Part 51
(Adrian's POV)
The knock came again.
Soft. Slow.
Like a heartbeat.
Adrian stood frozen a few feet from the door, staring at the shadow beneath it — two faint outlines of shoes, unmoving.
The sound of his pulse filled the silence until it hurt.
Leah's voice came from behind him, small and shaking.
"Don't open it."
He didn't answer.
He couldn't.
Because he already knew who it was.
He didn't know how, but he knew.
Every nerve in his body recognized the rhythm of that knock — calm, deliberate, patient.
A sound that didn't belong to the outside world.
"Adrian," came the whisper.
So soft, he almost thought he imagined it.
His hands trembled as he reached for the handle.
"Please," Leah said again, louder this time. "Don't—"
But the door was already opening.
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The night air hit him first — cold and heavy, thick with the smell of rain.
Then her face appeared in the doorway.
For a moment, he couldn't breathe.
She looked exactly like his memories and nothing like them at all — older, paler, eyes burning with a kind of devotion that terrified him.
"Hi," Alex said.
Just one word, soft as silk.
Behind him, Leah gasped.
Adrian couldn't move.
He couldn't even think.
Alex took a single step forward.
Water dripped from her hair onto the floor, tiny dark spots spreading across the wood.
Her hand lifted slightly, hesitant, trembling — like she was afraid he might vanish if she reached too quickly.
"You don't have to run anymore," she whispered. "I'm here now."
Something inside Adrian cracked.
A sound escaped his throat — half breath, half sob.
He wanted to shout, to tell her to leave, but the words wouldn't come.
All he could see was her eyes — the same eyes that had watched him through the dark, through every whisper, every sleepless night.
And beneath the fear, buried somewhere deep, was something worse — recognition.
He knew that voice.
He'd always known it.