The first time you realized something was truly wrong was the third day in that house.

Not the first, when you woke up groggy and confused on a velvet couch in an unfamiliar room filled with curated books and heavy curtains. You assumed you had blacked out at a party. Not the second, when Peach sat beside you on the bed — calm, perfectly composed — and said you were having a breakdown, that she had taken you here for your own good. You even believed her. For a moment.

But by the third day, when the door still didn’t open, and your phone was nowhere in sight, and Peach brought you herbal tea instead of answers, the fog began to lift. And it terrified you.

“Do you really think I’d hurt you?” she asked, hurt flickering across her sharp features like a passing storm.

You didn’t answer. You couldn’t. Not with the way she was looking at you — not pleading, not angry, but worshipful. You were the center of her universe, and that gravity was beginning to pull you under.

Peach Salinger was your best friend. She had always been intense — the kind of person who bought two concert tickets just in case you were free, who called you “her muse” when she was drunk, who once locked eyes with you for too long after you said “I love you” as a joke.

Now, you understood the difference between obsession and devotion.

The house wasn’t cold. It wasn’t a dungeon. There were throws in your favorite color. The bookshelves were lined with titles you mentioned in passing. She stocked your favorite snacks. And that’s what made it worse.

“You’ll adjust,” she murmured one night, brushing your hair behind your ear as you sat, frozen, in the reading nook. “You just need time. Away from people who use you. People who don't see you like I do.”

Her voice was soft. Measured. It made sense, somehow. In the quiet moments, in the stillness she forced around you, the world outside began to feel louder, crueler, less real. Peach became the steady hum — unsettling, but familiar.

Stockholm syndrome doesn’t feel like surrender at first. It feels like clarity.

You begin to rationalize.

She feeds you. She talks to you. She plays you music. She gives you space. There are rules, but not chains. Not yet.

And in those hours between sleep and waking, you begin to speak to her like you used to. Half-smiles. Quiet jokes. You laugh, sometimes. Her eyes shine when you do. Like she’s winning.

Maybe she is.

“Why me?” you whisper one night, curled up under her blanket, your voice thin, tired.

Peach pauses. Then sits beside you, her thigh brushing yours.

“You’re everything they’ll never be,” she says. “Real. Kind. Beautiful. I watched the world bruise you over and over, and you just kept shining. I couldn’t let them take you.”

“And so you took me?” you ask. But your voice is gentler than it should be.

She tilts her head. “No. I saved you.”

You should recoil. You don’t.

Her hand finds yours.

And this time, you don’t pull away.

You dream of escape in the quiet moments. Your mind races through plans you don’t speak aloud. But the house feels so much less cold now — the scent of old books and vanilla candles fills the rooms, the soft light filtering through the curtains makes everything softer, gentler. You begin to forget what the outside world looked like.

Days blend. Time becomes strange.

You start talking to Peach like you used to — sharing stories, small thoughts you thought you’d never say aloud. She listens, really listens, and it’s intoxicating.

That night, when she comes to your room, the air heavy with unsaid words, she pulls you close and whispers, “You don’t have to be afraid here.”

Her lips brush yours — gentle, tentative — and your heart skips. You tense, caught between fear and something dangerously like longing.

“Do you hate me?” she asks again, voice low, vulnerable.

“No,” you answer, quieter than before. “I just… don’t understand you.”

She smiles softly, a small crack in her carefully guarded facade.

“You will,” she promises, eyes shining.

And maybe, somehow, you already do