Page 23 of Watching You
Red ink.
Not mine.
Not Kinsley’s.
7:30 PM – Game.
I stare at it like it might explain itself. I haven’t written anything in red since middle school. It bleeds across the page like a warning. Like a claim. Like someone reached into my system and left a fingerprint.
I close the planner too fast. My hands are shaking. I tell myself it’s nothing. A prank. A mistake. Kinsley being careless. But she doesn’t touch my side of the desk. She knows better.
I move to the bed. I need to sit. I need to breathe. But the second I lower myself onto the mattress, I freeze.
The pillow smells different.
Not detergent.
Not vanilla.
Cologne.
Masculine. Clean. Sharp.
Familiar.
But not mine.
I jerk back like I’ve been burned, eyes scanning the room. Nothing’s out of place. Not really. But everything feelswrong. The sheets are rumpled. The air feels heavier. The silence feelswatched.
My phone sits on the desk, screen dark, silent. I keep glancing at it, half-hoping it will light up and tell me I’m imagining things. That this is just anxiety. That I’m spiraling over nothing. But then it buzzes—soft, deliberate, like a whisper in the dark.
I freeze.
The screen lights up, and one name appears: Kane.
Not Fischer. Just Kane. The way everyone says it. The way it echoes in locker rooms and stadiums in whispered rumors. But this isn’t a rumor. This isreal.This ishim. On my phone. In my space.
My breath catches. My fingers tremble as I reach for the device, thumb hovering over the message like it might burn me. I don’t want to open it. I already feel it under my skin. But I do.
Kane:
You found me.
Right where I wanted to be.
The words are simple. But they land like a match dropped in gasoline. He knows. He wants me to know. This isn’t a coincidence. This isn’t a mistake. This is Kane Fischer—quarterback, golden boy, Kinsley’s brother—watching me. Inserting himself into my life like he belongs there. Like he’s always belonged there.
I stare at the message, heart thudding against my ribs. I should delete it. I should block him. I should scream. But I don’t. I just sit there, phone clutched in my hand, remembering.
That night at his house.
The hallway.
The collision.
He’d been shirtless, chest broad and cut like something sculpted from heat and tension. I’d slammed into him, breathless, stammering, and he hadn’t moved.Just stood there. Just looked at me. And in that moment, something inside me had shifted. Something deep. Something primal.
I’d left early. Told myself it was nothing. But it wasn’t. It was him. It was me. It was the beginning.
