I didn't leave my apartment that day. Or the next.
The rain had stopped, but the storm inside me raged. Every shadow in the room seemed alive. Every reflection in the dark screen was someone else's eyes staring back at me.
The manuscript kept typing. Not waiting for me. Not needing me.
"You can't hide from me, A.K. I see every corner of your mind."
I whispered to myself, trying to convince myself it was hallucination. But the words were on the screen. They were moving, rearranging themselves as I read. I pressed my fingers to the keys, but the sentences didn't belong to me. Not fully.
I remembered the night again. Jules pinned. Kane thrown. The fire. The scream. Every memory I tried to bury clawed its way out through every word I read, every word I typed.
And then the emails started. Short, sharp, accusing:
"Why do you pretend? You were there. You know what really happened. You hid it. But hiding doesn't erase."
I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't think.
I only watched the words appear on the page. The story was no longer fiction. It was confession. It was judgment. It was him, breathing down my neck through the keyboard.
I wanted to run. To scream. To throw the laptop out the window.
But I stayed. I couldn't stop.
Because if I didn't finish typing, the story would finish me.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew, every chapter I wrote, every page I left unfinished, every lie I hid inside myself, was already being written by him.
I wasn't alone. I had never been alone.