He Haunts Me at Midnight

Chapter 6 — Fear Tastes Like Desire

I didn’t remember walking back to the house.

One moment there were sirens and shouting and blood on the street that wasn’t there a second before—and the next, I was standing in my room, door locked, hands shaking so badly I couldn’t unclench them.

Sam was dead.

The word echoed in my skull, hollow and unreal.

I slid down the door, my breath coming apart in shallow, broken pulls. The house felt different now. Heavier. As if it knew something irreversible had happened.

“You promised,” I whispered.

The temperature dropped instantly.

He appeared slowly this time, shadows drawing together in front of me like ink bleeding through water. His form was clearer than ever—solid enough that my body reacted before my mind could catch up.

Cold brushed my knees.

“You broke the rule,” he said calmly.

I laughed, sharp and hysterical. “You murdered him.”

“No,” he replied. “I stopped him from touching what wasn’t his.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make!”

I stood abruptly, anger burning through the terror. “You don’t get to decide who lives and dies for me!”

His eyes darkened.

“I do,” he said quietly, “when your life is the price.”

The walls groaned in response to his voice, the house settling deeper around us like a cage. I should have been screaming. I should have been running.

Instead, I stepped closer.

“Do you know what you did to me?” I demanded. “I’ll never forget that sound. I’ll see it every time I close my eyes.”

His expression shifted—not softer, but sharper. Focused.

“Good,” he said. “Fear keeps you alive.”

I shoved his chest.

My hand passed straight through him.

The cold hit me like a shock, racing up my arm and straight into my chest. I gasped, stumbling back—and he was there instantly, presence closing in around me, trapping me between him and the door.

“Don’t,” he warned.

“Don’t what?” I shot back, breath shaking. “Touch you? Hurt you? Or want you?”

The silence snapped.

His gaze dropped to my mouth.

Slowly, deliberately.

“You shouldn’t say things you don’t understand,” he murmured.

My pulse thundered so loudly I was sure he could hear it. “Then explain it to me.”

His presence leaned closer, so close the cold of him seeped into my skin, my bones. My body betrayed me completely—heat flaring where fear should have been.

“This,” he said softly, “is what happens when terror and desire share the same breath.”

I swallowed hard. “Get away from me.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

“Say it again,” he said. “Without trembling.”

I opened my mouth.

My voice failed.

His hand lifted—stopping inches from my waist. The air between us pulsed, charged and aching. He didn’t touch me.

That was worse.

“You’re afraid,” he whispered. “But you’re not repulsed.”

My breath hitched.

“You feel alive when I’m near,” he continued. “And you hate me for it.”

Tears burned my eyes. “I hate what you’ve done.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “And you’ll come to understand why.”

The space between us tightened unbearably. I could feel him everywhere—behind my ribs, along my spine, wrapped around my thoughts.

“Tell me to leave,” he said softly.

I searched his face, shadowed and terrible and impossibly compelling.

“I can’t,” I admitted.

The satisfaction that flickered through him was dark and immediate.

“I know,” he said.

He stepped back.

The cold eased. The room felt suddenly too empty, too large.

“You’ll stay inside tonight,” he said. “You’ll lock the door.”

“And if I don’t?”

His gaze pinned me in place.

“Then next time,” he said calmly, “I won’t wait for midnight.”

He vanished.

I collapsed onto the bed, shaking, my wrist burning beneath the sigil like it was alive.

Fear curled tight in my chest.

And beneath it—

Something else.

Something I didn’t want to name.