He carries a weight within him, similar to violence stitched beneath his skin.
It’s the way he looks at me.Calm, direct, and too steady.It’s as though I’m not a stranger.It’s as if I’m not safe.He knows me.Not the me I’ve built here with lies and diner grease and a false name.The other me.The one I swore was dead and buried.
My hand tightens around the handle of the coffee pot as if I’m holding on for dear life.The plastic digs into my skin—unforgiving, cheap, and far too familiar.Just like everything else in this goddamn place.My knuckles go white, tendons straining as though they want to snap.
My heart doesn’t just beat… it slams, a brutal thud-thud-thud against my ribs, like it’s trying to punch its way out of my chest.
Every pulse is a scream I can’t let out.Not here.Not now.
“You alright?”Pete asks, glancing over his shoulder, voice casual, he doesn’t feel the storm building in the room.
“Yeah.”
It slips out like smoke.A lie wrapped in silk.Polished, practiced, poison.
I keep moving, pretending I don’t see him.Pretending my skin isn’t crawling or my past isn’t whispering in my ear that it’s finally caught up.
Because it’s been years.
I changed my name.My life.My everything.Cut and colored my hair.Killed the girl I used to be and built someone new in her place.
But some nights, I still wake up sweating, my heart racing, convinced there’s a shadow at the end of my bed.I still hear footsteps that aren’t there, doors creaking open that never moved.I still brace myself every time I turn a corner, muscles tensed like a loaded gun, waiting for the worst.
Waiting to see him.Matteo, or his cold, fucked-up excuse for a father.Or worse… someone they sent for me.Someone resembling this.And tonight, it feels as if maybe that day finally showed the fuck up.
I avoid him like he’s a loaded gun with the safety off.
No eye contact.No pass-by glances.
I stick to the opposite side of the diner as though the floor might burn if I step too close.
But he doesn’t move.Doesn’t speak.Just sits.
Silent.
Still.
Watching.
Like I’m not a waitress, but more as if I’m a target.
Suzie, bless her oblivious heart, breezes over and pours him a cup of coffee as if he’s just another sad, lonely asshole killing time between bad decisions.
She doesn’t feel the shift in the air.Doesn’t see the way it coils tight around him.Around me.
But I do.
Every second he stays, my nerves fray thinner, and my skin crawls harder.I’m two seconds from tearing off my apron and getting the hell out of here, heart in my throat, legs already halfway to the door… but then he stands and I watch him leave.
By the time my shift ends, I’m running on fumes and frayed nerves.Every fake smile, every order barked at me like I’m nothing, has scraped me raw.
I rip off my apron as if it’s suffocating me, mutter a half-hearted goodbye no one hears, and shove open the back door.
The cold hits me with the force of a slap.It sinks into my bones.The streets are always dead this time of the night, and tonight is no different.I tuck my chin deeper into my coat, arms crossed tight over my chest, my makeshift armor, and force my legs to move.
The same sidewalk beneath my boots, the cracks etched into my memory with the permanence of scars I never asked for.The same alley seems to be watching me, waiting.
My heart kicks harder, a sudden jolt against my ribs like it’s trying to warn me before my brain can catch up.
