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Chapter 6

Her throat was dry, parched as though she had been running for miles. She reached for the glass of water on her nightstand, her hand trembling slightly as she brought it to her lips. The cool liquid soothed her, but the confusion from the dream didn't fade. What did it mean? Who was that person? And why had she felt so safe, yet so unsettled?

Ainsley lay back down, staring up at the ceiling, the strange sense of calm from the dream mingling with her lingering unease. She knew it was just a dream, but something about it felt too real to dismiss.

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Theo fumbled with his keys, too drunk to get them into the door's lock properly. The frustration of something so simple seemed to mirror the deeper feelings he was struggling to ignore. His hands shook slightly, his mind clouded with thoughts he couldn't quite shake off. Everything around him felt overwhelming, but if he was honest, it wasn't his relationship with Sereen, or his workload, or even the usual pressures of fame that were truly bothering him.
No, the real source of this building pressure was the damn messages.

Everything else in his life was predictable, tedious even. His career was moving forward at full throttle, his relationship with Sereen was as strained as always, but manageable, and the expectations from everyone around him hadn't changed. But these messages these conversations they had gotten under his skin in a way he couldn't explain. Whoever was sending them spoke to him like they knew him, not as a celebrity, but as an actual person. There was no fawning, no sense of awe over his star status. It was simple, genuine, and strangely comforting.

It made him feel... seen.

That was what disturbed him the most. He had tried to go back to his usual distractions clubbing, drinking, anything to drown out the thoughts swirling in his head. But tonight, something had shifted. He had avoided his usual hookups, still fresh from the conversation with agent earlier in the day. He was still reeling from their half-hearted breakup discussion, though he couldn't really figure out why it had impacted him so deeply.

His hand fell to his side, gripping his black signature jacket loosely. The white dress shirt underneath was open at the collar, revealing a sliver of his toned chest. The jacket hung carelessly from his hand as he stumbled through the dark apartment, toward his bedroom. He barely registered his surroundings, the familiar opulence of his home lost on him as he collapsed onto his bed, face down in the pillows.

For a moment, he lay still, his body sinking into the mattress, the weight of the day and the night pressing down on him. After a beat, he adjusted himself, rolling over to stare at the ceiling, illuminated faintly by the moonlight streaming through the large windows.

He glanced over at his bags. Scotland. He was leaving tomorrow.

"Shouldn't have gone to that party," he muttered to himself. He sighed deeply. The real reason he'd gone to that club wasn't to blow off steam it was because the stranger who had been messaging him hadn't sent anything today. Not a single message. And that absence had gnawed at him more than it should have.

"Damn it, Theo," he whispered harshly, "this is pathetic."

He sat up, frustrated, and ran a hand through his disheveled hair. Had he seriously gone out tonight just to get a reaction from someone he didn't even know? He rubbed his face with his hands, groaning as the reality of it hit him. This person this stranger might not even be who he imagined them to be. For all he knew, it could be some elaborate hoax. He chuckled bitterly to himself.