Mine To Watch

Chapter One: The Man Across The Hall

"Say it again slower."

Delphine's voice was too calm, which was how Nora knew she was panicking. "Someone posted a picture of you, sleeping."

"Through my window, it was two nights ago." Nora paced the length of her living room, phone brough to her ear, curtains closed shut for the first time in months.

"Delphine, I didn't even notice they weren't fully closed."

"That's it. We're calling the police."

"And telling them what? That someone commented a photo on i********:?" Nora laughed, and it came out wrong, and pathetic.

"They'll tell me to report the account. I've reported two already this month, and both got taken down. Both came back."

Silence on the line, because they both knew it was true.

"Then you're moving," Delphine said finally. "Tonight if you have to."

"I can't just—"

"Nora." Delphine's voice dropped, sharpened. "Someone stood outside your window, in the dark. Long enough to get a clean shot of you asleep. You are not staying there another night so I can say I told you so at your funeral."

Nora didn't have the energy left to argue.

The new building smelled like fresh paint and had that cold feel.

The rent was lower than it should've been, which made things even more suspicious.

The application had gone through in a day.

She told herself that was luck, not a red flag, and hauled the second box up three flights before her arms gave out.

"Need a hand with that?"

She turned so fast she nearly dropped it.

He was leaning in the doorway across the hall like he'd been carved to fit there — dark hair, dark eyes, dressed for weather that wasn't happening.

Watching her with an expression that was polite and not quite polite at the same time, like he already knew the punchline to a joke she hadn't told yet.

"I'm fine," she said. "But thanks."

"Julian." He held out a hand, unbothered that both of hers were full of cardboard. "Right across the hall. Figured I'd introduce myself before you decided I was the world's worst neighbor."

"Nora." She shifted the box to one arm just to shake his hand. His grip was warm, steady, entirely too calm for two strangers in a hallway.

"Nora Ashby." He said the full name slow, testing it, like he was checking it against something. "I think I've seen your page. My cousin follows a lot of that lifestyle content."

"Small world."

"Smaller than you'd think." He smiled — easy, natural, the kind of smile that should have meant nothing.

"Let me know if you need anything settling in. I'm around most nights."

He was gone before she could answer, door clicking shut, and Nora stood there a beat too long, box digging into her hip, telling herself the flip in her stomach was moving-day nerves and absolutely nothing else.

It took two more trips up from the car before she noticed the paper bag sitting outside her door that hadn't been there ten minutes ago.

She crouched, opened it. Coffee, her favourite, her exact brand — the specific one she ordered every single morning, the one she had never, not once, mentioned online.

And there was a note underneath, four words in careful handwriting.

Welcome to the building.

"Okay," she said out loud, to no one. "That's a little much for day one."

But she carried it inside anyway.

She didn't touch the coffee for two days, and on the third night, sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by half-unpacked boxes, headache rampanging through her skull, she finally zipped the bag open and made a cup.

It was, annoyingly, perfect.

The knock came the next morning while she was on her hands and knees under the kitchen sink, wrench in hand, hair falling out of its bun, water pooling on the tile no matter what she tightened.

"You look like you're losing that fight," Julian said when she opened the door.

"I'm not losing. I'm reassessing my strategy."

"Mind if I take a look? I'm decent with this stuff."

She should have said no. She'd met him exactly once, in a hallway, three days ago. Letting a stranger into her apartment went against every single thing Delphine had drilled into her since this all started.

"Fine," she said instead. "But I'm watching you the whole time."

"Wouldn't expect anything less."

He found the loose fitting in under ninety seconds, like he'd known exactly what he was walking into before she'd described it.

"You carry a wrench around with you normally?" she asked, leaning against the counter.

"Old habit, had to do with security consulting. You learn to expect things breaking before they do." He didn't look up. "There, that should hold."

"Let me pay you for your time."

"Coffee's fine."

He nodded at the bag on her counter, half empty now. "See you're using it."

"It's good coffee."

"I have decent taste."

Something about the way he said it made her stomach do a slow, unwelcome turn, and she busied her hands wiping down a counter that was already clean.

Three weeks in, he was a fixture she couldn't name as comforting or wrong — sometimes both in the same hour. He met her at the train exit twice, like he'd just happened to be passing.

Fixed the flickering hallway light without being asked. Remembered a deadline she'd mentioned once and brought it up days later, which should have felt sweet and instead left her faintly, uselessly unsettled — like she was being recorded instead of listened to.

Rain came down hard on the night she finally let him past the doorway instead of saying goodnight in the hall.

He shrugged off his jacket, hung it over her chair like he already knew where things went, and when she turned from the kitchen with two mugs, he was closer than she'd braced for.

"Careful." His hand caught her wrist, lingered a beat too long.

"You're doing that thing again."

"What thing."

"Standing too close and pretending you don't notice."

Something shifted behind his eyes — the calm slipping, just slightly, into something hungrier. "I notice everything about you," he said quietly. "I just don't always say it out loud."

The coffee went cold on the counter.

He left ten minutes later, and Nora locked the door behind him, pulse still loud in her ears — until she saw it.

His jacket, it was still hanging over her chair.

She almost let it go.

Then she saw the corner of a folded photograph poking from the inside pocket, an edge of a face she recognized, and her stomach dropped before her hand even finished pulling it free.

It was her, asleep.

In her old apartment.

The exact photo from the stalker account — printed, folded, carried in the coat of the man who'd been somewhat an angel.