Ellie openedher eyes in darkness. Her bed was soft and warm. The house was quiet. And yet, somehow, the air felt different. Heavier. Closer. Like the pressure building before a storm that wouldn’t break.
She turned on her bedside lamp, already suspecting what she would find. He was there.
He stood in her doorway. Arms stretched out, gripping the frame. His face was gold and shadow in the soft light, while a chasm of darkness loomed behind him. As if he had emerged from some grimly veiled place. Like a fallen angel. Beautiful and fierce and separated from the world.
His eyes met hers, filled with emotions she couldn’t name. Perhaps he didn’t know them himself—lost along with his memories. Perhaps that was the curse of a fallen angel: their past was torn from them as they tumbled.
Perhaps she should be more careful about what she read before trying to sleep.
She sat up in her bed, dragging the covers up to her chin. Her cotton pajama bottoms and worn gamer T-shirt were somehow far too flimsy a defense against the weight of his presence.
Her pulse picked up, butterflies stirring in her belly. Could it really all be in her mind? Could he really be nothing more than a fantasy?
Her covers were warm and heavy, smelling of fabric softener. They were tangible. Solid. She had to remember that he was not. “You aren’t real,” she whispered.
His forehead furrowed, eyes dark in the low light. “Ifeelreal,” he said.
Ellie huffed. God only knew what real felt like. The most real she felt was when she was imagining herself as someone else. A character in a world she’d invented. She didn’t have an answer, so she stayed silent. Watching him as he watched her.
He hung more heavily on the doorframe, the muscles of his arms bunching in the warm light, but the shadows under his eyes looked even darker than before.
“What are you doing here?” Ellie asked eventually.
“I’m… I thought you’d prefer me to stay out of your room.”
She wrinkled her nose. That wasn’t a real answer. “But watching me sleep is alright?”
“I wasn’t.”
She let out a bark of incredulous laughter, and he let go of the frame to scrub a hand through his hair, mussing it further. “Okay. I was. But only for a second. I… woke up here.”
“You woke up in my room?”
“Apparently.”
“Where were you before that?”
“I don’t know.”
Hell. What would that be like? To wake up somewhere, not knowing where you were or why you were there, or even who you were. Every time she saw him, he looked more drained, more exhausted.
The thought made her pause. Would her subconscious create such a nuanced hallucination? Would a fantasy gradually growmore tired? It didn’t seem likely. But then, was it more likely that she had developed a brain injury sometimeaftershe was released from the hospital? And she hadn’t taken any painkillers since she first saw him, just in case—even though her ribs ached and the healing scars on her legs still burned and itched—so it wasn’t that either. But if he wasn’t a figment of her mind, what was he? Some kind of spirit? A phantom?
“Are you haunting me?” she asked.
He stepped forward, seeming not to notice that he’d crossed the invisible boundary into her bedroom. “I thinkyouare haunting me,” he admitted roughly. “Why do I keep coming here? Why do I hear your voice? How did I… Shit.” He bowed his head, hiding his expression, tension written over the tight lines of his shoulders. “None of this makes sense.”
He could be lying, but the look on his face before he turned away, the combination of horror and grief and exhaustion… that would be hard to fake. And she knew—sheknew—exactly how it felt to be horrified and grieving and exhausted. She knew how hard it was to be alone.
“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked quietly.
“No.” His eyes flew to hers. That intense gaze locked on hers. “Fuck, no.”
“Okay.” Somehow she believed him. Despite the darkness curled around him, he sounded sincere. She watched him for a long, silent moment, both of them caught in a strange stalemate. He wasn’t going to take another step without her invitation, she knew it deep in her bones. It was up to her.
She could tell him to leave, and he would. She could roll over and pretend he didn’t exist—and perhaps he didn’t. Or she could stop trying to think through every possible consequence for every possible action, stop tying herself up in knots, and do what felt right.
Ellie pushed away her blankets and slowly stood. The thick carpet was soft under her feet. Cold air whispered in from the open window over her suddenly too-exposed skin. But she was committed to this path now.
