Page 215 of Fractured Devotion
One that I hope she never has to use.
I slip it back inside.
I stay this way all through the night. Sleep doesn’t find me. Maybe I don’t deserve it.
In the early hours of the morning, I rise, leaving the window.
I have nothing to pack.
And I don’t leave a trace.
When I walk out of the hotel, the morning air swallows me whole.
No destination.
No plan.
Only freedom.
And the steady certainty that I’ll never be far if she calls.
Not ever.
I don’t leave the city right away.
Not yet.
I have one more thing to do.
I head toward her place just before dawn, when the streets are empty, and the air carries that strange, muted stillness.
I keep to the edges, unseen.
I settle in my usual spot at the bakery across from her apartment.
The place is beginning to stir, soft and warm with the scent of rising dough and fresh-brewed coffee. The workers move with efficiency, placing trays of pastries into display cases andstacking bread loaves behind fogged glass. There’s a familiar rhythm here—whisks against metal bowls, the soft clink of plates being set down, the hum of ovens heating up the morning.
I sit tucked in the corner near the window, half-shielded by a pillar, a black coffee cooling between my hands.
Outside, I watch her apartment.
The lights remain off. She’s likely still asleep or lost in thought, unaware of the eyes watching from the other side of the street.
For a brief moment, I wonder if she ever knew I installed cameras there, once. It seems like a long time now, a long time since I was the shadow in her walls.
I think of those feeds now—empty frames and quiet rooms—but I already dismantled the network days ago.
I didn’t need it anymore.
Watching her through the glass feels different now. More distant and safer.
I don’t get close.
I know better than that.
But I sit there for a while, staring at the faint sway of her curtains, comforted by the softness of it.
From here, the apartment looks still, untouched by the chaos that always seems to follow us.
