Watching.
Again, it’s nothing.
I kept telling myself that, as if repetition could make it true.
Ten minutes later, I looked again, and the car was gone.
See?
Nothing.
My mind was playing tricks on me.
Yeah.
A cold ripple moves through me. My mind keeps lying, but my body refuses to listen.
Because after that, everything started to feel wrong: subtly at first, then all at once. Like my nerves had been rewired to expect danger even when nothing was there.
I tried to live normally. Tried to work, walk down the street, go to the shops. But normal stopped feeling safe.
A man standing too long in the produce section: not buying anything, just there, too still.
A stranger sitting alone in a café, watching the door instead of his drink.
A hooded figure outside the apartment building, not moving even when the wind picked up.
Every face became Adrian, and every shadow turned into something watching me back.
Every unfamiliar sound made my skin tighten, like something underneath it was trying to crawl out.
I’ve stopped sleeping.
Most nights I lay awake watching CJ sleep beside me; the rise and fall of his chest is the only thing that keeps me from unraveling completely. My hands would twitch under the blanket, itching to move, to check, to get up, to make sure.
If I went anywhere without CJ, security followed, but even with Silas and Mack there, nothing settled inside me. It just meant there were more eyes I couldn’t trust.
Eventually I stopped going out altogether. It was easier.
I stopped eating properly.
Stopped leaving the apartment unless CJ was with me.
I stopped seeing Silas and Mack, too.
I checked the windows constantly. Locked them. Checked again. Then again an hour later, as if something might have changed without me noticing.
Doors too. Always doors.
Locked. Rechecked.
Because I was never fully convinced I hadn’t missed something.
I saw movement in every corner of my vision, felt watched even when I was alone.
I’d sit down, try to breathe, try to convince my body to settle, and then stand up again to check everything one more time.
Just in case.
