HIS OBSESSION MY CAGE

CHAPTER TWO:SHADOWS OF THE PAST

Back to the present

Vanessa’s POV

The forest floor was eating me alive.

Marbles and pebbles and god knows what else glass, maybe sliced into my heels with every step. I didn't stop. Couldn't stop. The moon was the only thing keeping me alive, spilling silver through the canopy, showing me just enough of the path to keep me running.

Owls screamed overhead.

My foot caught something solid. I went down hard, palms shredding against stone, breath punched from my chest. I was up again before the pain caught up. Running harder. Limping now.

I didn't know why I was running.

My lungs had forgotten how to breathe. My memory was smoke. The only thing I knew, the only truth left in my body, was that stopping meant death.

A hand closed around my throat.

I was lifted feet dangling, scrabbling at empty air. The hairs on my arms stood like needles. My heart slammed against my ribs, trying to escape.

He spun me around.

The man smiled. His pupils caught the moonlight and glowed grey and ancient and absolutely wrong.

“You've been a very bad girl.”

His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. The forest carried it, wrapped it around me like chains.

---

My eyes opened.

I was drowning. No sweating. My clothes clung to me like a second skin, my hair plastered to my face. The ceiling above me was familiar: pale grey, acoustic tiles, a faint water stain in the corner.

Chris's office.

“Same dream?”

I turned my head. Chris stood in the doorway, coffee in one hand, the other shoved deep in his pocket. His therapist face was already on—calm, open, ready to hold whatever I needed to give him.

“You let me sleep through my session,” I said.

“You needed it.”

“Good luck scrubbing your couch. It's sweat-drenched.”

His mouth twitched. “I'll have it replaced. First—” He settled into the chair across from me, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “Any improvement? His face? His voice? Anything at all you can remember?”

I held his gaze. “Calm down, grandpa. I'm fine.”

I wasn't.

“And no.” I looked away. “Nothing new. Just the eyes.”

Grey. Luminous. Ancient.

Chris's face did that thing it always did when I said that—carefully blank, professionally optimistic, betraying nothing except the slight tightening at the corner of his jaw.

“We'll figure it out,” he said. “Real soon.”

“Don't beat yourself up over this.” I meant it. “I'll be fine. Hopefully.”

The word hung between us like bad smoke.

I cleared my throat. “Any news on Aria?

Chris's pause was a beat too long.

“Nothing yet.”

I'd known the answer before I asked. I asked anyway. Every time. Like pressing on a bruise to confirm it still hurts.

Five years.

Five years since she kissed my cheek and said back in an hour, save me some leftovers. Five years since I ate her portion too, just to feel closer to her. Five years of nothing,no calls, no letters, no body, no answers. Just absence. A negative space where my sister used to be.

My voice came out smaller than I wanted. “It's been five years, Chris.”

“I know.”

“Five years and nothing. No news. No calls. Nothing. Like she just—” My throat closed. I forced the words through. “—vanished off the earth.”

“Come here.”

He pulled me in. His arms were solid, familiar, the same arms that had caught me at my lowest and refused to let go. I pressed my face into his shoulder and breathed.

Grrrrr.

The phone shattered everything.

I fumbled for it, checked the screen unknown number. Probably spam. Probably a telemarketer. Probably.....

“Hello?”

A pause. Then: “Miss Vanessa Bane?”

The voice was calm. Professional. The voice of someone who delivered news for a living.

“This is she.”

“This is St. Jude's Medical. Your mother was admitted approximately twenty minutes ago. She's been placed in a medically induced coma. Her condition is critical. You need to come immediately.”

The phone slipped.

I watched it fall watched it hit the floor, bounce once, skitter under Chris's coffee table. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears. The room tilted.

“Nessa. Nessa. Nessa.”

Chris's face swam into view. His hands were on my shoulders, firm and grounding. I hadn't noticed him move.

“Can you hear me? Nessa, breathe. Breathe with me. In. Out. There you go. What happened?”

“Mum.” The word scraped my throat raw. “She's in a coma.”

His face went still. “Her condition relapsed?”

“Yes.” I didn't recognize my own voice. It belonged to someone smaller, someone who still believed the world could be gentle. “I have to go.”

“I'm driving.” He was already standing, grabbing his keys. “Come on.”

My legs moved. I don't know how.

---

The hospital smelled like bleach and endings.

I hit the reception desk at a run. “Lucia Bane. She was brought in she's in surgery. I'm her daughter.”

The receptionist adjusted her glasses. Her gaze traveled over me sweat-dried clothes, wild hair, eyes that probably looked exactly like what they were: a woman coming apart at the seams.

“Room six,” she said. “Third floor. Take the elevator on the left.”

I didn't thank her. I was already moving.

The elevator took years. Each floor number lit up in slow motion—2, 3, finally—and then I was running again, counting doors, six-six-six, there.

I stopped in the doorway.

My mother lay in the bed like a photograph of herself. Her face was the colour of old paper, her lips pale and cracked. The machines beside her breathed in her place, beeping in steady, indifferent rhythms.

I took her hand.

It was cold. Smaller than I remembered. The skin stretched thin over knuckles I'd held a thousand times—crossing streets, threading needles, wiping tears I'd sworn I was too old to cry.

“Mum.”

Nothing. The machines beeped.

I smoothed the hair back from her forehead. Grey now, more grey than brown. When had that happened? When was the last time I really looked at her?

“Visiting hours are over.” A nurse appeared in the doorway, clipboard in hand. “The patient needs rest.”

I didn't turn around. “Five minutes.”

“Sir, I need you to—”

“Five minutes.”

The nurse retreated. I heard her footsteps fade down the corridor.

I leaned closer, my forehead touching my mother's temple. Her skin was cool and dry. I closed my eyes.

“I'm going to save you.” My whisper barely existed. “I have a job now. It pays well. You're going to start chemo as soon as—as soon as the paperwork clears. You're going to get better. You're going to wake up and yell at me for not visiting enough and I'm going to yell back and then we're going to watch those terrible reality shows you love and pretend we don't both cry at the weddings.”

Her lips didn't move.

But the corner—just the corner—curved upward. The faintest ghost of a smile.

I pressed my mouth to her knuckles.

Then I stood up. Straightened my shirt. Walked out the door.

Chris waited in the hallway. He didn't speak. Just fell into step beside me.

---

“Miss Bane.”

I stopped. Turned.

The head nurse approached slowly, her footsteps heavy with reluctance. I knew that walk. I'd seen it a hundred times over the past five years, always preceding the same conversation.

“Madame.” My voice was steady now. Almost.

She stopped in front of me. Her eyes moved over my face, cataloguing the damage.

“How have you been, child?”

There it was. The pity. The softness that said I've seen your file, I know about your sister, I know about the mounting bills and the part-time jobs that never quite stretch far enough. The same look I'd learned to smile through.

“Holding up.” I offered the smile. It fit like borrowed shoes. “How are you?”

“I'm fine.” She hesitated. Her gaze dropped to her hands, then back to my face. “Nessa, about the bills…”

The air left my lungs.

“I know they're overdue. I know.” I couldn't let her finish. If she finished, it was real. “I'll pay them. I just need a little more time. Please. She needs the chemo. The doctor said without it—”

“I'm trying my best.” Her voice was gentle. That made it worse. “I've stretched the paperwork as far as I can. But Nessa, she doesn't have much time. If you can't pay, they'll discharge her. You understand.”

Discharge. A polite word for send her home to die.

“Just one more week.” I heard myself begging. I couldn't stop. “I'll get the money. I swear. Just—hold on. Please.”

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then her shoulders sagged.

“Hurry, Nessa.” She patted my arm once, dry and brief. “I still have other patients.”

She walked away.

I stood in the middle of the corridor. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. A gurney rattled past. Someone's visitor was crying in the waiting room.

My feet carried me outside. The automatic doors slid open and the evening air hit my face—cool, clean, carrying the distant smell of rain.

I didn't see the man until I collided with him.

Bump. Hard. Shoulder to chest. I staggered back, lost my balance, hit the pavement.

“Fuck.” A throaty groan. “Watch where you're going, you blind—”

I scrambled up. “Sorry. I wasn't—sorry.”

He was already dusting himself off, muttering under his breath. Then he looked up.

His eyes caught mine.

Stopped.

“You,” he said.

Something in his voice—not recognition, exactly. Something colder. Sharper.

I finally looked at him. Really looked.

Expensive suit. Worn at the edges, like he'd been in it since dawn. Dark hair, disheveled. A face that might have been handsome if not for the set of his jaw, the tension coiling through his shoulders.

And his eyes.

Grey.

Not glowing. Not ancient. Just—grey. The colour of storm clouds. The colour of the man who chased me through the dark every single night.

The colour of my nightmare.

He was staring at me like he knew me. Like he'd been looking for me and didn't expect to find me here, on the pavement outside a hospital, smelling of antiseptic and grief.

“Do I know you?” My voice came out rough.

His expression shifted. Something closed behind his eyes, a door slamming shut.

“No,” he said. Flat. Final. “You don't.”

He stepped around me and kept walking.

I watched him go. Watched his broad back disappear into the crowd outside the emergency entrance. Watched until I couldn't pick him out anymore.

Chris appeared at my elbow. “Who was that?”

“I don't know.” My palm pressed against my chest, where my heart was still trying to escape. “No one.”

A lie.

I didn't know his name. Didn't know his face. Didn't know why he'd looked at me like I was a ghost he'd spent years trying to bury.

But I knew those eyes.

I'd been running from them my entire life.