The confetti drifted through the air like ash from something burning unseen, sparkling under the warm, amber lights that suddenly felt too bright, too staged, too unreal. Each fluttering piece moved slowly, lazily, as if time itself had stretched thin.
My heart slammed against my ribs so violently it hurt, every beat a jolt of panic echoing in my ears. My lungs refused to slow, dragging in air in short, jagged pulls that scraped down my throat. I blinked hard, again and again, but the world wouldn't make sense.
The room swam with color and sound, but none of it felt safe. Shapes came into focus Suzanne, Justin, James faces stretched into excited smiles that felt detached from reality, like masks waiting to peel back. They stared at me, waiting, expecting... but my mind couldn't catch up.
Then him. Ryan.
He stood there like he'd been there all along, untouched by the chaos still ripping through my skull. His hair was slightly tousled, his dark eyes steady and warm in a way that once calmed me, and the small, teasing smile at the corner of his lips tugged at something deep in my chest. But that familiarity clashed with everything I had just survived. His presence didn't soothe me, it split me open.
"Happy birthday, my love," he murmured, stepping closer. His voice was soft, steady, the kind of voice meant to anchor someone lost in a storm but I was already drowning, and his calm only made the panic feel more unreal. My body stayed rigid, frozen in place, my thoughts crashing into each other so hard it hurt.
The photos. The messages. The dread that crawled across every inch of my skin for hours. The certainty that someone was watching us, hunting us. The nightmare wasn't fading it was overlapping with this moment like a double exposure.
Was the stalker him? Was he complicit? Or worse was someone still out there, unseen, patient, waiting for the lights to dim and the laughter to die?
Suzanne stepped forward, her voice cutting through the storm in my head. "She's still confused... Venisa, it was a prank! We all planned it together to surprise you on your birthday. Ryan had the photos as part of it. Nothing's real. Everything's safe."
Safe.
The word hit me like a blow. My knees faltered, and for a breathless moment it felt like the floor had given out beneath me. Relief didn't come as a soft blanket, it tore through me sharp and disorienting. Anger and shock tangled with disbelief so tightly I couldn't separate one from the other. They had played with my fear. They had made me think death was closing in. They made me picture Ryan's body somewhere cold and hidden. They made me brace myself to die too.
My jaw clenched. My hands trembled so violently my fingers curled into fists without permission. The room felt too warm, too close, as if the walls were inching inward. How could they laugh about this? How could anyone think pushing me to the edge of madness was entertainment?
And yet... the agony of the past hours loosened its grip, if only by a thread. Ryan was here. Breathing. Looking at me. Jojo wasn't lying lifeless like I feared or trapped somewhere dark and alone. The world hadn't ended in blood and shadows. Not yet.
I forced in a breath that shook its way down my spine, but instead of calming me, it broke something open. Six months of silence, of unanswered questions, three days of fear, of sleeping with one eye open exploded all at once. My vision clouded, my throat closed up, and before I could think, my feet were moving. I didn't hear what anyone said behind me. I didn't look at their faces again. I turned and walked away, every step automatic, my pulse roaring in my ears like distant thunder.
Ryan's personal room swallowed me the moment I stepped inside, the door clicking shut behind me with a sound that felt final. The air smelled faintly of his cologne, that clean, dark scent I used to bury my face in, now tainted by the ghost of panic clinging to my lungs. Underneath it was the subtle trace of freshly laundered sheets, familiar and suffocating. I didn't think, I just let myself collapse onto the bed, the mattress dipping under my weight. My fingers dug into the blankets like they were the only solid thing left in existence.
Then I shattered.
The sobs tore out of me without mercy, ripping up through my chest in raw, uneven bursts. I pressed my face into his pillows, muffling the sounds, but nothing could stop the shaking. All the these recent days of imagining the worst all of it flooded out with no filter, no restraint. Every unanswered call. Every night spent staring at the door, waiting for someone who didn't come home. Every shadow I thought hid a threat. Every second of thinking I had been watched.
I heard footsteps.
Ryan was close. I could feel it even without looking at him, the sensation of his presence like static at the edge of my skin. Maybe he was standing in the doorway. Maybe he was only a few feet away. Maybe he was afraid to touch me after what they'd done. I couldn't make sense of it. My head throbbed with too many feelings at once, fury, grief, love, relief, horror. All of it twisted together until I couldn't breathe without choking on it.
Jojo slipped into the room at some point, quiet as a whisper. His tiny paws pressed against the side of the bed before he nudged my arm with his snout. The warmth of his little body curled against me like a lifeline, pulling me back from the brink. I whispered his name through shaking breaths, and he answered with soft, fragile whines, pressing closer as if he could protect me from memories that hadn't even finished forming.
Time didn't move the same way after that. Minutes or hours, either could've passed while I cried into the blankets. My body slowly drained of fight, though the fear still lingered in the corners of my mind like something crouching in a dark room, waiting to crawl out again when I blinked. I held onto Jojo and the sheets as though they were anchors keeping me from disappearing into the hollow space inside my chest.
A knock came eventually, light but distinct, pulling me back into the present with a jolt. Ryan's voice followed, low and careful, as if he were approaching a wounded animal. "Venisa... can I come in?"
I didn't answer. My throat hurt too much, my voice barely more than a ghost. The tears had slowed, but my composure was still fractured, and I wasn't sure if I could bear looking at him yet, not after everything. Another soft knock came, followed by his voice again, richer this time, quiet but unshakable. "I'm here. Just let me know when you are ready."
The words split through the haze like a blade of light through a storm. Not a promise. Not an excuse. A simple, steady truth. I found strength enough for a whisper, the words catching on the remnants of my sobs. "You... you're really here..."
"Yes," he said, and the reply landed like a heartbeat against my spine. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
Even as the tears continued to roll down my face, something inside me finally started to unwind. The pressure in my chest loosened, not in a sudden burst, but in slow, unsteady pulses, like waves receding after a violent storm. The prank had been brutal, terrifying, a plunge into a nightmare I hadn't been prepared to crawl out of, but the simple fact that Ryan stood in front of me now, alive and breathing, smiling with that quiet warmth, pulled at something fundamental in me. In the midst of panic and delusion and horror, the realization crept in like a lantern flickering to life in the dark, some things, love, loyalty, the familiarity of a heartbeat you trust, still held their ground even when the world around you tilted into madness.
I didn't rush to speak. I didn't move. I let the silence stretch, let the tremors slowly leave my body, let my lungs relearn the rhythm of breathing without the taste of dread in every inhale. For the first time in half a year, the air didn't feel like razor wire in my throat. Ryan was here. He was real. And for a fragile moment, the world wasn't closing in on me anymore.
The door clicked faintly, and he stepped inside with cautious quiet, as if he were entering a room with a wounded animal, not a woman he claimed to love. Concern carved shadows across his handsome face, the lines around his mouth tight, his dark eyes scanning every detail, my swollen eyes, my shivering hands, the way I was gripping the blanket like it might vanish if I let go. His presence grounded me, but it also forced me to relive the terror of what I thought I'd lost.
He sat down slowly on the edge of the bed, close enough that his warmth reached me in the space between us, but not so close that I felt cornered. His hand rose, unhurried and gentle, fingers brushing my cheek before his thumb swept lightly across my skin. The touch was almost unbearably human. Comforting. Dangerous. It made everything that had just happened cut deeper by contrast.
"I'm sorry... please don't cry," he whispered, his voice low and strained with guilt. "I didn't realize it was affecting you this much. I thought it was one of your bucket list wish."
A shaky sound escaped me, something caught between a broken laugh and a hiccup drowned in tears. "What wish?" I muttered, my voice barely holding itself together.
He huffed out the faintest smile, leaning closer, his eyes still full of worry but touched with a glimmer of that familiar mischief. "Last time you told me about that series and book, the one with the stalker and the girl. You said you wanted to know what it'd feel like, just once."
I froze mid breath, then groaned and covered my face with both hands, heat burning across my cheeks. "You actually did it? You--you took it literally!?"
This man. This muscleheaded, serious, occasionally clueless man, managed to orchestrate this entire nightmare flawlessly? The same person who couldn't keep track of his keys for more than a week? My thoughts spun, clashing between disbelief and slow-burning fury.
"I didn't mean it..." I choked out, tears threatening again as the panic reared back. "I was joking! Who would want to get themselves a stalker? ...When I saw you in that picture, I thought- I thought it was real! I thought I'd lost you!"
Ryan's eyes softened instantly, his hand sliding gently into mine as if he could anchor me just by holding on. "That's impossible, my love. Nothing could ever keep me from you. I knew you would be annoyed knowing it was me, but I never expected my only three texts would scare you this much."
I frowned in confusion, trying to make sense of his words.
What did he mean by "only three texts"?
I had received more than ten messages, and from not just one, but two different unknown numbers.
Was he saying he had only sent three messages?
Or was he somehow counting only a few of them?
My mind raced, trying to figure out what he was talking about, and a shiver of unease ran down my spine. The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. How could just three texts cause this much fear when there were clearly so many more?
To be continued