I couldn't move.
The breath seized in my chest. When terror hits, the first thing you reach for is logic; within seconds, my brain scrambled to calculate every window, the deadbolt I had slid shut, the distances between us. But the sound behind me was neither an echo nor the noise inside my head.
The floorboards behind me gave slightly under a weight. A single creak.
I turned slowly. My left hand gripped the corner of the table so hard my nails stripped the varnish.
He was there.
He wasn't standing in the shadow like a statue; he was breathing. His chest rose and fell heavily beneath a wet wool coat. The sliding window facing the backyard was open a few inches; the cold night draft slipping in flickered the flame of the small oil lamp on the floor.
That was how he got in.
The light caught only the left side of his face. Wet hair clung to his forehead. The thin scar across his jaw hadn't scabbed over; it ran like a raw, red line against skin bruised blue by the cold. That dark look I'd caught at the cafe last night was so much closer now. His eyes were tired, but unyielding. Maddeningly awake.
"You locked the door," he said.
He didn't shout. He didn't even raise his voice. He said it in such an ordinary tone, as if we'd run into each other in a hotel lobby. The only difference was the sound of water dripping from the hem of his coat onto the floorboards. Drip. Drip.
"How..." My voice failed me. I tried to clear my throat, but my mouth was bone-dry. "What are you doing here?"
He didn't answer. Without breaking eye contact, he took a step forward. The wet prints left by his muddy boots glistened in the pale yellow light. Only three paces separated us now.
That familiar, suffocating smell took over the room: damp fabric, rain, sea salt, and that sharp, cheap cedar cologne. The entire past I had spent years running from burned the back of my throat in a single breath.
"I trailed your car all the way to the harbor," he said. His gaze shifted to the notebook on the table, then to the stone oozing blood. Not a flicker of emotion crossed his face. "I watched you on that beach, pathetic as you were. Crying, throwing things into the surf. Whispering to yourself."
My hands began to shake. My eyes drifted involuntarily to the heavy brass oil lamp on the table. Could I reach it? Could I throw it?
Jack caught the look. The right corner of his mouth twitched.
"Don't even try, Emily."
He pulled his right hand from his coat pocket. His knuckles were split open, the skin stripped away as if he'd beaten a stone wall with bare fists, wrapped loosely in a rough scrap of cloth. He rested his hand on the table, right at the edge of my notebook. It was a large, heavy hand—the same hand that once stroked my hair, and later bruised my neck.
"You took the money," he said, his voice low and flat. "You left me behind that burning warehouse and took the ticket from my wallet to come to this godforsaken town."
"You were dead," I whispered. It wasn't a defense; it was just the sentence I had repeated for months to convince myself, finally spilling out. "You weren't breathing, Jack. I swear to God, you weren't breathing."
Jack leaned closer over the table. His cold, damp breath struck my face.
"I wake up hard, darling. You should have known that."
He took something else out of his pocket. This time without rushing, he set it on the table with a metallic click, right beside the bloody stone.
An old iron key ring. Etched onto it was a small room number: 14.
"The whole town is waiting on the storm," Jack said, his eyes boring into mine. "The power will be out in half an hour. Unless you hand over the bag that key opens, neither of us walks out of this house. And trust me, Emily—this time, I won't leave even ashes behind."
Outside, the first crack of lightning tore through the dark. For a split second, a blinding white light washed over the room, erasing every shadow from Jack's face. There was no ghost standing before me; there was only a soaked man with nothing left to lose.