POV: (Unnamed)
They are flies buzzing around something sacred. Their laughter is a stain. Their whispers, a desecration. They look at him, they speak to him, they think they have a right.
They don't.
They don't see the fragile architecture of his soul. They don't understand that he is not just a person. He is a masterpiece. And masterpieces are not for the grubby hands of the masses.
He is mine. A truth as fundamental as gravity.
From my post in the cafeteria, I conduct my census. Three girls, their gazes lingering a moment too long. Two boys, one who nudged him "accidentally" in the hall yesterday. One teacher, who looks at him with a pity that is just another form of desire.
I note them all. Their faces are already in my archive.
The girl with the red hair she smiled at him yesterday. A wide, easy, unearned smile.
She isn't smiling today. I made sure of that.
He looked at me. His eyes, wide and lost, met mine across the crowded hall. It wasn't a glance; it was a search. A plea. See me. Know me. Fix this.
He doesn't understand. He doesn't need to ask. He doesn't need to do anything but exist.
I will handle the rest. I will prune the garden. I will silence the noise.
He just has to stay beautiful. Stay soft.
Stay mine.
Mila told him about the wall. She forced her way into our narrative. She saw the sacred texts and called them profane.
It's a deviation. An error in the script.
But I am the author here. I have already written the final chapter.
No matter what they do, no matter where they run, Avery will always, always end up back with me.
Because no one loves him with the purity that I do.
And no one who touches what is mine gets to walk away alive.
POV: Avery Knox
Monday didn't arrive; it attacked.
The stares were different. Not the usual curious glances or whispered judgments. This was a unified, knowing gaze. A hundred pairs of eyes holding a secret I wasn't privy to. I was a specimen under glass.
I kept my head down, a mantra of just get to class beating in time with my heart. Then I heard it, a hissed sibilance that cut through the noise:
"…didn't know he was Leo's."
I froze. The world narrowed to the two girls behind me. "What did you say?"
The one who spoke paled, her eyes darting away. "N-Nothing! Just… people are saying you and Leo Maddox are… together."
The word hung in the air, toxic and wrong. "We're not," I said, but she was already fleeing, the rumor given life and set loose.
I found Mila by the vending machines, her face a mask of dread. "Someone's telling everyone we're dating," I blurted, my voice tight.
She looked at me, and the fear in her eyes was a cold splash of water. "Avery… it's not just 'someone'."
"What are you talking about?"
"Caleb. Nico. They said… Leo told them. Directly. That you two were a thing."
The floor felt unsteady. "No. That's insane."
"It gets worse," she whispered, her voice trembling. She nudged my backpack, which I'd dropped at my feet. "Look."
With numb fingers, I unzipped the main compartment. The familiar scent of my pencils and old paper was gone, replaced by something else. Something sharp and clean.
I pulled it out. A hoodie. Jet black, expensive, and impossibly large. It wasn't mine.
I looked at Mila, my question silent.
Her voice was barely a breath. "That's Leo's. I've seen him wear it."
POV: Mila Voss
Obsession is one thing. This is a pathology. And pathologies have histories.
I'm going to find his. Before Avery becomes part of it.
I waited until he was safe at home, drowning in a terror I helped create. Then I opened my laptop, the glow of the screen my only light in the dark.
The initial searches were clean. Too clean. Leo Maddox was a golden boy, his digital footprint pristine.
So I dug deeper. Dark web forums, archived school board minutes, local news articles from his old district. I was a digital archaeologist unearthing a monster.
And then I found it. A single, buried article from three years ago.
Middle School Fire Ruled 'Suspicious' - One Dead, One Injured.
The details were sparse, sanitized for a community that wanted to forget. A single student dead. Another hospitalized for smoke inhalation. The suspect's name was withheld due to age.
But there was a photo. A group shot of the school's track team, the faces blurred, but one figure was unmistakable. That tall frame, that set of the shoulders. Leo.
And one line, a throwaway detail that made my blood freeze:
The deceased, Mark R., was rumored to have confessed his feelings for the same male student just one week prior to the incident.
My hands shook so hard I could barely type. This wasn't a crush. It was a pattern.
Avery wasn't just being stalked.
He was the next target in a sequence that ended in fire.
POV: Avery Knox
It started with the smell.
I walked into my room, and the air was wrong. Underneath the scent of my laundry and my life was something foreign. A crisp, expensive cologne. Leo's cologne.
My room was a crime scene, staged to look normal.
Everything was in its place.
Almost.
The small framed photo of me and Mila on my desk the one I always straighten was tilted two degrees to the left.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I moved closer, my hand trembling as I lifted the frame.
Beneath it, a single square of paper.
Two words, written in a sharp, precise hand:
You're mine.
I stumbled back from the desk as if it were electrified. I didn't grab a coat, didn't put on shoes. I just ran, the cold pavement a distant shock against my bare feet, until I was pounding on Mila's door.
She took one look at my face and pulled me inside, locking the door behind us. "He was in my room," I choked out.
She didn't flinch. She just nodded, her expression grim. "We need to talk."
That night, she laid it all out. The fire. The dead boy. The photo of a younger Leo. The wall of pictures in his room.
"It's him, Avery," she said, her voice hollow. "It's always been him."
And I just sat there, trembling, because the most terrifying part wasn't the revelation.
It was the small, stupid, secret part of me that had always watched him from afar, that whispered: I know.
POV: Leo Maddox
Mila Voss is a mouse who thinks she's a detective. She's been digging in places she doesn't belong, unearthing bones I buried long ago.
It's time the mouse learns about the cat.
I watched her leave her house, a little grey figure in a hoodie, thinking she was invisible. Predictable.
The park path was deserted, the evening air turning cold. I stepped out from behind the large oak just as she reached the bend.
She gasped, stumbling back, her earbuds falling out. "Leo?! What the hell?!"
I didn't offer a smile. There was no performance here. This was business. "We need to talk."
She looked like a startled rabbit, poised to run. I took a single step closer, closing the distance. My voice was flat, devoid of all the charm I wasted on everyone else.
"Stay. Out. Of. This."
"You think I'm scared of you?" she retorted, but her voice was a fragile thing, ready to crack.
I leaned in, my voice dropping to a whisper that was colder than the night air. "No. I think you're smart enough to be."
The bravado drained from her face. Good. She understood the hierarchy now.
"I don't want to hurt you, Mila," I said, the lie smooth and effortless. "But I will if you make me."
I turned to leave, a phantom retreating into the shadows. But I paused, a final dart to plant deep in her psyche.
"Oh, and Mila?" I called over my shoulder, not bothering to look back. "Tell Avery I said goodnight."
I didn't need to see her face. I heard the sharp, terrified intake of her breath.
The message was received.
POV: Avery Knox
Mila was a ghost on the walk back to her house. She clutched her phone like a weapon she didn't know how to use, her knuckles bone-white.
" What happened?" I finally asked, the silence suffocating.
"He warned me," she whispered, her eyes staring straight ahead.
I didn't need to ask who. The name was a specter haunting the space between us. Leo.
Later, barricaded in my room with a chair shoved under the doorknob, every sound was a potential threat. The house settling was his footstep. The wind was his breath against the window.
In a moment of madness, a need to feel connected to the before-times, I picked up my phone.
Me: You okay?
No reply. Of course not. The Leo I texted was a fiction.
A few minutes later, my screen lit up with a different number. An unknown one.
Unknown: You looked so scared today. So beautiful. Do you want me to come hold you?
The blood in my veins turned to ice.
Me: Who is this?
The reply was instant.
Unknown: You left your window unlocked again, pretty thing. Tsk tsk.
My head snapped toward the window. It was closed. Locked. I was sure of it.
Wasn't I?
A cold dread, more paralyzing than any fear I'd felt before, seeped into my bones. He wasn't just outside. He had been inside. He knew the state of my locks better than I did.
My phone rang, shattering the silence. Mila.
I fumbled to answer, my voice a raw whisper. "Hello?"
Her voice was even quieter, laced with a pure, undiluted terror I had never heard before.
"Avery," she breathed. "Don't answer your door tonight. Don't even go near it."
"Why?" I begged, already knowing the answer.
"Because I think he's outside your house. I think he's watching you right now."