“It’s Kansas City, it’s not the end of the world. I’ll be back before he even notices I’m gone.”
I don’t wait for the argument. By the time Linkin opens his mouth again, I’ve slipped out the door and pulled it shut behind me.
The sun hits me like a slap. Why is it sobright? It smells like asphalt, exhaust, and something sweet. I tie my hair into a highponytail as I jog down the path, fingers fumbling with the elastic until it’s tight enough to keep my hair from whipping my face. My sneakers find the pavement in a rhythm that starts to unknot whatever’s wound tight inside me: left, right, left, right. The city noise recedes into a steady backdrop until it’s just me and the cadence of my feet.
This is my time. Running clears my head the way nothing else does. It strips everything down to the essentials: breath, heartbeat, the small, familiar ache in my calves. For a while, the world shrinks to the sound of my feet and the air filling my lungs.
I need time alone. I don’t want Lucian hovering over me. I don’t want his hands to be the measure of how fragile I am. I don’t want him to brush my hair like I’m something breakable and then look at me with that careful, worried expression that makes me feel smaller. I need to be somewhere he isn’t. Just space where I can be loud in my own head and not have to soften anything.
My breathing evens out. The burn in my thighs arrives and reminds me I didn’t stretch like I should’ve, but it reminds me I’m alive. Sweat beads at my hairline and trickles down my spine, cooling as the breeze catches it. The park opens up ahead, a strip of green between buildings, trees throwing dappled shade across the path. Kids’ laughter threads through the air, and the humming under my skin starts to quiet.
I don’t think about the rig. I don’t think about the vandalism or the way Lucian looked at me last night when he brushed my hair like I might fall apart again. I don’t let my mind go there. I let my feet think.
I just run.
There’s a dark shape against chrome, a block of shadow leaning on the hood of a sedan that catches my attention. I barely register him at first; he’s just another parked car, anotherperson in a park. Who wears head to toe black in the summer in a park—actually, never mind, I could see Shiloh doing that. My feet keep their rhythm. My breath keeps its count. The trees blur green and gold, and the path hums under my soles.
I glance over at him again, his head turns, and his eyes find me.
It’s the way he looks that makes my stomach drop, like he’s been waiting for the exact moment I’d pass. A smirk tugs at one corner of his mouth, small and wrong. He winks, the motion lazy and practiced, and I cringe as something in the air goes cold.
No. I’m overthinking this. He’s probably just one of those creeps who thinks winking at women is charming.
I force my gaze forward. Don’t look. Don’t make it a thing. People stare at runners. People wait in cars at the park. I remind myself of the facts like stones to hold down the rising panic. I’m fine.
The trail bends, and the parking lot slides away. The trees close in, and the city noise thins to a distant hum. I let the rhythm of my feet pull me along, let the burn in my calves be the only thing that matters.
After about five minutes, I hear footsteps behind me.
At first, they’re just another sound, maybe an inexperienced jogger, or someone running on the path. But the steps are heavier than a jogger’s bounce, a measured crunch that eats the gravel in long, even bites. The cadence is wrong.
I don’t look back right away; I tell myself not to. But the hair along my neck prickles, and the sound grows closer, a second heartbeat syncing to mine.
When I finally glance over my shoulder, my chest drops out.
He’s jogging the trail behind me. The same man dressed in all black I saw in the parking lot. His smirk is still there, and he’s focused onme. He’s wearing black gloves in July, and the sight of them is a wrongness that lands in my gut like a stone.
Why gloves? The question has no answer, and that absence is louder than any explanation. Panic hits like a fist, causing my lungs to tighten and my legs to go hot and cold at once.
I push harder. My stride lengthens, breath tearing. The park that felt like a refuge a minute ago narrows into a corridor with him at the far end and me trapped in the middle. Every step I take, his steps answer, his pace matching mine, closing the distance with the steady, terrifying inevitability of someone who planned this.
My mind scrambles for options. My phone is in my pocket, heavy and useless until I pull it out, and pulling it out might take too long, especially at this pace.
The crunch of his footsteps is a countdown. The sun’s light tilts, shadows lengthen, and the world narrows to the sound of my own breath and the man’s steps eating up the space between us.
“Run all you want.” His voice slides across the trail, low and taunting, like he’s enjoying the sound of me running away. “But you can’t hide. You know I’ll find you.”
Something rips open inside my chest. A sound I don’t recognize tears out of me, and I push harder, my legs pumping until my lungs burn. The world narrows to the slap of sneakers and the hot, ragged rasp of my breath.
Branches whip my arms as I cut off the path and into the trees. Leaves slap my face, twigs snag my shirt, sweat slicks my spine. The air closes in—thick, green, smelling of damp earth and something older and darker. Every nerve is a bell: run, run, run.
His voice threads through the leaves, casual and close. “Celeste… don’t make me chase you too hard.”
I don’t stop. I can’t. I shove through a tangle of brush, lungs burning, scanning the undergrowth for a place to disappear. Finally, I drop behind a thick cluster of brambles and pressmyself flat to the ground, panting so hard my ribs ache. My heart is a drum in my ears.
Then I hear the crunch as a twig snaps somewhere too close for comfort.
He’s not a silhouette anymore. He’s a presence, the sound of him folding the space between us. “I know you’re out here,” he calls, sing-song, like he’s coaxing a pet. “C’mon, baby. We both know you want this. You were practically begging me.”
