Ava's POV
It was 3:12 a.m.
I hadn't slept.
Again.
The hum of the radiator was the only sound in my tiny off-campus apartment. My fingers clutched the edge of the blanket, too tightly. I had locked the door twice, checked the windows three times. Nothing was broken. Nothing was out of place.
And yet… something was.
That feeling—like someone had stood just beyond the threshold. Like the air had shifted, moved around another body. Like eyes had once been in the same space, and the memory of them lingered on the walls.
I kept telling myself I was being dramatic. Paranoid. I'd been working too hard. My professor had even told me to slow down. But it wasn't the work. It wasn't the caffeine. It was him.
Adrian Blackwood.
We hadn't spoken again since the hallway incident. But I'd caught him watching me from across the quad. Once in the library. Twice outside the art building.
I had never seen anyone look at another human being like that. Not hunger. Not love.
Something deeper.
Something darker.
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The next morning, my sketchpad had a page I didn't remember drawing.
It was me. Sleeping.
The lines were precise, intimate—my shoulder slightly exposed, my lips parted, the way I slept when I felt safest.
But I hadn't drawn it.
I would never draw myself like that.
My hand trembled as I touched the edge of the page.
I ripped it out. Burned it in the sink.
But even then, I felt it:
I wasn't alone in this apartment.
Not entirely.
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