GIDEON VALE
I can’t get her out of my mind. She’s turning my carefully built world upside down and it’s f*****g annoying. I’m slipping up. I don’t ever slip up. I couldn’t afford it.
The thought doesn’t come once. It loops. It presses. It lingers like something unfinished, something scratching at the inside of my skull, refusing to be ignored no matter how many times I try to file it away under irrelevant.
Matilda Monroe.
Even her name feels like disruption. Too sharp. Too alive. It doesn’t sit quietly the way everything else in my life does. It doesn’t obey structure. It doesn’t fit.
I stare at my phone longer than necessary, thumb hovering just above the screen, already knowing what I’m about to do before I actually do it. This is not hesitation. I don’t hesitate. This is calculatio
