The door clicked shut behind him with its usual low echo. Lucien stepped into the dim hush of his apartment, the air thick with the scent of old paper and faint rain that had followed him from outside. His coat, still damp at the hem, slid from his shoulders in one fluid motion and was tossed carelessly over the back of a nearby chair.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled. The remnants of Élise’s laughter still clung to his mind like cigarette smoke—warm, disorienting, dangerous. The tea had been sweet. Her tiny apartment had smelled like cinnamon and oil paints. She had talked about a gallery she wanted to visit, about a stray cat that followed her home. He had listened, said very little, but his gaze had been fixed on her lips the entire time.
He hated how soft he became around her. Worse, he hated how much he needed to feel that softness again.
Lucien moved through the apartment with practiced stillness. The curtains were already drawn, the silence complete. He reached for the shelf beside his desk, fingers moving to the place his diary always waited for him—third from the left, beneath the worn volume of Demons. Except…
His hand froze.
It wasn’t there.
A frown cut across his features. He checked again. Pulled the books apart. No diary. No leather cover. No faint scent of ink and time.
He stood upright, the tension rising slowly like water filling his lungs.
No. He hadn’t written in it after returning from Élise’s. He’d had it with him earlier—he always did. He never went anywhere without it. Never.
Then came the vibration.
His phone, forgotten in his coat pocket, buzzed twice.
He retrieved it, heart already in his throat.
Élise: “Hey, I think you left something here?”
A long silence followed as he stared at the message, the screen too bright in the apartment’s gloom.
Another buzz.
Élise: “Black notebook? The one you always have?”
His chest constricted like someone had taken a fistful of his ribs and begun to twist.
Lucien didn’t move.
His mind ran through the pages—pages scrawled with things he could never say aloud. Pages soaked in obsession, in every look he’d stolen, every time her fingers brushed his. Sketches of her sleeping, entries about the day her father died and she called him at 3AM, crying on the floor. And worse—declarations. Of love. Of need. Of dark, twisted longing.
He had written about how she would never belong to him. How he’d watched her date other men with a calm mask and a fractured soul. How he would ruin any man who touched her wrong. How he dreamed of kissing her just once in the dark, with no witnesses.
If she read it—
Another buzz.
Élise: “Should I open it? There’s no name in it. Just wanted to check if it’s yours.”
His fingers flew, heart pounding so hard it blurred his thoughts.
Lucien:“Don’t.”
Lucien: “I’ll come get it. Now.”
No reply came.
Lucien grabbed his coat so fast the chair tipped backward and clattered onto the floor. He didn’t bother fixing it. His breath came quick, uneven, as he locked the door behind him and took the stairs two at a time.
He didn’t know what terrified him more—the thought of her reading what he had never dared say… or the possibility that she already had.
That she might now know everything.
His secrets. His hunger. His silent, unrelenting love.
The storm outside had returned as he stepped into the street. Rain slid down his face like cold tears. But Lucien didn’t feel it. He was already walking fast, then faster, until his footsteps were a blur against the cobblestones, his mind racing louder than the thunder above.
The diary had always been safe with him.
Tonight, it might finally destroy him.