Page 41 of Hunting Harbor

“I can’t.” The simple honesty in his response makes my stomach drop. “You’re too beautiful.”

His fork scrapes against his plate, and I flinch at the sound. Every nerve ending in my body is on high alert, sensitized to his presence like a compass needle locked on magnetic north. When he shifts in his seat, I tense. When he reaches for the coffee pot, I track the movement with wary eyes. When he stands to retrieve something from a cupboard, my entire body coils in preparation for… what? Flight? Fight?

Neither—because the most horrifying revelation isn’t the bruises on my body or his calm acknowledgment of causing them; it’s the ugly truth that some broken part of me is waiting for his next command, anticipating the release of surrendering control. Just like I write in my manuscript.

The realization hits me with sickening clarity. Page after page of my stalled novel flashes through my mind: the masked figure stalking my protagonist through moonlit woods, the violent taking that isn’t entirely unwelcome, the Stockholm syndrome that follows. I write it all before I meet Kairo, before I come to this cabin, before last night.

My protagonist, Emma, even describes her attacker’s hands in detail— “elegant but strong, the kind of hands that could either create art or destroy a life with equal precision.” Kairo’s hands, down to the small scar across his right knuckle, catch my eye now as he pours more coffee.

The masked man in my story whispers, “I’ve been watching you for so long,” just as Kairo whispers to me last night as I fall asleep.

My stomach churns as connections snap into place: the forest chase, the mask, the cabin, the aftermath breakfast where the captor acts as if nothing happens. I write all of it, draw from some dark well inside me that I convince myself is just fiction, just imagination.

Do I manifest this somehow? Attract it? Want it on some unconscious level?

“You’re very quiet,” Kairo observes, breaking my spiral of horrified self-reflection. “What are you thinking about?”

“My book,” I admit before I can stop myself. “My manuscript.”

Something flashes in his eyes. “Tell me what you see in it now.”

“That I write this,” I whisper, gesturing vaguely between us—at the cabin, at my bruised body. “All of it. Before it happens. Like I somehow… predict it. Or want it.”

He smiles then, and it transforms his face into something almost kind. Almost human. “Maybe you do. Maybe that’s why we find each other. Fate has a way of bringing like minds together.”

“We’re nothing alike,” I snap, sudden anger cutting through my confusion. “I would never hurt someone like you hurt me.”

“But you imagine it in exquisite detail,” he counters, rising from his seat. “Create it word by word, scene by scene.”

I shake my head, denying the accusation even as doubt creeps through my certainty. I write the words, yes. It’s dark fiction—a twisted, sometimes violent story that explores the shadows of human desire. But that is fiction. Just fiction.

Isn’t it?

My thoughts scatter like startled birds when Kairo suddenly moves around the island. My muscles tense, anticipating violence, but he merely circles behind my chair with deliberate slowness. I sit frozen, staring straight ahead, afraid to turn and track him, afraid to remain still and vulnerable.

His hands rest lightly on the back of my chair, not touching me but close enough that I can feel the heat of his body against my back. I stop breathing, suspended in the moment between his presence and his touch.

“You should be scared, Harbor,” he whispers, breath warm against my ear, stirring loose strands of hair. “Because I’m not letting you go.”

A shiver travels down my spine at his words, and heat pools between my legs. I should jerk away, should scream or fight or do anything other than sit here, my breath catching as his fingers finally make contact, brushing against the sensitive skin of my neck.

The touch is feather-light, just fingertips tracing the column of my throat, but it sends electricity coursing through my veins. Mybody betrays me with a small, involuntary arch toward his hand, like a cat seeking more contact.

I hate myself in that moment—hate the disconnect between my mind, which screams danger, violation, escape, and my treacherous body responding to his touch despite everything he’s done.

“See?” His voice is low and rumbly, a murmur in my ear. “You can lie to yourself, Harbor, but your body knows what it wants.”

“No,” I manage.

His fingers continue their gentle exploration, traveling up to trace my jawline, then threading into my hair. “You write us into existence. Call me from your darkest fantasies. And now you want to deny the connection?”

“This isn’t a fantasy,” I whisper, even as my head tilts slightly into his touch. “This is a nightmare.”

“Is it?” He tightens his grip just enough to control my head, turning my face toward his. His eyes burn with intensity as they search mine. “Then why aren’t you fighting harder to wake up?”

The question lands like a physical blow. Why am I not fighting? Why am I sitting here, letting him touch me, feed me, control me after what he does? The answer lurks in the darkest corners of my mind, in the manuscript pages that predict this moment with such terrible accuracy.

My body knows Kairo long before I meet him. My mind creates him, summons him from whatever hell spawns men who hunt women through midnight forests.

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