CHAPTER 3 #2
I had been sitting on the bank, playing with a small pocketknife she’d given me, but the moment I heard the strain in her voice, I dropped everything.
I ran down the pier, the wood groaning beneath my growing teenage frame, and threw my arms around her from behind.
I grabbed the cold foam grip of the rod over her smaller, calloused hands, my six-foot frame already towering over her.
Together, we dug our heels into the wood. The fish fought like a demon, pulling with a heavy, rhythmic violence that vibrated through the graphite rod straight into our bones. My muscles burned, my teeth gritted, my blonde hair falling into my eyes as I pulled back with everything I had.
“We got him, Mom! Don't let go!” I had roared over the sound of the splashing water.
With one final, coordinated heave, we reeled it in, lifting the massive, gasping grouper out of the brown water and onto the wooden planks.
The fish flapped violently, its heavy tail beating a frantic rhythm against the pier, its dark, glassy eyes staring up at us.
Mom had dropped the rod, turning around to throw her arms around my neck, her laughter rich, loud, and triumphant, echoing across the empty lake.
“That’s my boy,” she had whispered into my ear, her hair smelling of sweat and lake water. “If it wasn't for you, Joshua, that thing would’ve dragged me right into the deep. You my anchor, son. Don't you ever forget it.”
Sitting on my bed in 2026, the album heavy on my knees, the tears were flowing freely now, hot and silent, staining the front of my shirt.
She was gone. A sudden, insulting cardiac arrest had taken her from me last year, snatching her away in the middle of the night before I could even say goodbye.
The world had become an incredibly cold, dark place since that night.
She had been my only anchor. The only woman who kept me from sinking entirely into the absolute mires of insanity and despair.
Without her, the urge to carve the world into pieces, to punish the weak and the arrogant, was becoming harder and harder to control.
I closed the album with a heavy thud, wiping my face with the palm of my hand. I leaned back against the headboard, staring up at the dark ceiling.
Then, her face appeared in my mind again. Ciara.
There was something about that girl. Something I had sensed during our brief conversation on the sidewalk.
She was strong. Resilient. But beneath that loud, confident, street-bred exterior, I could detect the faint, telltale vibrations of structural damage.
She was broken too. Just like me. She had that quiet, watchful look in her eyes—the look of a person who had spent her entire life waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the people she trusted to leave her in the dirt.
We were both masters of the theater. We were both incredibly adept at hiding our pain behind a perfectly curated facade.
“Could you be an anchor, Ciara?” I whispered into the dark room, my pulse slowing as the image of her face calmed the storm in my chest. “Could a girl from the streets keep a man like me from drowning?”
***
A sudden flash of light cut through the dark bedroom, illuminating the velvet drapes for a brief second before vanishing. It was the sweep of headlights.
I stood up from the bed, placing the photo album back into its silk wrapping and sliding the drawer shut. I walked over to the street-facing window, my hand reaching out to gently part the heavy drapes. I adjusted the wooden blinds, looking down at the house directly across the street.
The Fergusons' house.
The front porch light was on, casting a warm, golden rectangle of light across the manicured green lawn. A sleek, late-model SUV was idling in the driveway, its exhaust forming small, pale plumes of steam in the cool night air. The front door of the house opened, and Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson emerged.
They looked like the absolute epitome of suburban perfection.
Mr. Ferguson was wearing a sharp, charcoal sports coat, his arm draped possessively around his wife’s waist. Mrs. Ferguson was dressed in a beautiful, flowing emerald-green dress, her laughter floating across the quiet street as she adjusted her earrings.
They looked so lovely. So normal. A perfect little couple heading out for a perfect little date night, entirely unaware that the man watching them from the darkness across the street possessed a mind that could tear their comfortable reality to shreds.
Then, Ciara stepped out onto the porch.
She was holding little Mia in her arms—the four-year-old girl curled against her shoulder like a sack of flour, her thumb tucked into her mouth.
Ciara was smiling down at the child, a soft, incredibly tender expression that made my chest tighten with a strange, foreign ache.
It was that nurturing spirit again. That absolute warmth.
Mrs. Ferguson turned around, waving goodbye to Ciara and Mia, her voice carrying a cheerful, distant tone across the asphalt. “We’ll be back by eleven, Ciara! There’s juice in the fridge!”
Ciara nodded, waving back with her free hand, her rich, dark skin looking beautiful under the golden glow of the porch light.
Mr. Ferguson backed the SUV out of the driveway, the tires crunching softly on the gravel edge before straightening out onto the street. The headlights swept across the front of my house once more as they drove away, disappearing down the block in a low rumble of machinery.
The street returned to its quiet, suburban stillness. Ciara remained on the porch for a moment, adjusting the child in her arms.
Then, she turned her head.
She didn't just look down the street; her gaze traveled directly across the asphalt, her dark, sharp eyes locking onto the exact window where I was standing.
My heart did a violent, erratic leap against my ribs.
I panicked. It was an instinctual, uncharacteristic reaction for a man who prided himself on total control.
In a split second, I snapped the blinds shut and ducked down, my massive frame hunching below the level of the window sill, my back hitting the drywall with a soft thud.
My breathing was frantic, my chest heaving as I pressed my hands against the hardwood floor.
“Fuck,” I breathed, the word slipping out in a ragged hiss through my teeth. “Fuck. She saw me.”
The blood was rushing through my ears like a torrential river. A cold sweat broke out across my forehead. She had spotted me. She had looked directly at the window while I was lurking in the dark like a common voyeur.
“She must think I’m some sort of creep,” I muttered, my fingers digging into the fabric of my trousers. “Always checking her out. Always watching from the shadows.”
The thought of her looking at me with disgust, of her seeing me as just another lowdown, predatory weirdo from the block, made my stomach twist with a violent, sickening agony.
I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't let her see the darkness before I was ready to show it to her.
I needed to reset. I needed to wash the panic out of my system before it took root.
I stood up from the floor, my movements stiff and robotic, and walked into the master bathroom.
The room was a masterpiece of black marble and brushed chrome.
In the center sat a massive, deep-soaking porcelain bathtub, large enough to comfortably accommodate my six-foot-eight frame.
I turned the heavy silver knobs, letting the water gush out of the faucet at a steaming, blistering temperature.
I poured a generous amount of cedarwood and sea salt bath oils into the stream, watching the water turn a milky, opaque white as a thick, fragrant steam began to fill the room, coating the mirrors in a dense layer of condensation.
I stripped out of my clothes, leaving them in a neat pile on the stool, and reached for my phone on the counter. I opened a meditation app, scrolling down until I found my usual track: a low, primal recording of Tibetan monks engaging in traditional throat chanting.
I pressed play, and the room was instantly filled with a deep, vibrating drone—a guttural, multi-tonal sound that felt less like music and more like a physical force.
The low frequency resonated through the marble tiles, vibrating through the soles of my feet, instantly striking a chord in the center of my chaotic mind.
I stepped into the tub, the scalding water biting into my skin with an intense, burning heat that made my muscles lock up for a single second before they began to melt. I slid down into the porcelain vessel, submerging myself up to my chest, letting my long legs stretch out fully.
I closed my eyes, letting the back of my head rest against the cool porcelain rim.
Inhale. One. Two. Three. Four.
Exhale. One. Two. Three. Four.
I focused entirely on the breath, watching the expansion and contraction of my lungs, using the deep, ancestral drone of the monks to block out the image of Ciara’s eyes looking up at my window.
The heat of the water worked its way into the deep tissue of my shoulders, dissolving the tight, defensive knots that had formed during my panic.
Slowly, the baseline control returned. My mind became a vast, empty room, the walls painted white, the floor clean. The panic was just data. The embarrassment was just a chemical reaction. I was Dr. Joshua Willis. I was the master of this narrative.
As the meditation session drew to a close, the water losing its blistering edge, a sudden thought struck me.
I needed a distraction. More importantly, I needed to ensure that my weekend plans were perfectly calibrated.
I needed to make sure that Amanda Wilde wasn't going to chicken out of our little arrangement.