Ruth’s POV
The morning didn’t feel like a beginning. It felt like a continuation of something I couldn’t name, but was already inside of.
I woke tangled in sheets that still smelled like sweat and something shameful, my skin sensitive in places it shouldn’t be. The anonymous photo from last night hadn’t disappeared from my phone. I hadn’t deleted it, I hadn’t even responded.
I just stared at it again, letting it crawl under my skin. The angle, the timing, and the silence that came with it. I thought about reporting it, typed out a message twice, deleted both. Some deeper instinct, one I didn’t want to examine, told me not to. Maybe I needed to know more before giving it away, maybe I didn’t want anyone interfering.
The air inside the house was heavy, I needed to be out. I pulled on jeans and boots and walked without purpose, letting the path between the porch and the meadow pull me along like it always did. Wild grass swayed like it was whispering something I couldn’t hear. I didn’t expect to see him, but there he was. Emmett.
At the edge of the trees, splitting thick rounds of pine, arms flexing under a fitted black shirt, face half-shadowed. He didn’t look up right away. Just swung the axe again and again, steady, brutal, focused.
I stepped closer. “We really have to stop running into each other like this.”
His eyes lifted, no smile or real reaction. Just a faint nod and a flat, “It’s a small town.”
I crossed my arms, pretending the distance in his voice didn’t sting. “Do you work out here often? Or do you just like loitering suspiciously near my property?”
He set the axe down but didn’t answer immediately. His breathing was even, but there was something rigid in his stance now. “There’s a lot of old trees needing removal,” he said finally. “This patch keeps me busy.”
“So, coincidence, then.” I watched him for a beat. “Or fate.” He didn’t take the bait, just bent down to gather the cut pieces, stacking them like they were more important than the conversation.
“Honestly, I don’t mind it,” I continued, pushing past the awkwardness. “The quiet’s gotten louder since I moved here. Every sound feels sharper now. Every creak in the floorboards, every gust through the trees… sometimes I wake up convinced of someone standing outside my bedroom window. I never see anything, but the feeling stays.” His head jerked slightly, but he didn’t turn.
“I had this dream,” I said, the words slipping out before I could stop them. “I was walking through the house. It was pitch black, but I could feel eyes on me. Every room I entered, the feeling followed. Like someone was always just out of reach.” He straightened, slowly. Looked over at me with a new kind of tension, his jaw tighter, eyes unreadable.
“Dreams lie,” he said flatly. “They turn shadows into monsters and make you doubt what’s real.”
I blinked at the edge in his tone. “I wasn’t saying it was real- just that it felt like-”
“It’s just a dream, Ruth.” He cut in sharper this time, picking up his gloves from a nearby stump. “That’s all.” I stared at him. The shift had been sudden, like I’d said something wrong and didn’t know what.
“You okay?” I asked softly.
He didn’t answer, just turned and walked back toward the trees without another word. No goodbye, no glance over his shoulder… just gone. I stood there with the wind against my face and my arms wrapped around myself like that could anchor me.
By the time the sun dipped low, I’d convinced myself he’d been dealing with something unrelated. Maybe I’d projected too much, maybe I was just too sensitive lately. I tried to sketch it out of my system that night, lined a page with exaggerated shadows and thick pencil strokes, but nothing helped.
It was close to midnight when the email arrived. No subject, no message body, just an audio file. My chest tightened. I shouldn’t have clicked it, but I did. At first, it was ambient, soft wind, the faint creak of wood, the scratch of pencil on paper. My pencil, my porch. Then his voice.
“You didn’t know I was there.” A pause, I stopped breathing.
“But in that moment, you looked like you were finally breathing again.” Silence.
I replayed it, twice… three times. He’d been there, closer than I ever imagined. Watching not like a stranger, but like someone trying not to touch. I closed the laptop but didn’t move from the couch. The house was dark, but my heartbeat wasn’t.