Without Your Persmission

Chapter 8: The Neighbor

The moment he was gone, I could breathe again.

But it wasn't relief.

It was withdrawal.

Like he'd taken the oxygen with him and left me gasping for something heavier than air — for weight, for heat, for the aftermath of touch I never even received.

I stared down at the silver card in my hand. Cool. Minimal. Intentional.

His name. A number. Nothing else.

No company branding. No curated persona. No layers to hide behind.

Just him.

Like he wanted to make it impossible for me to pretend that this — whatever this was — hadn't happened.

Like he wanted to leave fingerprints without ever touching me.

I felt the shape of him everywhere. A shadow in my bones. The pulse he left behind hadn't steadied. It had multiplied.

I tucked the card deep into the pocket of my coat, like it would burn a hole through my palm if I didn't.

"Okay, what the hell was that?"

Gretta's voice cut through the thrum of the club, low and pointed — too close now, like she'd been watching.

I turned slowly, swallowing down the tremor behind my ribs. She looked half-impressed, half-horrified.

"You saw?" I asked, like it wasn't obvious.

She lifted a brow. "I saw Alistair Craven — the Alistair Craven — walk up to you like he'd been looking for you all his life."

I couldn't help it. I flinched.

"Relax," she added, hands raised in mock surrender. "I'm not accusing. But please tell me that was just a coincidence."

I paused. Every word I could offer would be a lie.

But I softened my gaze, tried to mask the interior wreckage with a version of myself she wouldn't question.

"It was," I said. "Coincidence."

Gretta studied me for a long moment. Her eyes, always too sharp when I least wanted them to be, skimmed over my expression like she could peel it apart with sheer will.

"He approached you," she said finally. "That much is clear."

"I didn't seek him out."

"And you talked."

"I did."

"And?" she asked.

I hesitated. "It was... fine."

"Fine," she repeated flatly. "You look like someone just kissed you and slapped you in the same breath."

That made me exhale, something between a breath and a laugh. "That's a dramatic interpretation."

Gretta crossed her arms, half-leaning against the wall. The lights from the dance floor cast erratic patterns across her cheekbones.

"I still don't like him," she said.

"You don't know him."

"I don't have to. I trust patterns. Intuition."

"You're saying you're psychic now?"

"I'm saying," she replied, "that some men walk into a room and make it colder. And some walk in and make it too hot. Neither's safe."

"And which one is he?"

"He's both," she said without hesitation. "Which makes him worse."

I didn't answer. I couldn't. The silver card in my pocket felt like a secret shard of mirror — cutting and shining and mine.

Gretta sighed, then softened.

"I'm not trying to rain on your parade, Rory," she said. "It just freaks me out that he's showing up now. When you've already got someone watching you."

Her voice dropped lower with that last part. It sobered me instantly.

"I know," I said.

"I believe you when you say you didn't initiate this, okay? I do." She stepped closer. "But just because he's the one who came to you doesn't mean it's safe to lean in."

I looked down.

"Besides," she added gently, "you're still being watched."

That dragged my gaze back up.

"Has there been anything else?" she asked. "Messages? Doors left unlocked?"

"No," I lied.

Not since the text. Not since the unlocked laptop.

Not since the creeping suspicion that the person watching me had changed form — no longer a ghost in the walls, but a mirror I couldn't stop looking into.

Gretta sighed again, brushing her hair from her face.

"Look," she said, voice dropping again. "Maybe this whole Alistair thing really is just some... coincidence. Maybe it's just fate being dramatic. But for my peace of mind, will you just—" she paused, visibly struggling with her phrasing, "—ease off for a while?"

I blinked. "Ease off?"

"Yeah. Like, maybe don't spiral into this one?"

I felt something coil, defensive and territorial, rise in my throat.

But I saw the look in her eyes — not anger, not judgment. Fear.

She was scared for me.

And that still meant something.

So I nodded. "Okay."

"Okay?" she repeated, suspicious.

"I mean it."

"You never mean it."

"I mean it this time."

She narrowed her eyes. "Say it. Out loud. Like an oath."

I laughed, but it was too tight. "Fine. I promise I won't spiral."

"About him," she clarified.

"About Alistair Craven," I said. "I won't spiral."

She stared at me another beat before nodding. "Good."

"Good," I echoed, trying not to feel the lie pulse in my chest like a second heartbeat.

It wasn't even twenty steps out the club before I felt for the card again in my pocket.

It was still there.

It would always be there now.

I had promised her I'd let go.

The words still tasted like varnish—sweet on the surface, toxic beneath. A vow built from convenience, not conviction. I told Gretta I would stop spiraling over Alistair Craven, and for twenty-six hours, I tried to believe it.

But a promise made in desperation is a brittle thing. And obsession—real obsession—doesn't dissolve with daylight or logic. It calcifies. Finds new, quieter ways to feed itself.

I woke that morning with the ghost of him in my veins, not as a fantasy but as evidence—as if the air still carried the sound of his voice. The sharp edges of our conversation at the club cut deeper in the light. The way he had said my name, the way he had looked at me like a secret he had long since guessed.

And still—I behaved.

For two days, I did nothing. I ignored the urge to run the walk he often took on Tuesdays. I stayed away from the café with the honey-thyme cortado. I didn't check the private account.

Instead, I cleaned. Scrubbed corners already clean. Moved my canvases. Reread emails. Said nothing.

Gretta noticed, of course.

"You've either joined a cult or you're dissociating," she said on the third morning, sipping her lukewarm oat milk latte like it held the answer. "You haven't spoken to your paint in three days. That's unnatural for you."

"I'm fine," I replied, too quickly.

"Mmm. That's what serial killers say right before they start composting the neighbors."

She was joking. Probably. But there was a new tightness behind her eyes, an awareness she hadn't voiced yet.

"I'm just tired."

Gretta arched a brow. "Tired from what? Not stalking Alistair Craven?"

I stilled. The comment came too easy, too sharp.

She caught it instantly. "Sorry. That was—"

"No, it's okay," I said, and I meant it. I couldn't blame her for still circling the wound I'd tried so hard to dress in denial. "I told you I'd stop. And I have."

But even I didn't believe myself.

⸻

That evening, I left the apartment just to breathe air that hadn't been pressed between the walls for days.

I didn't go anywhere near the parts of town he frequented. Instead, I walked down to the edge of the business district, where the buildings got older and the sidewalks cracked under their own weight. Where no one looked twice at a girl in all black with a sketchbook under her arm.

I wasn't drawing. I was pretending to.

A half-hour passed. Maybe more. And I started to think this was what peace might feel like—not the absence of obsession, but the ability to carry it in silence.

Until I got home.

The door wasn't locked.

Gretta wasn't home. I knew that for a fact—she was out at her volunteer dance thing she did on Thursdays, the one I always teased her about. Her shoes were gone. Her keys weren't on the hook.

And yet—when I stepped inside, the lamp in the hallway was on.

I hadn't left it that way. I never left it that way.

It was the smallest detail. An inch of thread in the lining of the world. But I pulled on it.

And something inside me tore.

I walked slowly, soundless. Through the hall, into the living room.

Nothing disturbed. Not visibly.

But there—on the side table—sat my sketchbook. Open. Not to the last page I'd drawn, but to a page near the center. A study I'd done weeks ago of a hand—his hand. I hadn't even remembered leaving it in there.

My fingers trembled as I closed it, like the air around me had shifted in temperature but not direction. Like someone had been here, known where to look, known what not to touch—except that.

And then—something worse.

My phone buzzed once. No name. No preview. Just the screen lighting up like a breath in the dark.

When I unlocked it, there was no new message. Nothing in the inbox. Nothing in the call log.

But the screen was warm. Too warm. Like it had been used. Recently.

I stared at it for a long time. Half of me wanted to believe it was just a glitch. A software hiccup. A non-event.

But my instincts—those tight, snarling things I usually tried to paint into submission—they whispered something colder.

You're not alone in this.

Someone's still watching.

And they're closer than you think.

⸻

Gretta came home hours later, singing under her breath until she saw my face.

"What happened?"

I told her.

Not everything. Not about the sketchbook. Not about the phone. But about the light. The lock. The feeling.

She paled immediately.

"I knew it," she said. "I knew it wasn't over."

I didn't reply. I couldn't. My skin didn't feel like mine. I hadn't realized how much I'd relied on pretending the silence meant safety.

Gretta locked every window. Double-checked every room. Slept with a kitchen knife under her pillow.

And in the morning, when I finally turned on my laptop—just to feel normal, just to drown in something I could control—there was a new email.

No subject. No sender.

Just a blank body and an attachment: a cropped photo of my building.

Taken from across the street. In daylight.

I shut the screen.

And then came the knock on the door.

Gretta opened it. I hovered just behind the wall, not because I was hiding, but because something tightened in me the moment I heard the voice.

"Hi... sorry to just show up like this. I'm new in the building. I think we've crossed paths before?"

Gretta murmured something polite, guarded. The stranger—the girl—continued.

"My name's Alicia."

I didn't breathe. I didn't move.

Because I had seen her before. Not here. Not once. But several times—hovering at the periphery of my focus when I was tracking him. At the café. Outside the gym. A reflection in a window. A silhouette by a parked car. Always near Alistair. But never touching. Never speaking.

Until now.

And suddenly, she was here—on my doorstep, using her name, offering a smile I didn't trust.

A smile that felt like a door quietly closing.