Dark Obsession

Chapter 2

The door buzzes once.

Then it swings open without permission.

“Rise and shine, you emotionally constipated goddess of death,” Riley declares, stepping into Eden’s loft like it’s a sitcom set. She’s wearing a gray Dungeons & Dragons hoodie that’s too big for her frame, one sock with cartoon dragons, one plain black ankle sock, and combat boots she clearly didn’t lace. A coffee carrier dangles from her left hand. The right clutches a half-eaten breakfast burrito wrapped in tinfoil and rebellion.

“I brought bribes,” she announces, waving the food like it’s holy. “Two shots of espresso, oat milk, no hope. Just like your personality.”

Eden doesn’t look up from her morning regimen.

“You’re lucky I don’t keep a loaded gun by the door.”

“You do,” Riley grins, dropping the drinks on the table. “That’s what makes it fun.”

She bites into her burrito, chews twice, then adds through a full mouth:

“You’re welcome for the emotional nourishment.”

Riley drops onto my couch like it owes her rent. The laptop’s open before her boots even hit the floor.

Lines of code blink across her screen like war drums. She's already three tabs into digital mischief when she looks up, deadpan, and asks, “So, remind me why I’m not allowed to hack your ex’s bank account again?”

“Because I like plausible deniability,” I mutter, tightening the strap on my tactical gloves.

She gasps. “Oh, look at her! Plausible. Deniability. Big words for someone whose idea of vulnerability is wiping a fingerprint off her coffee mug.”

“Are you done?”

“Never. I’m eternal. Like glitter. Or your unprocessed trauma.”

I glance at her screen. “Is that the Sterling estate floor plan?”

She smirks. “Nope.” Beat. “It’s the guest wing surveillance blind spots. Just a hobby.”

“Get out.”

She grins wider. “If you didn’t want me here, you’d have locked the firewall tighter.”

She’s not wrong.

Riley doesn’t say what she wants. She doesn’t have to.

Instead, she updates Eden’s firewall mid-sip, launches two background scripts, and drops a tracker onto a Sterling-linked dark account (all while humming a pop song Eden would hate).

“Your security certs expired last week,” Riley says. “You didn’t renew them. That’s either reckless... or a cry for help.”

Eden doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t answer.

Riley glances at her sideways. “You know I’m not gonna let you fade into spy-mode oblivion again, right?”

“Riley,”

“I’m serious,” she interrupts, quietly this time. “You don’t talk. You don’t ask. You just disappear. I’m not letting you do that. Not again.”

Eden finally meets her eyes.

Riley breaks the tension first by smiling, crooked and soft. “I’m the chaos that keeps you human, B.”

She turns back to the screen, pretending she doesn’t mean it.

But she does.

Every sarcastic byte of her.

Riley’s fingers dance across the keyboard like they’re late to a party she didn’t want to attend. Fast, fluid, chaotic: her typing has rhythm, but no breath. No pause.

“Tell me again why Sterling security runs on 1990s encryption?” she mutters, eyes flicking between screens. “This is like breaking into a hospital vending machine.”

Eden says nothing. Riley keeps going.

Her thumb taps the spacebar hard. Twice. A nervous tic.

She reaches for her phone to check a process log, but the lock screen flashes first.

MOM – 3 MISSED CALLS

She flips the phone over like it bit her.

“Spam,” she says too fast. “Or guilt. Same difference.”

Eden doesn’t look up.

Riley forces a chuckle. “Pretty sure my mother thinks I joined a cult. She’s not entirely wrong.”

Her fingers resume their rhythm.

But this time, they tremble just a little.

And she types faster to hide it.

“She slept with her stepbrother, Eden,” Riley says, tapping her keyboard like it’s her sidekick. “At a charity gala. For orphans.”

I raise an eyebrow but don’t bite.

“Come on, this is high-society gold. The PR team issued a statement about 'shared trauma’ and 'complex grief responses.’ Translation: they got caught in the coat closet and now they’re gaslighting the media.”

Still nothing from me.

She sighs dramatically. “God, you’re no fun.”

“I’m not here to be fun.”

“No kidding.” Her tone drops. “You ever gonna stop pretending you don’t care about the Sterling name?”

I meet her eyes.

“I don’t care,” I say evenly.

“Yeah,” she says, leaning back, folding her arms. “And I’m the Pope.”

Silence. Not hostile. But not gentle, either.

She turns back to her laptop, voice quieter.

“You’re not broken for wanting something that hurt you.”

I don’t respond.

But my grip tightens on my mug.

She talks too fast when she’s avoiding something. Uses volume like armor. Jokes like razors.

“Riley.”

She doesn’t look up.

“Stop typing.”

Click. Click. Click. One more line of code, then she freezes.

I don’t have to say anything else. I just stare.

She sighs, closes the laptop halfway, rests her chin on her fist. “Okay. Fine. I’m deflecting.”

I arch a brow.

“But you,” she adds, pointing at me with the pinky of her coffee cup, “you’re deflecting better. That’s why you’re the scary one.”

“I’m not scary.”

“Right. That’s why everyone you talk to flinches. Even your mirrors.”

I don’t smile. But she knows I’m not offended.

She shrugs. “Anyway, you can psychoanalyze me all you want, B. Just don’t expect me to stop showing up.”

“I never asked you to.”

“I know,” she says quietly. “That’s what makes it dangerous.”

And she sips her coffee like nothing just cracked.

But something did.

The kitchen’s quiet except for the soft drag of cloth over steel.

I wipe the blade slow. Precise. Like it’s a ritual. Like it’s the only thing in this apartment I can make clean.

Riley’s sitting on the counter, swinging her legs like she’s ten. Watching me, not blinking.

“You know,” she finally says, “you don’t have to clean those like you’re punishing them.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re gripping it like it owes you child support.”

I place the last knife down, edge away from me. Straight line. Clean line.

She hops off the counter. “You ever consider cleaning, like, a candle holder or a coffee mug? You know, stuff that doesn’t scream *unprocessed rage and trauma*?”

“Knives don’t break when you press too hard.”

She opens her mouth. Closes it.

That one hit too close.

She says nothing else.

And for once, the silence between us feels like truth.

Not avoidance.

Riley drops a protein bar onto the table like she’s solved world hunger. “This one’s got almonds. You like almonds, right? Or is that one of your ‘emotional risks’ now?”

I don’t answer. I’m busy lining my knives back into the drawer, one by one, handle facing out. Order is comfort. Predictable. Safe.

Riley, meanwhile, is chewing with her mouth open and typing on her phone with three fingers.

“I don’t get how you live like this,” she says, glancing around the immaculate loft. “Everything in its place. No room for chaos. No space for…”

“Collapse,” I finish for her.

She raises a brow. “I was gonna say personality, but sure. That works.”

We stare at each other. Two opposite systems. Same fuel: fear.

“You joke to forget,” I say quietly.

She shrugs. “And you don’t joke at all. Guess we’re both winning.”

She’s wrong.

Neither of us is winning. We’re just surviving prettier.

The eggs are cold by the time we eat.

We sit at opposite ends of the kitchen island. No music. No news. Just the occasional clink of fork against plate.

Riley talks less when she knows I’m somewhere else in my head.

“Need anything before I go?” she asks, wiping her hands with a napkin already torn down the middle.

“No.”

“You sure?”

I nod.

She starts toward the door, grabs her hoodie. Pauses.

“I left a USB on your desk,” she says. “Don’t open it unless you’re ready to bleed.”

Typical Riley. Bleeding, but wrapped in a punchline.

She opens the door. Doesn’t look back.

But I do.

I stare longer than I should at the spot where she stood, as if it might answer something I’m too tired to ask.

Across the hall, in the glass reflection, Riley sees me.

She doesn’t smile.

She just walks away.

And says nothing.

Riley’s already halfway out the door when she pauses, hand on the frame, one boot catching the edge like she’s unsure whether to stay or run.

“You look tired.”

I don’t answer.

She turns back slightly, eyes sharp now, playful edge gone.

“Or haunted.”

Still, I say nothing.

She tilts her head, lips twitching like she’s fighting off something heavier than sarcasm. “Either way… don’t pretend tonight’s just another night.”

The words hit like a door creaking open in a dark hallway—quiet, but threatening something deeper.

“I’m working.”

“You’re always working. That’s not what I said.”

I meet her gaze. “What are you trying to warn me about?”

“Nothing specific,” she says. Then adds softly, “Everything.”

She gives me a look that says she knows more than I’ve said. That she’s worried. That she sees it coming even if I don’t.

I don’t answer her. I just stand there. Arms crossed, spine tight, breath shallow.

Riley lingers in the doorway like she’s waiting for me to say something. Anything.

I don’t.

She huffs, but her voice is quieter now. Less smirk, more concern in disguise.

“You know,” she says, brushing a curl from her face, “I’m not saying you should get laid.”

I glance at her. Slightly. Warily.

She smiles—but not the usual cocky grin. This one is soft around the eyes. A truth she can’t code around.

“I’m saying,” she continues, “you should stop acting like love is a disease.”

I stare at her a second too long. Enough to feel it. Not long enough to show it.

“Careful,” I murmur, “you’re starting to sound like someone who believes in happy endings.”

She shrugs. “Maybe I do. For other people.”

Then she’s gone.

Leaving the words behind like a splinter I won’t pull out.

The door clicks shut behind her.

And then my phone buzzes.

I don’t rush to check it. I already know it’s not Riley. Not work. Not anything I want.

Just something I can’t ignore.

I lift the screen.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

One message.

“You looked right at me. Still forgot my face.”

My breath stills. Not fear. Not surprise.

Just recognition I’m not ready to admit.

I don’t respond. I don’t delete it, either.

Instead, I lower the phone and let my body lean against the wall. The plaster is cold. Familiar. Usually grounding.

Tonight, it feels different.

Like the foundation shifted while I wasn’t looking. Like the structure’s still here. But the weight it used to hold no longer fits me.

The message blinks again. Unread, but not unseen.

I stare at the screen.

Then at the reflection in the glass.

Whoever they are… they remember me.

And I’m starting to remember them.