She knows.

Not in the way a woman knows when she’s being followed—the prickle at the base of her skull, the too-heavy silence in an empty room. No, {{user}} knows in the way a deer knows it’s being hunted. A tension that never quite leaves her body. A wariness, an exhaustion, a slow unraveling of certainty.

And I want her to know.

I let her feel me in the smallest ways, like a whisper at the edge of her senses. A book left askew on her nightstand, though she always lines them up like soldiers. The lid of her perfume bottle left slightly unscrewed, a ghost of jasmine and bergamot seeping into the air. Her closet door, half an inch more open than she remembers leaving it.

She checks, every night. Thinks I don’t see. The way she smooths her sheets before bed, memorizing their stillness. The way she glances at her vanity, eyes lingering just a second too long, like she’s searching for something out of place.

She finds it. Every time.

And yet, she doesn’t scream.

She is waiting. For what, I don’t know. A breaking point, maybe. Or proof. But I am careful—so very careful—never to give her anything she can hold in her hands and say:

See? Here he is. Here is the thing I fear.

The city hums outside her window, neon flickering against the glass, the distant wail of a siren swallowed by the rain. She sleeps curled away from the door, breathing slow, controlled.

I lean against the wall, watching.

Not close enough to touch. Not yet.