I can see you

Chapter 5

(ROSY'S POV)

I didn't just call him once. I called him three times. The first time, I held the phone like it might crack apart in my hand. Like if I dialed too hard, it would reject me. No answer. The second time, I left a voicemail. I tried to sound breezy like I was just checking in. As if this was casual and as if I hadn't rehearsed the message twelve different ways in my head before pressing send. By the third time, it didn't even ring it went straight to voicemail. And that was when I knew. He had given me a fake number. On purpose.

I stared at the screen like it owed me something. Like if I glared hard enough, the digits would rearrange themselves into a reason. A truth. They didn't. Just numbers. Just silence. But it didn't hurt like a slap.
It hurt like static. Soft and constant. Like something quietly unraveling.

I didn't scream. Didn't cry. I just stood in the middle of my room with phone in one hand, sketchbook in the other. The one I had stolen. I used to tell myself I was only borrowing it. That I'd return it once I understood it. But that was a lie. Because the moment I saw the page - that page - it had stopped belonging to him. It became mine. Just like he did. Or maybe... I became his. I couldn't tell the difference anymore.

The girl in the sketch didn't look like she was crying. She didn't even look afraid.
She was curled in on herself, but there was power in it like she was keeping something inside. Something that might burn the world if it ever got out. Me. He had drawn me. Not some fantasy. Not some ideal. Me - messy and folded and too much. And for one split second, I felt chosen. Not stalked or forgotten but seen.

But that version of me only existed on paper. The real me? I sat across the street now, watching him every Friday. Same window seat. Same black coffee I never drank. He entered the bookstore like it was sacred. He stayed twenty-seven minutes exactly. I'd timed it. Sometimes he browsed and sometimes he sketched but mostly he just sat.

He never looked up. Except once - a flicker. A tilt of the head like he had felt me. I ducked and the second I did, I hated myself. Because I had wanted him to see me but I couldn't survive it if he did.

That was what it was like now. It felt like there was a war inside of me. One part of me wanted his attention like oxygen but the other wanted to choke him for withholding it. I started checking behind me in crowds. Started memorizing which alleys he preferred when he cut behind the bookstore. I walked them so often my feet could trace the path in my sleep.

I told myself it was caution. But the truth? I liked it. The watching. The weaving. The way it felt when I found him before he noticed I was there. It was a secret no one else knew. A private myth I kept writing.

Rosy and Edward. Predator and prey. A game where I would catch him soon but not too soon that it would ruin the fun.

The nightmares had changed. It wasn't him chasing me anymore. It was me running after someone I couldn't catch. Someone who looked like me but walked like a stranger. She was always ahead and always faster. She never turned around but last night, she did. And when she did, her eyes were mine. But her voice wasn't.

"You let him lie to us," she had whispered.
"It's not a love. It's a warning."

I had woken up with my voice still echoing in my head. I had checked the sketchbook and it was where I had left it but something felt wrong. The page with the girl was slightly bent. Not torn. Just... touched. Like it had been lifted, handled and studied. And then carefully, too carefully, placed back. I had stared at it for an hour because if I didn't move, maybe time would. Maybe he'd text. Maybe the number would work this time. It didn't.

That night, I had heard something outside my window. Just a thud. Nothing dramatic but loud enough to wake me up from my sleep. I had turned off the light and waited. Breath held and ears straining. Nothing.

I had gone to check anyway. There was nothing out there but the feeling in my stomach stayed. Like something had left. Or worse - had come in. Or maybe I was just being sensitive because of the recent discovery I had made.

I didn't know what I had stepped into but whatever it was, it was bigger than a fake number. It was deeper than a lie.

It had started small. A name in his sketchbook. A passing comment he had made at the café. I had looked it up, expecting nothing. But instead... it had opened a door I didn't mean to find. A part of me told me to stop digging. But another part - the one that still believed love meant knowing someone completely - kept going. And now I knew Edward was hiding something. Something that explained everything.

Not just the fake number. Not just the silence. But why he watched people the way he did. Why his drawings felt like warnings. Why he always left alone.

Sometimes, when I stared at the drawing of the girl, I whispered things to her. Just to see if she would blink. Last night, I had whispered, "He lied." And I swear - she smiled.

I was not naïve anymore. He had given me a fake number, but I knew where he walked. Where he lingered. I knew his bookstores and back alleys and pauses. I knew the way his fingers twitched when he sketched someone new. I knew the smell of his cologne before he entered a room.

I knew his shadows. And I was going to step inside them. The next time he sketched me, it wouldn't be from memory. It'd be from love.

I didn't know what I wanted. Maybe to make him look at me again or maybe to be the last thing he ever saw. Maybe just to hear him say my name - real this time, no lies and only love - before everything burned.

He had drawn me once like I was important but now I wanted to become unforgettable. And if I couldn't have his honesty, I'd take his devotion.

By force, if I had to.