I can see you

Chapter 10

                        (EDWARD'S POV)

I had taken many lives before-too many to count, really. My victims had been mostly teenage girls. There had been a reason for that. In this sprawling, indifferent city, no one really paid attention when a teenager vanished. Their parents filed a missing person report, maybe put up a few posters, but the cops? They closed the case after a half-hearted investigation, chalking it up to a runaway. That was the world we lived in-cold, careless, cruel. And I had learned to slip through its cracks like a ghost.

But then came Rosy.

Even then, I didn't understand why I hadn't killed her that night in the alley. She had been right there alone, scared, just like the others. Easy and vulnerable. Yet something inside me had shifted. The moment our eyes met, I wasn't in that alley anymore. I was seventeen again. Trapped in twisted metal, coughing smoke, glass biting into my arms. My mother's lifeless eyes stared into mine, her long black hair soaked in blood as she clutched me in a final embrace during the crash that had taken everything from me.

The night that had left me orphaned, scarred, and hollow.

Years had passed since then. I was an adult now. I had built a life-or something that mimicked one. I lived in a crumbling house at the end of an abandoned alley. It was quiet there. Forgotten. Like me.

Photography had become my passion-my escape. You'd understand if you had seen the walls of my spare room. They were plastered with photographs, every one carefully developed, framed, and hung with reverence. But there had been a pattern. A fixation. A muse that repeated in every frame.

Rosy.

Three years had passed since our last conversation. It hadn't been much. A quiet café. She had asked if I was cold, smiling over her coffee. I had lied and she had laughed. I still hadn't forgotten the sound. Her laughter had echoed long after the cup was empty, long after I walked away and blocked her number from my phone. But just because we hadn't spoken didn't mean I hadn't been close.

I was watching. I always was.

My lens followed her, protected her, recorded her. I knew where she went, what she wore when it rained, who she talked to, and when she lied about being okay. I wasn't stalking her. I was watching to make sure no one else hurt her before I did. That was different.

I worked then as a professional photographer on movie sets. It had been a perfect cover. It gave me access, mobility, privacy. It also bought me time. Time to think. Time to plan. Time to remember. The world was full of monsters, and if any of them dared touch her, if they dared speak her name wrong, I would find them. I would take them apart, bone by bone, until there was nothing left but regret in the shape of a scream.

Rosy was mine to watch. Mine to protect. Mine to destroy.

She moved like she was being followed, though I was careful not to leave a trace. Her eyes flicked to shadows. She was always reaching for memories that didn't settle, like she was half in this world and half in another. She was slipping, unraveling, but I didn't know why.

Lately, she had been different. There had been something restless in her movements, something almost... haunted. I had seen her walk past the same spot three times in a day, clutching old photographs, looking at buildings like they were supposed to mean something. Like she was searching for someone. A ghost. A memory. A sister.

She believed she had had a twin. It was absurd. But she clung to it like it was a lifeline. Riya. That name again. The girl who had ruined everything. The girl Roy wouldn't stop talking about. The girl who was dead-or should have been.

I knew that Riya was still there. I would have dragged her out of hell if I had to. Because it was the only thing I could do for Roy. I would have found her and then killed her. But I didn't know anymore why I was hesitating.

It didn't matter. I wasn't there for her. Not really. That wasn't love because I didn't feel love. Not for her or for anyone. That was revenge. Justice. Closure.

I kept telling myself that.

No one talked about Roy. I didn't, not even to the one person I was supposed to trust. My therapist asked, sometimes-soft questions, meant to nudge rather than push. I answered the way I had been trained: just enough to sound honest, never enough to be known. He thought he understood my grief, my obsessions. He didn't know the half of it. The only reason I kept going to him was because he knew my secret and he helped me hide it.

My family had been everything good I had left. And then she came. Riya. Roy never said her name without blushing like a fool. Everyone thought he was happy, but I saw the change. The way he smiled when no one was looking. The late nights and the secrecy. But then the fear. He started sleeping with the light on again. Kept looking over his shoulder. And then, just like that, he was gone.

And then my family. Everyone gone except me and her.

I thought I would move on but then why did I dream of her almost every day standing over Roy's body, her hands drenched in red?

I hadn't decided what to do with Rosy yet. I thought I would've, by then. The others had been easy-swift, clean. Girls who wore the wrong smile. Who reminded me of something I didn't want to remember. But Rosy? She had been something else.

She was an infection. Sometimes I woke up gasping, her name lodged in my throat like a blade. Sometimes I saw her reflection in the photographs before I even took the shot. She wasn't just in my past. She was under my skin.

I told myself that was about revenge. About Roy. About balance. It was. That wasn't love. Whatever that thing had been-that obsession, that pull, that rot-it wasn't love. She wasn't special. She was just a wound that hadn't healed. A problem I hadn't solved. A lie that wouldn't stay buried.

And yet... I wanted to touch her. I wanted to trace every line of her face and memorize it like scripture. I wanted to hear her sob, yes, but only for me. I wanted her to break, but only in my hands.

Sometimes I wondered what she'd say if I had told her the truth. That I had never stopped watching. That I had erased men from her life like dust from a lens. That I had followed her into bookstores and watched her sleep through a camera I had installed a year ago?

Would she have screamed? Would she have cried? Or would she have smiled and asked me why it had taken so long?

I didn't know anymore. I didn't know where I ended and she began. And the most terrifying part of all?

I didn't want it to end. Not yet or ever. Because even if I denied it, even if I screamed it was all for revenge...

There had been a part of me that wanted her. Not to kill but to keep. But I waited. I had always been good at that. Time, after all, was patient. And so was I.

One day, Rosy would remember everything. And when she did, I would be there with open arms and a blade in my hand.