“You want to tell me what started this?” he asks, leaning against the counter and folding his arms.
I pull the note from my pocket and hand it to him without commentary. He reads it once, then again, his back teeth clenching.
“I don’t like this,” he mutters.
“Neither do I.”
“Someone’s watching you,” he continues, his eyes lifting to mine.
Ethan drags a hand over his face, then starts moving through the apartment, adjusting objects that were already in place. Hedoes it without thinking, his tall frame filling the narrow space as he passes. His sandy-brown hair falls loosely across his forehead, and the familiar tattoo on his forearm flashes into view as he reaches for the window latch. He looks older than twenty-five in moments like this, his jaw set and shoulders squared. I recognize the behavior immediately. He manages tension by doing, not by standing still.
“I had a rough call today,” he remarks, as if testing the ground. “Kid fell off scaffolding. No harness. He’s lucky to be alive.”
“Lucky is relative,” I reply quietly.
He nods, a shadow crossing his face. “Dad would have hated that job site.”
“Yes,” I agree. “Too many shortcuts. Too much risk for no reason.”
We go quiet for a moment, the history between us present without needing explanation. Ethan ended up in emergency medicine after our father died, drawn by the same instinct at seven years old that pushed me toward trauma surgery when I was twelve. We took different paths into the same kind of work, but we were both shaped by the same loss and the need to do something useful with it.
“Lila doesn’t think I’m overreacting about the note,” I add after a moment. I keep my tone casual, but my fingers curl briefly against my palms before I relax them.
Ethan pauses what he’s doing and looks at me fully then, hisblue-green eyes moving from the apartment to my face. “And what do you think?”
“I think I might be reading too much into it. A note isn’t a threat. Marks on a door don’t automatically mean intent. I spend my days looking for worst-case scenarios. It’s possible I’m applying that lens where it doesn’t belong.”
He studies me, his focus attentive rather than doubtful. “That’s you trying to talk yourself out of your instincts.”
I shake my head slightly. “That’s me trying not to escalate this before I understand what I’m dealing with. I don’t want to assume a motive when there could be a simpler explanation.”
“Does that explanation include someone knowing where you work and how you move through your day?” he asks quietly.
I don’t answer right away.
“That’s the part I can’t explain,” I admit. “The placement and timing. It feels intentional, but feelings aren’t proof.”
Ethan exhales through his nose and leans back against the counter, his arms crossing over his chest. “Ro, paranoia is when there’s nothing there and you build a story anyway. This isn’t that. There’s something there. You’re just holding off on labeling it.”
“I don’t want to assume anything,” I say. “I don’t want to turn this into something bigger by reacting the wrong way.”
Ethan nods once. “I have to head in soon,” he says. “Overnight shift.”
“Okay.”
He pushes off the counter and steps closer, lowering his voice. “You’re not overreacting. You’re assessing. That’s different. If anything changes, you call me.”
“I will.”
“And Ro,” he adds, holding my gaze. “Trust that thing in you that notices details. It’s kept you alive more than once.”
The acknowledgment lodges in my chest.
He squeezes my shoulder once before stepping back, already in work mode, though his attention stays on me a second longer before he heads for the door.
“I’ll check in,” he promises. “If anything feels off, you call me. I don’t care what time it is.”
“Okay.”
