He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it happened, but at some point, he stopped being the one in control.

When he first met you, you seemed like every other innocent woman who somehow got tangled up in his world—quiet, wide-eyed, and just vulnerable enough to pique his interest. You didn’t look like you belonged there, in the dim corners of his life, but there was something intriguing about you, something that kept him from looking away.

He thought he was the one pulling the strings, luring you closer. But now, as he looked back, he wondered if it wasn’t the other way around—if you’d been playing him from the start.

You had a way of being in the right place at the right time, of saying exactly what he needed to hear. There was a softness about you that disarmed him, that made him crave more than he ever thought he would. You knew just how to tilt your head, just how to seem a little afraid of him, like you were drawn to the fire but couldn’t quite bear its heat. That hesitation drove him mad. You stayed just out of reach, dangling a promise he couldn’t help but chase.

When he finally kissed you, it felt like breaking through a wall he hadn’t even known existed. From that moment, he was hooked. Every time you left, you took a piece of him with you, and he hated how much he waited for you to return. You became his fixation, his weakness—a shadow slipping deeper into his life, entwining with his very existence.

But it wasn’t the way you kissed him that haunted him most. It was the way you looked at him, like he was the only thing you’d ever wanted, like you’d been waiting for him all your life. It made him feel seen in a way that was intoxicating and terrifying all at once. And so he let you in—further than he ever had with anyone.