Obsessed

Chapter Three – The Invitation

( Selena pov )

Morning arrived slowly, as if it, too, were uncertain whether it should show up at all. The light filtering through my curtains was pale and diffused, the kind that softened edges and blurred intentions. For a moment, I lay still, listening to the distant honk of traffic, the faint hum of electricity in the walls, the rhythm of my own breathing. The world sounded normal. Too normal. As though nothing had shifted the night before.

I told myself that meant nothing had.

I rolled onto my side and stared at the wall, letting the ceiling fan’s shadow sweep lazily over the paint. Whatever had happened, whatever that strange pull had been, that unsettling awareness would fade. Encounters did. Impressions did. People like him passed through lives like storms and moved on to destroy somewhere else.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

But when I finally stood and caught my reflection in the mirror, the lie cracked. There was something in my eyes I didn’t recognize. Not fear. Not excitement. Something quieter. A softness around the edges of my gaze, as though a question had taken root there overnight and refused to leave. I touched the glass, half-expecting the reflection to blink back at me differently.

“Get it together,” I murmured.

The city outside my window didn’t care about my internal unraveling. New York moved the way it always did loud, impatient, alive. Cars weaved through traffic like they were arguing with each other. Vendors shouted. Somewhere nearby, a radio blared a song I didn’t recognize but somehow already knew the rhythm of. I forced myself into routine. Routine was grounding. Routine didn’t allow room for shadows.

Coffee first. Strong. Slightly too bitter. The smell of cinnamon from the cheap candle I’d lit the night before still lingered in the air, mingling with the clean scent of rain drifting in through the cracked window. I opened my laptop, scrolling through unread emails, client briefs, deadlines I couldn’t afford to miss. Work has always been my anchor. The one place my mind behaved.

Yet even as I edited color palettes and adjusted typography for a branding project, my focus fractured. My thoughts kept drifting back to the quiet weight of a gaze, the way the air had shifted around him, the unsettling certainty that he’d seen me in a way no one ever had. I turned on the fan, even though the room wasn’t hot. Silence was worse than noise. Silence gave my thoughts too much space to stretch. By noon, my concentration was hanging by a thread.

That was when my phone buzzed. The vibration was sharp, cutting cleanly through my spiraling thoughts. I glanced down, expecting a client reminder or a message from Laila asking if I’d eaten yet. Instead, an unfamiliar logo glowed on the screen.

Valen Group International.

I frowned.

At first, I assumed it was spam. The kind that slipped past filters dressed up in corporate language. My thumb hovered over delete. But something stopped me. The message was too clean. Too precise. There were no awkward greetings. No exclamation marks. No mistakes.

I opened it.

Dear Miss Ward,

We are impressed by your creative portfolio and would like to invite you for an interview for a Senior Design Consultant position at Valen Group International. Your skills align closely with a confidential project we are currently developing.

Please find the attached invitation for tomorrow, 6:00 p.m., at our Lagos branch office.

HR Department, Valen Group International

My breath caught.

Senior.

Confidential.

Tomorrow.

I read it again. Slower this time. Each word felt deliberate, placed with intention. I hadn’t applied to Valen Group. In fact, I’d barely heard of them. They weren’t the kind of company freelancers like me casually stumbled into. And yet here was an invitation. Not a job listing. Not a call for applications.

An invitation.

A prickle ran up my spine.

I refreshed the email. Checked the sender. The domain was legitimate. No misspellings. No red flags. I opened the attachment with an embossed letterhead, sleek and minimal, my name typed neatly at the top. My résumé wasn’t public. My contact information wasn’t listed anywhere obvious. How had they found me? The font, the watermark, the formatting it all screamed authenticity. Too much authenticity.

My chest tightened as unease settled in.

Instinct whispered don’t go. The same instinct that had kept me safe in rooms where I didn’t belong. The one that knew when curiosity crossed into danger. But another part of me, the reckless, questioning part I rarely listened to, leaned closer.

Why you?

I searched the company online, fingers moving faster than my thoughts. Their website loaded smoothly, polished and expensive. International reach. Multiple industries. Awards stacked like trophies. The kind of company people built careers and lives around. Yet something felt… incomplete. There were no staff photos. No leadership profiles. No smiling executives talking about company culture. Just clean pages, sharp copy, and a single tagline dominating the homepage:

Precision. Power. Legacy.

The word precision lodged itself somewhere deep in my stomach. I leaned back in my chair, eyes tracing the slow spin of the ceiling fan above me. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe someone referred to me without telling me. Maybe

A knock interrupted my thoughts.

I jumped.

Laila’s familiar grin appeared at my half-open door, her head tilted in curiosity. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” I forced a laugh that felt foreign on my tongue. “Just… a weird job email.” “Ooo,” she teased, stepping inside. “Big company? Fancy title?” “Something like that.” She leaned against the counter. “About time the universe paid you back for all those unpaid internships and sleepless nights.”

I smiled because that’s what I was supposed to do. But the feeling didn’t reach my eyes. When she left, the apartment felt quieter than before. Heavier. I stared at the email again, my cursor blinking patiently over the reply button. Waiting. Watching.

Eventually, I printed the invitation.

The paper felt heavier than it should have, as though it carried more than ink. I folded it carefully and slid it into my journal, tucking it between pages filled with sketches, half-written ideas, and thoughts I’d never shown anyone. Outside, rain began to fall soft at first, then steadier. The kind of rain that didn’t ask permission.

I watched it streak down the window, my reflection blurring with the city beyond. And though I didn’t want to admit it, though I fought the realization with every rational thought I had, a single truth pulsed quietly at the back of my mind.

This wasn’t coincidence.

This wasn’t opportunity.

This felt like him.