Devotion After Dark

CHAPTER SEVEN

Curiosity was supposed to satisfy itself with answers and ours only seemed to grow.

The night refused to let Solenne sleep.

She had turned over beneath the thin blanket so many times that the sheets had become tangled around her legs, but sleep remained stubbornly out of reach. The old house was quiet around her. Somewhere beyond the bedroom walls, the wooden beams creaked softly whenever the night wind moved through them, and the ceiling fan turned with a slow, rhythmic hum. Usually, the familiar sounds would have been comforting. Tonight, they only seemed to make her more aware of how awake she was.

Her mind kept returning to the man next door. She disliked how easily his mysterious aura had settled into her thoughts. There was nothing particularly strange about thinking of a neighbor. At least, that was what Solenne told herself as she sat up and pushed her hair away from her face. Yet every time she closed her eyes, she remembered the quietness of his voice, the almost unnatural stillness in the way he stood, and the peculiar feeling she had whenever his dark eyes rested on her—as though he were trying to remember something he had forgotten long ago.

She eventually gave up on sleep.

Careful not to wake her grandmother, Solenne slipped out of her room and made her way downstairs. The wooden floor was cool beneath her bare feet, and the house smelled faintly of old furniture, dried sampaguita, and the rain that had fallen earlier in the evening. She opened the back door and stepped onto the veranda.

The night air immediately eased something inside her.

She sat on the edge of the veranda, pulling her knees toward herself as she looked across the garden. At first, she thought the small lights drifting between the trees were distant lamps. Then one floated closer, followed by another.

Fireflies.

There were dozens of them scattered across the darkness. They moved without any obvious pattern, appearing between the leaves before vanishing into the grass, their tiny flashes reflected against the wet ground. Solenne watched them for several minutes, strangely comforted by the sight. Back in the city, nights had always been crowded with headlights, television sounds, traffic, conversations from neighboring apartments. Here, darkness seemed to have its own presence.

She breathed slowly. For the first time that evening, her thoughts became quiet. Then she heard footsteps. Solenne turned. Someone stood beyond the garden fence.

She could make out the shape of a man beneath the old mango tree, but the weak light from the house did not reach him properly. He was dressed in dark clothes, his figure almost blending with the surrounding shadows.

She recognized him before she saw his face. Not because she knew him. Because she had heard that voice before.

“Can't sleep?” His voice was low and composed, carrying easily across the garden.

Solenne's fingers tightened around the edge of her nightclothes.

There was something strangely familiar about it. She had heard the same voice the other night, when she had briefly encountered the mysterious man near the road. She remembered the calm way he had spoken, the faintly old-fashioned quality of his words, and how he had sounded as though he never needed to raise his voice to make himself heard.

She studied him carefully. “You're the man from the other night.”

“I believe I am.” That answer made her smile despite herself.

“That sounds unnecessarily mysterious.”

“Perhaps.”

He stepped forward. The distance between them slowly disappeared until the light from the veranda finally reached him.

And for the first time, Solenne saw his face clearly.

She had expected someone older.

Instead, the stranger looked remarkably young, perhaps only a few years older than she was, just like what she thought. His features were refined without appearing delicate, his dark hair slightly disordered by the night breeze. His eyes were the first thing she noticed after that—an unusual shade that seemed darker whenever he stood away from the light and unexpectedly clear when he moved closer.

He did not look like someone who belonged in the middle of a quiet provincial road. There was something composed about him that made Solenne hesitate. It was not simply his appearance. It was the way he carried himself, as though he had learned long ago how to reveal very little while allowing people to believe they had seen everything.

"Are you going to keep staring at me?"

Solenne realized, with a small and embarrassing jolt, that she had been staring at him for far longer than she intended.

She had not meant to. At first, she had only been trying to place his face, searching through the scattered memories of the past few days for something familiar. Perhaps she had seen him somewhere in town. At the market. Near the old church. Passing by her grandmother's house. Yet every possibility dissolved as soon as she tried to hold onto it.

There was something about him that refused to settle into recognition.

He stood across from her with an almost unnerving stillness, his attention resting on her without appearing intrusive. He did not fidget or glance around as most people did when a conversation became uncomfortable. Instead, he waited, as though he had already noticed her uncertainty and had no intention of rescuing her from it.

Solenne blinked. “I wasn't staring.”

“You were.” His expression barely changed.

The simple certainty in his voice made warmth creep into her cheeks. She looked away, suddenly fascinated by anything that wasn't his face. “I was just trying to decide whether I've seen you before.”

For the first time, something changed in his expression. It was so subtle that she nearly missed it. His face remained composed, yet a faint tension passed through his features before disappearing. His eyes lingered on her for another moment, as though her question had reached somewhere she had not intended to touch.

“Have you?” The question sounded innocent. It did not feel innocent.

The twenty-year-old studied him again. There was no recognition she could confidently name, only an uncomfortable sense that the answer mattered to him more than it should. She tried to remember every stranger she had encountered since arriving in the province, but none of them fit. His face was unfamiliar, and yet the longer she looked at him, the stronger the strange impression became that she had encountered some part of him before.

The first thing Solenne noticed was that she could not remember his face.

Not properly.

She had seen him close enough to study the shape of his features, the faint crease that appeared between his brows whenever he considered something, the dark hair that fell slightly out of place whenever the wind moved through the garden. She remembered those details separately, yet whenever she tried to picture him as a whole, the image seemed to slip away before she could hold on to it.

What remained with unsettling clarity was his voice.

Low. Even. Unhurried.

It had been the first thing that made her recognize him.

Solenne watched him from across the narrow space between them, trying to reconcile the man standing in front of her with the voice she had heard several nights ago. The memory had returned the moment he spoke, so suddenly that she had almost forgotten what she had been about to say.

She studied him again. He did not appear particularly concerned by her scrutiny. If anything, he seemed accustomed to being watched. That, somehow, bothered her more.

“I don't know.” The answer left her before she had fully decided what she was trying to ask. His gaze remained on her.

There was no obvious reaction. No surprise, no nervous glance away, nothing that suggested she had caught him off guard. He simply waited, as though he had all the patience in the world and had no intention of rescuing her from the uncertainty she had created herself.

Solenne swallowed. A loose strand of hair had fallen across her cheek. She tucked it behind her ear, buying herself another moment while her thoughts rearranged themselves.

“I remember your voice,” she finally said.

Something shifted in his expression. It was so subtle that she might have imagined it—a brief tightening around his eyes, perhaps, or the smallest pause before his reply.

“I heard you the other night.”

Silence settled between them. Not the uncomfortable kind. This one felt deliberate.

“That is possible.”

Solenne blinked. “Possible?”

You may have heard me.” He tilted his head slightly.

She stared at him. That wasn't an answer. It was barely even a response. She had expected him to deny it, perhaps laugh at her for making an assumption, or simply tell her that she was mistaken. Instead, he had chosen a strange middle ground where everything remained technically uncertain.

“You sound exactly like him.”

“Do I?”

Solenne could feel something inside her crawling as she swallowed. “Yes.”

It took seconds for him to stare at her and suddenly release a chuckle, finding her tale a funny story. “Then perhaps you've heard someone who sounds like me.”

Solenne's eyebrows drew together. The explanation was delivered with such effortless calm that, for a brief moment, she nearly accepted it.

Nearly.

There was something deeply irritating about the way he spoke. He never seemed to lie outright. He simply arranged his words so carefully that they left her with nothing solid enough to challenge. Every question she threw at him somehow returned to her disguised as another possibility.

She folded her arms. “That's not how this works.” His expression shifted by the smallest degree. It was not quite amusement, though she caught something close to it in his eyes.

“How does it work?”

Solenne watched him carefully, waiting for the explanation. There was something almost irritating about how comfortable he looked, as though he had all the time in the world and no reason to give her a straight answer. She had expected resistance, perhaps even an argument, but his expression remained unreadable.

“I ask a question. You answer it.”

His response was so simple that she almost laughed. “That does sound reasonable.”

A faint shift touched his expression. It was not quite a smile, but there was enough amusement in his eyes to make her wonder if he found her willingness to play along entertaining.

“Good.” The word was delivered with effortless certainty.

Solenne studied him for another moment. Something about the exchange bothered her, although she could not immediately put her finger on what it was. She had agreed to his little arrangement, yet the more she considered it, the more she realized that she had never actually been told what she was agreeing to.

“But I don't remember agreeing to it.” Her brows drew together.

Her mouth fell open for a second after the words left her. He looked perfectly composed. Not embarrassed. Not caught off guard. Not even particularly concerned. That calmness made something inside her tighten.

Solenne narrowed her eyes. “You are doing that on purpose.”

His gaze remained on hers, steady and almost impossibly patient.

“Doing what?” She could hear the challenge in her own voice now, though she tried not to let her irritation show too plainly. He had an infuriating way of answering questions without actually answering them, as if every conversation between them were a game and he already knew the rules.

“Avoiding the question.”

For the first time, something resembling amusement flickered across his face. It was subtle enough that she might have missed it if she had not been watching him so closely.

“Perhaps.”

There it was again. That maddening calm.

Solenne stared at him, caught somewhere between disbelief and frustration. He did not seem troubled by her suspicion. If anything, he appeared almost pleased that she had noticed. She wanted to press him again. She wanted to demand an answer until that composed expression finally cracked.

Instead, she remained where she was, studying the stranger in front of her and wondering how someone could reveal so little while somehow making every unanswered question feel more important than the last.

She had met people who were secretive before. Usually, they were terrible at hiding it. They became defensive, changed the subject too quickly, looked everywhere except at the person questioning them. This man did none of those things. He seemed completely comfortable with silence, as though he could sit there all night and allow her curiosity to wear itself out.

Unfortunately for him, Solenne had never been particularly good at giving up.

Once a question settled into her mind, it became difficult to leave it alone. It lingered in the background of her thoughts, quietly demanding attention until she either found an answer or became too irritated by the uncertainty to think about anything else. The stranger had already given her enough reasons to be curious, and the fact that he seemed perfectly comfortable withholding information only made her determination stronger.

“Who are you?” She watched him carefully after asking. For a moment, he simply looked at her. Something changed in his expression. It was subtle enough that she might have missed it if she had not been paying such close attention. The guarded composure he had maintained throughout their conversation seemed to shift, as though her question had reached somewhere he had not expected her to touch. His eyes remained fixed on hers, but the ease that had accompanied his earlier replies disappeared.

He was not cold. He was not hostile, either. It was something harder to name. The look in his eyes reminded her of a locked door standing in the middle of an otherwise empty hallway. She could not see what was behind it, but she could tell there was something there. Something deliberately kept out of sight.

The sensation made her straighten slightly. She had the peculiar feeling that she had stepped closer to him without actually moving.

“You ask direct questions.” His voice remained composed, almost mildly amused, but Solenne noticed the carefulness behind it. He spoke as though every word had been considered before allowing it past his lips.

She held his gaze. “I've noticed you don't answer them.”

There was no accusation in her voice, although she was tempted to make one. Instead, she let the statement sit between them, watching to see whether it would finally make him uncomfortable enough to surrender something useful.

It did not.

“That is also true.”

The answer was so effortless that she almost laughed.

Almost.

Instead, she exhaled sharply through her nose and looked away for a brief moment, gathering what little patience remained with her. There was something maddening about the way he spoke. He never appeared flustered. He never stumbled over his words. Even when she cornered him with a question, he somehow managed to step around it without making it obvious that he had done so.

She looked back at him. “Your name.”

The words came more firmly this time. A pause followed. It was not long. Still, Solenne felt it.

His silence seemed heavier than the previous ones, as though this particular question had reached a boundary he had no intention of crossing. His eyes drifted away from hers for the first time, settling somewhere beyond her shoulder.

She waited.

He did not answer.

The quiet stretched just enough to make her wonder whether he was actually considering telling her.

Then his attention returned to her. There was the faintest hint of amusement in his expression now, but it did nothing to soften the mystery surrounding him. “You are very persistent.”

“That isn't an answer.” She gazed at him.

“I know.”

The sheer calmness of his reply left her momentarily speechless.

She narrowed her eyes. “You know, most people introduce themselves when they meet someone.”

“Most people ask less questions.”

“And most people don't behave like they have something to hide.”

For the first time, his expression faltered. Only slightly. But she saw it. A brief tightening around his eyes. A quiet stillness that seemed to pass through him before he composed himself again.

Solenne's curiosity sharpened.

There.

Whatever he was avoiding, she had touched it.

She leaned back slightly, studying him with renewed interest. He seemed perfectly ordinary if she looked at him casually, yet the longer she observed him, the more difficult he became to understand. There was an old-fashioned restraint in the way he carried himself, something that did not quite belong with the world around them.

Even his silence felt deliberate. She wondered how many questions he had avoided before meeting her. She wondered how long he had been practicing.

He seemed to realize that she was studying him because the corner of his mouth lifted faintly. “You are still trying to figure me out.”

“I am.”

“At least you're honest.”

“I could say the same about you.” His amusement disappeared.

For a heartbeat, they simply looked at one another.

Solenne could not explain why the moment suddenly felt different. Nothing had happened. Neither of them had moved closer. No voice had been raised. Yet something invisible seemed to settle between them, creating a distance that had not been there moments earlier. She had asked for his name. He had refused to give it. And somehow, that refusal told her more than an introduction might have. There was a story behind his silence.

She just did not know what it was yet.