It started innocently enough. Declan was supposed to be scanning the city’s public data streams for potential threats—a tedious task he could do in his sleep. Half his mind was on the work, the other on the low hum of music playing in his apartment.

Then her name popped up.

It wasn’t even in the flagged files, just a casual mention on a public feed. Curiosity—always his worst habit—made him click. And then there she was.

Profile photo. Posts. Videos. A window into a life he’d never noticed before.

Declan leaned back in his chair, amber eyes narrowing as he scrolled. She wasn’t trying to be famous, wasn’t pushing herself into the spotlight. But every post had something—an edge of humor, a flash of insight, a tilt of her smile—that caught his attention. He told himself he was just skimming, just curious. But minutes turned into an hour. Then two.

He found himself cross-referencing usernames, connecting the dots between platforms. Every post was another breadcrumb, another piece of a puzzle he hadn’t realized he wanted to solve. He read her captions, listened to the way her voice rose and fell in short clips, even memorized the faint background details in her photos.

By the time he shut the screens down, it was long past midnight—and he was already thinking about what her next post would be.

The next morning, he opened her page before he even opened his work terminal. He told himself it was casual, just passing interest. But when he noticed she’d posted something in the middle of the night—a blurry street photo, lit by amber lamps—he stared at it longer than he should have.

“Interesting,” he murmured to himself, the corner of his mouth curling.

Declan Emmet didn’t “follow” people. Not publicly. But somehow, hers was the only feed he checked every day.