The awareness had become constant—a low hum beneath Ivy's skin that never quite faded. When she worked in the building, sanding the old floorboards until her shoulders ached and sawdust coated her arms like fine powder, she felt it. When she walked to the diner for lunch, the afternoon sun hot on her neck and the smell of honeysuckle thick in the air, she felt it. When she drove to Knoxville for supplies, her Honda rattling over mountain roads while classic country played low on the radio, she felt it.
That prickling awareness. The sense of eyes on her.
Sometimes she'd catch a glimpse of him—a shadow in the tree line where the forest pressed close to the road, a figure on the ridge above town silhouetted against the sky, a dark truck parked on a distant logging road with someone sitting
