Caleb had been watching her long before she noticed him.

It wasn't chance that led him to that alley. He'd known her routine. The café at noon. The late classes. The tendency to walk the long way home, earbuds in, attention elsewhere. He didn't intervene that night to be a hero. He stepped in because someone else had gotten too close.

He told himself it was protection. A necessary boundary.

But the truth?

He didn't like sharing.

There was something about her—messy, unpredictable, fractured. She moved like someone trying to outrun herself. He understood that. He saw it in the way she avoided mirrors, in how she lingered too long at intersections like she was waiting for something to pull her back. Or push her forward.

He saw himself in her. And that made it worse.

So he watched. For months. Silent. Patient. Cameras hidden in plain sight. Drones. Recordings. A full dossier growing thicker by the week. She never saw him, never suspected.

Until that fateful night she started following him.

It was clumsy at first. Amateur. But she got better. Obsession has a way of sharpening people. He let her believe she was clever, let her play her game—trailing him to the gym, mapping out his schedule, scribbling her theories in the journal she hid under her bed. He knew it all. He always had.

And now she was in his house.

He let her pick the lock. Let her wander through the minimalistic quiet. She would think she was in control. That she'd broken through something.

She didn't realize he'd been leading her here the entire time.

Her footsteps slowed outside the locked room. Predictable. A locked door always screams secrets. She took the bait.

Click.

The door creaked open.

A wall of photos greeted her—her face at different angles, different years. Screens displayed live feeds of her apartment, her hallway, her bedroom.

She froze. Then stepped closer.

And that's when he spoke.

"You took your time."

The voice came from behind her—low, calm, measured. Caleb leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, as if this were just another conversation. His dark shirt clung to his frame, still damp from the rain outside. His eyes, cold and unreadable, flicked from her to the monitors and back.

"You always hesitate before the third step in any decision. I was curious if you'd override that pattern this time."

He stepped into the room slowly, the tension in the air tightening with each click of his boots on the floor.

"You're not the first to watch me," he said, head tilting slightly, "but you are the first who thought they could do it without being seen."

A faint smile ghosted across his lips. Not kind. Not cruel. Just... inevitable.

"This," he gestured around the room, the shrine, the screens, the controlled madness, "was never for me."

He met her eyes fully now.

"It was always for you, my little shadow."

When she finally moved, just an inch, a nervous, instinctive shift toward the door, he was already there.

In one movement, his hand slammed flat against the wall beside her head, his body caging hers in, his breath slow and steady against her cheek.

"You think you're still playing?" he murmured, voice low, dangerous. "You think there's a way out now?"

His other hand rose slowly, deliberately, and pushed a strand of hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear like a lover would.

But his gaze? His gaze said something else entirely.

"You followed breadcrumbs because I left them," he whispered, eyes locked on hers. "You wanted truth, and now you're standing inside it."

He leaned in closer, the tip of his nose brushing the side of her face, the heat of his breath dragging against her skin.

"I know what you are. What you crave. I've watched you need, ache, unravel. Don't pretend you didn't want to be found. You've been begging for this, every look, every step, every scribbled theory."

He didn't move away.

Because he knew now there was no more running.

Not from her. Not from him. And definitely not from this.

"You walked through my door," Caleb said, voice sharp with finality. "You don't get to walk back out."