The car idled at the roadside, engine murmuring like a distant animal, patient and watchful. Sharon stared out through the windshield, though she wasn't really seeing the road ahead—only fragments of the past surfacing uninvited, stirred awake by his words.
I've watched you.
The sentence echoed, heavy and intimate all at once.
She wrapped her arms around herself, as if that might keep the world from tipping further off balance. "That doesn't make this okay," she said at last, her voice steadier than she felt. "Knowing someone's life without their permission… that's not protection."
Akon leaned back slightly, giving her space at last. The intensity didn't leave his eyes, but something else slipped in beside it—restraint. Regret, perhaps. "I know," he said. "And if you tell me to take you home right now, I will."
The offer surprised her more than anything else. She turned toward him, searching his face for mockery or manipulation, but found neither. He was still. Waiting.
The silence stretched. Outside, a bus rumbled past, its windows glowing with other people's lives—laughing, arguing, living without this strange gravity pulling at them.
"Why now?" she asked quietly. "If you've known me all this time… why today?"
Akon's gaze drifted to the road ahead. "Because you're standing alone now." He paused, choosing his words with care. "And because something is coming."
Her fingers tightened in her lap. "Coming?"
"Yes." He met her eyes again. "The kind of change that doesn't ask permission. I couldn't stay invisible anymore."
A chill traced her spine, though she couldn't tell whether it came from fear or recognition. "You speak like you know the future."
"I know patterns," he replied. "And I know you."
She let out a soft, humorless laugh. "You know stories about me. Moments you've stolen from a distance. That's not the same."
"No," he agreed. "It isn't." His voice softened. "That's why I stopped tonight. That's why I'm sitting here instead of watching from the shadows."
For a moment, neither of them moved. The air between them felt charged, as if the slightest motion might shatter something fragile and newly formed.
Finally, Sharon reached for the door handle—but didn't open it. "Take me to work," she said. "After that… we'll see."
Akon nodded once, as though he'd expected nothing more. He eased the car back onto the road, the city swallowing them again with its glow and motion.
As the café came into view, Sharon felt a strange ache settle beneath her ribs—not dread, not hope, but the unsettling awareness that a door had opened somewhere deep inside her. One she hadn't known existed until now.
When the car stopped, she hesitated before stepping out. "Akon," she said, her hand resting on the door.
"Yes?"
"If you really are what you say you are," she murmured, "then understand this—I won't belong to anyone who doesn't give me the truth."
His smile this time was quiet, reverent. "Then I'll spend as long as it takes earning the right to tell it."
She stepped out into the night, the café lights flickering on as if welcoming her back into something familiar. The car drove away moments later, leaving only the hush of evening behind.
But even as she tied her apron and pushed through the café doors, Sharon knew one thing with unsettling clarity:
The quiet she'd known before was gone.
And whatever waited ahead—whatever shadows were moving toward her—Akon was now woven into its shape, impossible to separate from the path unfolding beneath her feet.