Scene Eight The First Morning After
Wren woke before her alarm, the kind of early morning where the light hadn’t fully decided to exist yet. Her apartment was quiet, too quiet, the kind of quiet that made last night feel unreal.
She sat up slowly, rubbing her hands over her face, trying to shake off the memory of the dark shifting in the trees. But it wasn’t the danger that stayed with her.
It was him.
The way he stood between her and the shadows.
The way he said her name.
The way he kept his distance like it mattered.
She got dressed mechanically, pulling on jeans and a sweater, her mind still replaying the moment he told her not to look back. She hadn’t. And she didn’t know why she listened.
She stepped outside, locking her door behind her. The morning air was cool, soft, harmless. Nothing like the night before.
She walked down the steps, heading toward the bus stop.
Then she froze.
There, at the end of the block, parked half in shadow and half in the weak morning light, was the same matte-black bike.
Her breath caught.
Kade wasn’t on it. He wasn’t leaning against it. He wasn’t watching her.
But the bike was there — angled toward the road, positioned like it had been left intentionally, like it wasn’t abandoned but waiting.
Wren’s pulse tightened.
She looked around, scanning the quiet street. No movement. No sign of him. No reason for the bike to be here.
Except one.
He hadn’t gone home last night. Or if he had, he’d come back.
She walked toward it slowly, each step careful, controlled, like approaching something alive. The bike looked exactly the way it had in the diner parking lot — quiet, dangerous, restrained.
She reached out, fingertips brushing the cool metal of the handlebar.
A voice behind her said, “Don’t touch that.”
She spun.
Kade stood a few feet away, hands in his jacket pockets, shoulders relaxed but eyes sharp. He looked like he hadn’t slept. Or like he didn’t need to.
Wren swallowed. “You… stayed?”
He didn’t answer right away. He didn’t look away. He didn’t soften.
“I wanted to see if the dark followed you,” he said.
Her chest tightened. “Did it?”
His jaw flexed. A small movement. A dangerous one.
“No.”
She exhaled, relief mixing with something she didn’t want to name.
Kade stepped closer, not enough to invade her space, just enough to make the morning feel heavier.
“You shouldn’t walk alone today,” he said.
Wren frowned. “Why? It’s daylight.”
He held her gaze, steady and unflinching.
“The dark doesn’t care about daylight.”
Her breath caught again — not in fear, but in recognition.
He wasn’t talking about last night. He wasn’t talking about shadows. He wasn’t talking about the trees.
He was talking about something else. Something he knew. Something he’d seen. Something he didn’t want near her.
And she realized something she shouldn’t have:
He didn’t stay because he felt responsible. He stayed because something about her made him break his own rules.