BABY

THE PROBLEM

I knew something was wrong before I opened my eyes.

Nothing dramatic. No footsteps. No shadow at the door. Just that small animal feeling that the room had shifted while I wasn’t looking.

Rain tapped softly against the windows of Room Seven. The sheets were warm around my legs. My overnight bag sat on the chair exactly where I’d left it.

And exactly not how I’d left it.

I was out of bed before my brain had fully joined me.

The zipper, which I’d abandoned half-open, was neatly closed. My phone sat charging on the nightstand despite dying in my purse the night before. My cash, usually shoved loose into the side pocket, had been stacked flat and tucked beneath the strap. Lip gloss rested on top of the bag like a suggestion.

I stood there staring at it.

Then I laughed once, sharp and humorless.

“Well,” I said to the empty room. “That’s deeply f*****g weird.”

I checked the door first. Still locked. Chain in place. Windows latched from the inside. No muddy footprints, no broken catches, no cinematic clue left behind for my convenience. The room looked untouched except for the parts that mattered. My toothbrush had been set upright beside the sink.

The dress I’d tossed across a chair now hung neatly in the closet. Even my heels sat paired beneath the bed like they’d attended finishing school overnight. Whoever had done it hadn’t searched my things. They’d corrected them. That was somehow worse. I went cold in stages. Then hot all at once. Because there was only one person in this house arrogant enough to organize a stranger’s life and call it hospitality.

I threw on jeans, a black top, and the kind of expression that had ended weaker men. My hair went up in a quick knot because rage is practical that way. Then I snatched my bag, checked for missing cash, cards, knife, dignity. Everything was there. That annoyed me further.

I yanked the bedroom door open and marched into the hallway ready to commit several conversational felonies. The old house greeted me with silence and soft morning light spilling through the stairwell window, all innocence and polished wood. Liar. The smell of coffee drifted up from downstairs.

Of course it did. I followed it to the kitchen where Simon stood at the counter slicing strawberries with measured precision, as if no one in the building had just violated twelve different boundaries before breakfast.

He glanced up once.

“You found the charger,” he said.

I stopped so hard my heel clicked.

Then smiled.

The dangerous kind.

“I’m going to give you one chance,” I said pleasantly. “And because I’m feeling charitable, I’ll let you choose whether it begins with an apology or an explanation.”

Simon set the knife down, wiped his hands on a towel, and considered me with the calm of a man evaluating weather.

“Good morning, Connie.”

Wrong answer.

“You went into my room.”

“I entered your room.”

“Bold distinction.”

“Accurate ones often sound bold.”

I took two slow steps toward him.

“You touched my things.”

“I improved their arrangement.”

“You rearranged my bag like a serial killer with customer service training.”

That almost smile appeared again, brief and irritating.

“Your zipper was snagged.”

“My zipper was mine.”

He nodded once, accepting the point as if we were debating etiquette instead of crimes.

“Fair.”

“Fair?” I repeated. “You break into my room, handle my belongings, and your response is fair?”

“The door was unlocked.”

“It was locked.”

“It was lockable.”

I stared at him.

“That sentence should get you arrested on grammar alone.”

Simon poured coffee into a mug and slid it toward me like we were still participating in civilization.

“You left your phone dying,” he said. “Your cash visible. Shoes in the walkway. Dress wrinkling. It offended me.”

“You being offended by my packing style is not a legal defense.”

“No,” he agreed. “It’s a personality trait.”

I hated that I almost laughed.

Hated it more when I realized he was watching for exactly that.

“You’re not funny,” I said.

“You’re less angry than when you walked in.”

I looked down.

My hand had reached for the coffee without asking permission.

I let go of the mug immediately, as if touching anything he offered could be entered into evidence.

“That means nothing.”

“It means you trust heat before people.”

“That sounds like nonsense.”

“It sounds observed.”

I folded my arms. “Do you do this to make women feel seen or to avoid answering questions?”

“Yes.”

“Pick one.”

“I prefer efficiency.”

Annoying man.

I looked around the kitchen for signs of damage, guilt, or hidden chambers. All I found were polished counters, fresh fruit, and a man who somehow made domestic competence feel like provocation.

“You don’t get to go into my room again,” I said.

“Then lock the door.”

“I did.”

He tilted his head slightly.

“Better next time.”

For a second I genuinely considered throwing the coffee at him.

Not drinking it. Throwing it.

Instead, I took the mug and sipped out of spite.

Excellent coffee. Of course.

“You’re insufferable,” I said.

“You’re still here.”

“I’m deciding whether robbery can happen twice in one weekend.”

“You’d need better timing.”

“I’m standing in your kitchen.”

“You announced yourself on the stairs.”

I hated that too.

He turned back to the counter and resumed slicing fruit, giving me the profile of a man entirely unbothered by the fact that he had just admitted to entering my room like a well-dressed goblin.

“Why do it?” I asked finally.

He didn’t answer at first.

Then:

“You looked like someone trying to leave badly.”

I frowned.

“And?”

“I dislike preventable messes.”

I stopped arguing because some men treated conversation like oxygen and Simon looked annoyingly well-fed already. I took the coffee, grabbed my bag, and walked out of the kitchen without another word. Let him keep his smug little island of fruit and cookware. The foyer felt colder than before. Maybe because now I knew the locks in this house were decorative.

At the front door, I paused long enough to test it twice. Solid. Deadbolt engaged. Functional when it wanted to be. Interesting. My car keys were exactly where I’d left them in my bag. The engine started on the first turn. Gravel spit beneath the tires as I pulled away from Blackthorn harder than necessary, the inn shrinking in my rearview mirror like a lie regaining confidence once distance helped.Halfway down the road, I reached for my phone on instinct.

Fully charged.

That alone shouldn’t have bothered me. I had plugged it in plenty of times half-asleep before and forgotten by morning. But the charging cable had been wrapped neatly around itself in the side pocket of my bag. I never wrapped cords. I shoved it back in the cupholder and told myself to relax. At the next light, I picked it up again. Brightness lowered to the exact setting I preferred at night. My stomach tightened. Maybe I’d done that too. Maybe.

By the time I reached town, I was angry at him for touching my things and angrier at myself for not knowing for certain that he had.

I parked outside a small pharmacy wedged between a laundromat and a diner that looked like it served heartbreak with syrup. Rain misted lightly over the windshield, turning the street soft around the edges.

Inside, fluorescent lights hummed with the confidence of places that sold batteries, aspirin, and regrets. I grabbed a basket and wandered aisles I didn’t need, mostly because movement felt steadier than thought.

Travel toothpaste. Gum. A charger I absolutely did not require. Lip balm. Shampoo in a bottle small enough to insult hair. Normal things. That helped.

By the time I reached the register, I’d almost convinced myself I was being dramatic. Simon was invasive, arrogant, and weirdly competent. That did not automatically make him dangerous. Some men trespassed because they confused helpfulness with entitlement. Plenty of people came pre-installed with boundary issues.

Then I opened my wallet. My bills were sorted by denomination. I never did that. I stood there staring at the money long enough for the cashier to ask if I was paying in cash or emotionally. “Card,” I said, because dignity was already unstable.

I slid the bills back into the wallet carefully, as if touching them too fast might confirm something I wasn’t ready to name. Tens together. Twenties behind them. Receipts tucked flat instead of crumpled. Coins zipped into the side pouch. Order where I remembered chaos.

Maybe I’d organized it myself in some late-night burst of competence. Maybe stress had made me efficient in my sleep. Maybe I was one bad week away from narrating weather patterns. I paid, took my bag, and stepped back into the damp gray morning.

Across the street, a woman in yoga pants wrestled a toddler into a car seat while talking on speakerphone. A delivery driver smoked beneath an awning. Someone argued cheerfully with a parking meter. The world looked insultingly normal. I stood under the pharmacy awning with rain ticking off the edge above me and tried to decide which possibility bothered me more: That Simon had touched my life again. Or that I couldn’t prove he had at all. I should have left town then.

Any woman with respectable instincts would have pointed the car toward the highway, blocked the inn’s number if I’d had it, and let Simon reorganize someone else’s luggage. Instead, I bought a coffee I didn’t need and stood outside watching rain gather in the gutter like I was waiting for wisdom to float by. It never did. What arrived instead was curiosity, dressed badly and impossible to ignore.

If he had touched my things, why so carefully? Why charge the phone, sort the money, hang the dress, pair the shoes? Theft I understood. Cruelty I understood. Control, unfortunately, I understood intimately. But this strange domestic trespassing felt different. Not kindness. Not exactly menace. Something more intimate and more irritating than either.

I went back to the car, sat behind the wheel, and stared at my reflection in the rearview mirror. “You are not going back there,” I told myself. Then I started the engine and turned toward Blackthorn anyway.