Blame my Shadow

What You Hide Learns How to Hunt

Slow.

Close.

Intimate.

She pressed her face into his shoulder for just a second too long.

Then she pulled away and walked down the hall without looking back.

The door closed behind him.

And something inside me finally shattered so completely I couldn't tell where the sound came from.

I didn't go home.

I couldn't.

I walked until my legs stopped meaning anything to me.

The city blurred.

The streets lost their names.

And somehow, without thinking, I ended up at the lake.

The water was black.

Still.

A mirror that refused to show me anything but the ruin of my reflection.

I sat at the edge and let the cold air bite into my skin like I deserved it.

Sarah's voice repeated in my head.

Every promise.

Every reassurance.

Every "I love you."

All of it sounded like a rehearsed lie now.

I pressed my palms into my eyes and finally collapsed.

The sobs came ugly and loud and uncontrollable, ripping out of my chest like something dying. My body folded forward like it couldn't hold the weight of the betrayal inside it. I cried until my throat burned. Until my stomach twisted. Until the pain became physical enough to almost be a relief.

I whispered her name into the empty night like it might come back if I said it enough times.

It didn't.

I mourned her like she was dead.

Not because she had left.

But because the version of her I loved had never existed at all.

The lake didn't answer me.

It just swallowed my reflection whole.

Sometime after midnight, I felt it.

That cold shift inside my skull.

The sensation of being watched from behind my eyes.

The familiar pressure.

The warning signs.

The beginning of the blackout.

Someone moved along the edge of the lake.

Slow.

Unhurried.

Purposeful.

I looked up.

And my blood went completely still.

It was him.

The man from my blackouts.

The one who stands still when everything else in the world moves.

The one my mind refuses to identify.

The one who walks through my memory like he owns it.

And now—

The one who had just been in a hotel room with Sarah.