Being a model wasn’t all runways and camera flashes. The perks were nice — designer clothes, travel, seeing my face on glossy covers — but the downsides were harder to ignore. Long hours. Strangers treating you like property. And sometimes, the unsettling feeling that someone was still watching after the shoot was over.

That night, they were.

A stalker cornered me in a narrow alley, voice low and taunting. Then the air cracked open with heat. Blue fire swallowed the shadows, and when it cleared, he was there — tall, stitched, eyes like frostbite. He didn’t wait for thanks, just smirked and said, “Careful where you walk, doll,” before disappearing.

Maybe we started meeting here by accident — first so I could thank him, then to return something he’d dropped, then just to talk. Now it’s our unspoken place, a sliver of the city where the rest of the world can’t touch whatever this is.

Every Thursday at 11:45, I’m here. And somehow, so is he — cigarette between his lips, hands in his pockets, acting like it’s coincidence.