22. Kai #3
She breaks the wax. I know every line by memory because I rewrote the damn thing three times before I was satisfied.
The first version sounded too much like Ghost had already decided what she was going to do.
The second went too far in the opposite direction and somehow managed to sound like a liability waiver with sexual tension.
Eventually I stopped trying to make it perfect and wrote what I actually wanted.
Little Ember,
I’m tired of the window.
Not of watching you. I could stand outside that house every night for the next year and still find something about you I haven’t seen before.
I’m tired of glass.
I want to hear you instead of guessing what the sounds look like on your mouth. I want to know whether you still get that same flush when I’m standing close enough for you to feel me watching. I want to find out if that smart mouth of yours survives when my instructions aren’t written on paper.
I’ve spent weeks telling you what I would do if I were inside. I don’t want to imagine it anymore. If you let me come closer, I won’t give you my face. Not yet. You’ll get the man you’ve been looking for in the dark, and nothing more than I’m ready to give you.
But you’ll get my hands. You’ll get my voice. And if you want it, Little Ember, you’ll finally get to find out whether everything I’ve written makes your body react the same way when I’m close enough to do something about it.
I want my hands on the woman I’ve been watching through that glass.
I want to stand in front of you and tell you what I want while you decide whether you’re brave enough to give it to me.
I want you nervous.
I want you curious.
I want you lying awake wondering what would happen if there were no locked door between us.
So I’m giving you another choice. After you read this, open the front door a few inches. That’s all.
Don’t come outside looking for me. Don’t call into the dark.
If the door stays closed, I go home and nothing changes. If you open it, I’ll know you’re ready for me to come closer.
I will not come farther than you allow. You already know that rule.
You decide when I am welcome.
Tonight, Little Ember, I’m asking if that time is now.
—Man in the Shadows
Julia reaches the end, and even from this distance I can tell because all movement stops.
The glass of wine stays untouched on the table beside her plate while she sits with the page in both hands, staring at it long enough that the first uncomfortable thread of doubt starts winding through me.I have asked more of her tonight than I ever have before.
The lamp was a signal. The window was still distance. Even standing there touching herself for me happened with glass, locks and half a yard between her body and the man watching it.
A door is different. A door means access.
I knew that while I wrote the letter, and judging by the way Julia remains completely still on the couch, she knows it too.
If she closes this down tonight, I go. I meant that.
I will be pissed off and probably spend half the ride home arguing with myself about why disappointment feels like rejection when I’m the one who created the rules, but I’ll leave.
There will be no second attempt tonight.
Julia finally lowers the page and rests it in her lap. Her head falls against the back of the couch as she stares toward the ceiling. Then one hand comes up over her face, her shoulders move. For half a second I think something is wrong before I realize she is laughing.
A smile pulls at my mouth.
“What the hell are you thinking?” The question disappears into the distance between us.
Maybe she is laughing because this is absurd.
Maybe she has finally realized she has allowed an anonymous stalker to progress from poetic threats to requesting entry into her house and has decided there is no response left except hysteria.
Fair. Then her hand lowers and she looks toward the windows, toward the trees.
My pulse changes. There is no way she can see me from there. I straighten slightly nevertheless.
She remains on the couch another minute, perhaps longer.
I refuse to check my phone because knowing exactly how long she takes would somehow make the waiting worse.
Then she stands and everything in me goes still.
The letter remains on the coffee table. For one second, she turns in the direction of the stairs, and I brace for the answer I promised myself I would accept.
Instead, she changes direction toward the hallway.
My heartbeat lands harder beneath my ribs. From this angle, the living-room window gives me only part of her as she moves farther into the entryway, the pale line of her face and one shoulder appearing briefly before the wall takes most of her from view.
I know where she is standing anyway. In front of the door.
Her door. The same threshold I promised I would never cross unless she opened it first. She stays there long enough that my hands come out of my pockets without me noticing.
I don’t move. Then Julia’s shoulder shifts.
A second later, a narrow line of warm light appears on the porch.
The door opens only a few inches. That is all.
She simply leaves the door slightly ajar and steps back into the house.
For several seconds, I stare at the strip of light spilling over the porch boards and onto the dark lawn. She opened it. The fucking door. Every part of me reacts at once, desire and disbelief and something possessive enough that Ghost practically hums beneath my skin.
She said yes.
I stay where I am not because I’m reconsidering, there is almost nothing left in me capable of doing that now.I wait because she deserves one final chance to close it after the reality of what she has done settles in.
The door remains open. A minute passes, maybe more, and the narrow line of light doesn’t disappear.
Whatever happens after I cross that lawn will be different from every night that came before it.
There will be no glass to make distance feel safer, no handwritten page carrying my voice for me and no tree line separating the man she wants from the one she can actually touch.
She still has no idea who I am. Soon she will hear me.
That thought should scare the hell out of me for reasons that have nothing to do with Julia.
Instead, it makes my pulse kick harder, hard enough to push away from the tree. Hard enough for me to already decide that the helmet goes off, the balaclava stays. And that if I drop my voice enough, she will never connect me to the person who she’s been seeing every Thursday afternoon.
The wet ground gives softly beneath my boots as I step out of the darkness and start toward the house, my eyes fixed on the thin band of light cutting across the porch. For the first time since I began watching Julia Hayes, there is nothing between us except the distance I am already crossing.