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I steal a quick glance at him from the corner of my eye.

He doesn’t seem to be looking at the scenery. He certainly isn’t looking at the glowing jack-o’-lanterns or the approaching lights of the town in the distance.

He’s looking at me.

His dark, unblinking gaze is locked onto my profile, intensely watching the pulse in my throat.

And as we speed deeper into the dark, a chilling notion wraps its knobby fingers around my throat.

This man did not get in my car or come to town for Mrs. Howard’s famous peach cobbler.

He got into my car because he was waiting for me.

Two

The Return

RYDER

6:25 PM

The monster who broke my world still smells like sweet vanilla and violets. Even after fifteen years.

I lean back against the headrest, letting the silence of the car settle over us like a thunder cloud.

Out the passenger window, the gloom of Blackwood Highway rolls past, dark pines standing like silent sentinels along the ditch.

Beside me, Harmony Grove keeps her hands locked onto the steering wheel, her posture so rigid I can almost hear the harsh, rhythmic tick of her pulse echoing through the car.

My gaze sweeps over her profile, hungrily taking in the sight of her after one long year away from this cursed town.

I soak in her rich, warm brown skin, infused with liquid golden undertones as it glows faintly beneath the dim orange light of the dashboard. Thick brown curls cascade over her shoulders in a wild, heavy mass, framing a petite face that looks far too soft, far too pure for the dark edge I know she carries.

Even with that knowledge, it doesn’t distract me from her full, pillowy lips or her lean, athletic frame. Her small tits heave slightly under her sweater with every shallow, guarded breath she takes, drawing my eyes there.

It’s hard to tell with this lighting, but I remember her eyes. Light, striking, the warm color of melted butterscotch. Right now, they are glued to the asphalt ahead, fixed in a stare of pure, controlled panic.

She looked right at my face thirty seconds ago and saw a stranger. A nobody. She doesn’t remember me, and that’s fine.

That’s exactly what I want… for now.

She doesn’t see the boy who used to sit two rows behind her in home room, hopelessly pathetic, quietly watching the way the afternoon sunlight caught those brown curls while the rest of the class laughed at her jokes.

Back then, I was just a kid with faded bruises hidden under thrift-store flannels, completely invisible to Blackwood High’s gleaming royalty.

I spent an entire year gathering the courage just to say hello to her in the hallway, only to end up choking on my own breath whenever she walked past me.

She was my drug back then. She’s my addiction now.

She never noticed me in high school. And why would she?

I was no one to her, less than nothing.

For the last fifteen years of my life, I’ve tracked her every move. I know her morning routine. How she takes her coffee—black with a single dash of cinnamon. I’m familiar with the street address of her apartment three hours north, the route she walks to work, and the exact date she books her time off every single autumn.

I have photo albums buried in a locked box at home filled with stolen moments of her life—Harmony walking her dog, Harmony reading on her balcony, Harmony smiling at a world that has no idea how terrifyingly dark her and her friends truly were.

My fixation with her started as a middle school crush, but over the years, it has mutated into something far more time consuming.