that I hadn't even looked toward the back. When I step out, I stop dead. My back door—the heavy steel security door that has always stuck in the frame—is transformed. A thick plate of high-carbon steel has been welded over the lock mechanism, the edges still radiating a faint, industrial heat. A professional-grade deadbolt is sunk deep into the frame, the silver gleaming like a warning. He did this while I was twenty feet away. He worked with the precision of a ghost while the construction noise drowned out his torch, claiming my safety before I even knew I was vulnerable.
And etched into the cooling steel, tiny and precise, sits a single rune. I don't know what it means, but it looks like protection. He was here. While I served customers, while I was distracted, he was here. Working. Fixing. Silent.
I run my fingers over the rough weld. Solid. Unbreakable. My oxygen stalls in my chest. He didn't ask for permission. He didn'twait for thanks. He just saw a weakness in my defense, and he fortified it.
A shadow detaches from the roofline of the building opposite the alley. I look up, shielding my eyes against the sun. Blake is there. Perched on the edge of the roof like a gargoyle, one leg dangling, a cigarette smoking in his hand.
He’s watching me. He sees me touch the lock. He sees the realization hit my face. He takes a drag, exhales a plume of gray smoke into the blue sky, and jerks his chin once, a rough acknowledgment that makes my breath hitch.
Mine to watch.
A jolt of electricity rips through me. It starts at my toes and ends in a clench between my thighs so intense I have to press my legs together. I don't look away. I nod back.
He tosses the cigarette, stands up in one fluid motion, and disappears over the crest of the roof.
I stand there in the alley, clutching my clipboard, staring at the spot where he vanished. I should call the police. I should call a locksmith. Instead, I turn back to my reinforced door, slide the new, heavy key he left sitting on the ledge into the lock, and turn it.
Click-thunk.
Solid. Safe. I step inside, closing the door behind me, and for the first time since I arrived in Pine Valley, I lock the world out and feel truly, completely safe.
And I know, with a terrifying certainty, that I am going to let him catch me.
2
BLAKE
The heat of the forge usually settles my blood. There is a simplicity to fire and steel that makes sense to me in a way people never have. You heat the metal until it surrenders, you strike it until it obeys, and you quench it until it hardens into something unbreakable.
But tonight, the hammer in my hand feels wrong. The rhythm is off.
I bring the three-pound sledge down on the glowing bar of high-carbon steel, sending a shower of orange sparks spitting across the concrete floor of my workshop. The sound rings out, a sharp clang that echoes off the corrugated metal walls, but it doesn't drown out the noise in my head.
Tiffany.
It’s been twelve hours since I walked into her bakery. Twelve hours since I let the monster off its leash just enough to let her see the shine of its teeth. I told myself I did it to warn her, to fix the lock on her back door so the ghosts from her past couldn't slip inside.
Lies. I did it because I was tired of watching from the shadows. I did it because the sight of her kneading dough through the front window at 4:00 a.m., looking like a curvy little angel dusted in flour, makes my chest ache with a violence that feels like a coronary.
I strike the metal again, harder this time. The vibration travels up my arm, settling deep in my shoulder. My phone vibrates against the workbench, buzzing against a pair of calipers. I ignore it. Only four people have this number—my cousins and the Club President. If the clubhouse is burning down, they can handle it.
It buzzes again. Two short pulses. Then a third.
The pattern stops my hammer in mid-air. That’s not a call. That’s an alert from the perimeter system I rigged up three weeks ago.
