Kai
Idon’t rush things.
That’s the mistake people make when they think obsession is loud.
Obsession is patient.
It’s standing still while the world spins itself into knots and knowing exactly where it will land.
I lean against the railing above the beach, cigarette burning down between my fingers, watching the lights of the resort pulse like a living thing. Music drifts up from the party — laughter, glasses clinking, something tropical and obscene pretending this island isn’t rotten at the core.
She’s in there.
I don’t need to see her to know.
I feel her like pressure in my chest, like a missing organ screaming to be put back where it belongs.
Noah thinks he owns this place.
Thinks money and guards and white linen mean control.
Men like him always confuse access with possession.
I watch a couple stumble past below me, drunk and happy and careless. I imagine how easy it would be to snap their necks. How little sound it would make. How quickly the night would swallow it.
I grind the cigarette out on the rail.
Scarlett doesn’t belong in rooms like that. She never has.
She belongs in the quiet moments before something breaks.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I don’t check it right away.
I like knowing it’s her before I prove it.
When I finally look, it’s a single message. Short. Careful.
Stop.
I laugh under my breath.
That word used to mean something different between us. It used to be a challenge. A lie she told herself while leaning closer instead of backing away.
I type back slowly.
You don’t get to tell me that anymore.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
She’s scared.
Good.
Fear strips the bullshit away.
I can already picture her — sitting stiffly, pretending to listen, pretending she belongs. Noah’s hand heavy at her back like an anchor. Like a threat disguised as affection.
I flex my fingers.
He put his hands on her.
That thought settles low and dark in my gut, not hot — cold. Precise. The kind of rage that doesn’t burn out. The kind that builds structures.
I didn’t come here to explode.
I came here to take her apart piece by piece until there’s nothing left of the girl who said yes to him.
My phone buzzes again.
Please. Don’t do this.
I stare at the word, jaw tightening.
She still thinks there’s a version of this where time saves her.
I type one sentence.
I’m already doing it.
I push off the railing and start walking, not toward the party, not toward the beach — but toward the darker path that curves behind the resort, where the lights thin and the island remembers what it was before people tried to civilise it.
I know this terrain. I’ve mapped it in my head for days. Where sound carries. Where it dies. Where someone could scream and be swallowed whole.
Scarlett doesn’t know it yet, but she crossed the point of no return the moment Noah dragged her here.
He brought her to an island.
He isolated her.
He gave me time.
I smile to myself as the jungle closes in around me, damp and alive and watching.
Soon, she’s going to look at me the way she used to — not like I’m dangerous.
But like I’m inevitable.
And when she finally understands that choosing me isn’t a question of right or wrong —only survival —I won’t ask.
I’ll just say the truth she’s been running from since the beginning.
You were always coming with me.