PROLOGUE
The dreams are always the same.
I’m alone, but only for a moment. It’s not the sort of mundane loneliness I’ve become accustomed to that lingers like a dull ache in my chest. In my dreams, it’s a cold, numb emptiness that seeps everything from me until there’s nothing left.
Until him.
Before I see him, I feel him. His presence holds an unimaginable magnetism, in both my dreams and in wakefulness, that draws me to him like a moth to flame.
Dangerous, yet beautiful.
In the dark—always in the dark—I scour the shadows for him, blindly reaching. Sometimes I’m in a massive warehouse where my steps echo against the concrete floors and the hallways seem to stretch and warp the longer I run. Other times, I’m lost in the woods surrounded by a thick sea of trees that seem to whisper my name as I rush past them. No matter where I am, I’m searching frantically, driven by the gravity of his presence and his disembodied whispered words:
“Find me.”
I’m trying, I want to scream, but the only sounds that come from my mouth are heaving breaths when I begin to run, desperately seeking him.
My veins flood with adrenaline and trepidation, half of my mind helpless to resist the allure of the unknown while the other half rings with alarm bells.He’s dangerous.
It doesn’t help that whatever primal instinct cautioning me away from him is easy to push aside when reckless curiosity outweighs my will to live anyway.
After my desperate hunt leads me around sharp corners or down winding paths, he’s always waiting for me, veiled in shadows and barely visible, blending into the darkness like he belongs there.
All except the sharp, devilish grin that slowly spreads across his face. That part is always clear.
Blood pounds in my ears as my instincts tell me to run but my need for answers forces me to stay.
“You found me,” he purrs.
I’m frozen. Terrified. Enthralled.
In real life, when I’m awake, he rarely appears for more than a few seconds. But in my dreams, I can stare at him for what feels like hours, even though his features stay shrouded in obscurity, blurred and out of focus.
It’s when I move closer to him in a desperate attempt to fully see his face, when I reach for him as if he’s some sort of lifeline, that I snap into consciousness with a racing heart and sheets beneath me damp from cold sweat.
But even though he fills me with equal parts terror and fascination, I always want more. I can never get enough of the man who’s been stalking me, even in my dreams.
Waking up is always the hardest part.
Because a part of me wishes I’d never woken up at all.
CHAPTER 1
“Hope is the worst of all evils, for it prolongs the torment of man.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Ionly ever see him in my periphery, in shadows and in dreams. There one second and gone the next. He’s become my secret obsession, a man watching me from the shadows and always disappearing just before I can reach him.
I know I should be afraid of him, but for now, my morbid curiosity outweighs my fear.
There’s a reason he’s watching me.
I just can’t figure out what it is.
I told my husband once–on one of his good days–that I noticed a man following me. That he was standing right outside the house, watching me from the otherside of the street. But Joel checked the doorbell camera playback, but the only movement was the blur of cars driving past and the wind shifting the trees. He had told me I was “going crazy” and "hallucinating shit,” and that was the end of that.
He wouldn’t even allow me to see a doctor, claiming it was a waste of my time and his money after my last attempt at medication—a year ago, before I started seeing this mystery man—didn’t help anything. The doctor had said my depression may be “situational,” which was probably her polite way of telling me to get away from my husband.
