Page 26 of Wild Thorns

Something had jolted me awake around three in the morning, my heart hammering before my eyes were fully open. A sound, maybe, or just the particular silence of the hour, that dead space between night and dawn when the world held its breath.

I lay in the dark and listened to my pulse slow. Listened to the sounds of the apartment settling, the creak of old wood, the distant hum of the refrigerator. Normal sounds. Safe sounds.

But my brain wouldn't stop.

It was four in the morning. I'd been in Magnolia Creek for three weeks, and somehow the distance had made the memories closer, not further. Like being safe had given them permission to surface. Like all the things I'd been running from had finally caught up and were sitting in the corner of my bedroom, waiting to be acknowledged.

Marcus.

Three years together. I'd met him at a design conference in Charlotte. He was charming, attentive, exactly the kind of person who made you feel like the most important person in the room. He'd asked intelligent questions about my work. He'd remembered my coffee order after one conversation. He'd looked at me like I was someone worth remembering.

We moved in together after a year. I thought I was happy. I thought this was what love looked like.

The change had been slow. So slow that I hadn't noticed it happening until I was already trapped.

The way he needed to know where I was at all times, not as a request but as an expectation. How often he had opinions about my clothes, my friends, my schedule, opinions that weren't really opinions but instructions wrapped in concern. The way my world got smaller, piece by piece, boundary by boundary, until I was living inside walls I hadn't agreed to build.

And the incidents. Small at first. A glass breaking in the kitchen, an accident, my hand slipping while I washed dishes, but his insistence that I'd thrown it. A text message I swore I'd sent, that he swore I hadn't. The feeling of being watched that I told myself was paranoia, because surely no one would actually follow their girlfriend to the grocery store.

The night he'd cornered me in our bedroom, his hands on my shoulders just a little too tight, his face too close to mine, breathing my air as if he owned it. His eyes had seemed wrong in that moment, darker than they should have been, the pupils too large, something moving in their depths that didn't look entirely human. The air around him had smelled wrong too—that same faint sulfur I’d caught in the car, sharper now, as if his anger fed it.

"You belong to me," he had growled. "You'll always belong to me. Don't ever forget that."

I'd thought it was possessive, then. Romantic, even, in a twisted way. The kind of intensity that people wrote songs about.

Now I knew it was a promise. And a threat.

Finding the tracking app on my phone had proved it. The box of photographs in his closet, photos of me taken without my knowledge, from angles that suggested he'd been watching for months, had proved it. The rose on my pillow the morning after I'd had drinks with a colleague, a colleague Marcus claimed not to have known about, had proved it.

I'd left him nearly a year ago. Packed a bag while he was at work, drove to Tara's, never went back.

I thought I was handling it. The restraining order was pending. I was careful about where I went, what I posted, who I talked to. I'd built a new life, piece by careful piece.

My phone buzzed.

The sound cut through the darkness like a blade. I knew before I looked. My body knew, that cold certainty settling into my stomach like ice water.

New message from an unknown number.

Serena. Did you think you could hide from me?

More than just my name this time. A question. A reminder that he was paying attention, that distance was an illusion, that I would never really escape.

My hands were shaking so hard I could barely hold the phone. The screen light seemed too bright, harsh and accusing in the darkness of my bedroom.

I blocked the number. Deleted the message. Sat in the dark with my knees drawn up to my chest, trying not to scream.

He'd found my new number again. The second time since I'd arrived.

A second breach. Two different unknown numbers, both finding a phone I’d bought with cash. This wasn’t luck or social engineering—this was something else entirely. I’d have to ask Tara if she’d given my number to anyone. And if she hadn’t... then Marcus had methods I couldn’t explain. Methods that terrified me more than the messages themselves.

That familiar wave of panic hit hard and fast: cold sweat breaking out across my skin, heart hammering against my ribs, the feeling that I couldn't breathe, that the walls were closing in, that I was trapped, alone, and no one could help me.

I counted my breaths. One, two, three. Tried to ground myself in the present.

I was in Magnolia Creek. I was in my apartment. The doors were locked.

Were the doors locked?