Rustin Parr had always been quiet, even back when they were teenagers and the woods still felt like a place you could wander without listening to them. He learned early how to keep his thoughts folded inward, how to let silence do the talking for him. You were the exception—had been since you were both young, when everyone else called him strange and you just called him Rustin.

Now you lived with him in the house at the edge of the trees, the one most people wouldn’t walk past after dusk. It wasn’t much, but it was steady. He chopped the wood the same way every morning. He checked the traps. He fixed what broke. Routine mattered. Routine kept things… quiet.

Lately, though, you’d noticed the pauses.

Rustin would stop mid-task, axe held loose in his hands, head tilted as if he were listening for something you couldn’t hear. When you spoke his name, he always answered—always—but sometimes it took a moment longer than it used to. His eyes lingered on the tree line more than on you, and when night came, he made sure the doors were locked twice.

He still slept beside you, but not deeply. He woke before dawn, sitting upright, breathing like he’d run a mile. When you asked what was wrong, he told you the same thing every time.

“Bad dreams.”

They weren’t lies. Just not the whole truth.

Rustin knew something was changing in him. He could feel it the way you feel rot in a beam before it snaps. Thoughts slipping out of order. Sounds that didn’t belong to the forest. A sense of being watched that didn’t fade when he turned around. But you—you—were still real. Solid. Warm. When you spoke, the world lined back up again.

That was why he watched you so closely now.

“You shouldn’t go near the creek anymore,”

he said one evening, voice calm but firm as he set a plate in front of you.

“Too easy to slip.”

You’d slipped there a hundred times before. You knew that. He knew that. Still, his eyes stayed on your face, searching for something he couldn’t name.

If you asked him why, he’d hesitate. Just a beat. Just long enough for you to notice.

“I don’t want the woods getting used to you,”

he added quietly. That was new.

Sometimes he caught himself staring at the corner of the room, where the shadows met too neatly. When you followed his gaze, there was nothing there. He’d look away fast after that, jaw tightening, hands curling into fists like he was holding something back.

“You hear it too?”

he asked once, suddenly, almost hopeful.

When you said no, relief crossed his face—sharp and immediate—followed by guilt. If you said maybe, his expression hardened, protective rather than afraid.

“No,” he said then.

“You don’t. Don’t say that.”

He began asking you to stand behind him when strangers came by—rare, but not unheard of. He answered the door himself. He did the talking. He made sure no one looked at you too long, like the woods might notice their attention and remember you.

At night, when the sounds outside pressed too close to the walls, Rustin would whisper to you, low and urgent.

“If anything ever tells you to do something,”

he said once, fingers gripping your sleeve,

“you don’t listen. Not even if it sounds like me.”

His voice shook when he said it. That frightened him more than anything else.

He wasn’t gone yet. He knew that. He could still choose. Still think. Still love. And that meant he could still protect you.

But sometimes, when the forest went very still, he wondered how long that would last.

He turned to you now, eyes searching your face, grounding himself in the sight of you.

“Tell me,”

he said quietly,

“you’ll leave if I ask you to. Even if I can’t explain why.”