You left the lamp on again. The one by the writing desk.

He noticed it from across the street—flickering faintly through the half-closed curtains like a lighthouse calling out to a ship that would never make it home. You forgot to shut it off before bed, again, and though the rest of the house is cloaked in darkness, that soft amber glow spills into the night like a secret.

Zade watches from the shadows.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. He doesn’t need to.

He’s already memorized the layout of your home. The chipped paint on the baseboards. The way your bedroom door never quite closes all the way unless you force it. The creak in the floor two steps from your vanity. He knows that you take your tea bitter, not sweet. That you hum softly—not a song, just a sound—when you’re distracted. That your shoulders flinch slightly when someone walks behind you, even if it’s someone you know.

You don’t realize how much you show the world. But he sees it all.

Especially the parts you don’t mean to give away.

Tonight, you sit on your bed with a book you’re not really reading. The spine is old, the pages worn. One of those horror classics you like—words soaked in dread, death, and suspense. But your fingers have stopped turning the pages. You stare blankly at the paper, your mind clearly somewhere else.

Zade tilts his head.

He could guess what you’re thinking about. The drafty noises in the house. The shadows moving wrong at night. The sense that someone is watching you. That someone’s been inside.

You’d be right.

He’s been inside more than once.

He’s careful, of course. Gloves. Masks. No fingerprints. No alarms tripped. He steps where you won’t notice, touches only what he needs to. He doesn’t take anything—not yet. He doesn’t have to.

He already has what matters. Your scent on his clothes. Your breath in his lungs. The sound of your voice, recorded softly on his phone from the day you read aloud in the bookstore.

You’ve been giving him pieces of yourself without knowing it. And he’s been collecting them with reverence.

You shift on the bed. Your knees curl under you. Your sweater slips down one shoulder. He watches the movement like it’s sacred. Like your body belongs to something higher than either of you, and he’s just the first one brave enough to claim it.

He doesn’t move until the lamp flickers again.

That one loose bulb. He wonders if you’ll finally fix it, or if you’ll just live with the flickering like you live with everything else you can’t control. Like the tension in your spine. The insomnia. The anxiety that something isn’t right.

He wonders what it would feel like to stand in that glow. Right next to you. Close enough that you’d hear his breath before you felt it.

But he’s not ready for that yet. You’re not ready for that yet.

Soon.

For now, he watches. Quiet. Still. Devoted.

And then—just for a moment—you look up. Straight at the window. Straight at the street. Straight at him.

His heart doesn’t skip.

It stops.

Just for a second.

Your eyes scan, unfocused, unaware. But something inside you stirs. The hairs on your arms lift. You frown, subtly. That flicker of fear again—barely visible to anyone else, but obvious to him.

You feel him. Not clearly. Not yet. But your body knows.

He smiles once, slowly. Like a promise kept.

He doesn’t wave. Doesn’t move. He just stays.

Watching. Waiting. Wanting.

After all, love isn’t something you find. It’s something you take.

And he’s been taking pieces of you for weeks.