Forever & Always

Hazel didn't expect New Orleans to feel like it was watching her.

The city wrapped itself around her the moment she arrived - iron balconies sagging with age, streets humming with old music, the air thick with heat and secrets. Her mother called it a fresh start. Hazel called it wrong. The nights were too loud, the shadows too patient, as if the town had been waiting for her long before she ever stepped off the taxi.

The dreams began the first night. She stood in places she didn't recognise but somehow knew - cracked courtyards, candlelit rooms, streets drowned in fog. And there was always a man. Tall, silent, close enough that she could feel him watching her, protecting her. His face however, was a blur, like her mind refused to remember it. Still, when he reached for her, hazels chest ached with familiarity, a longing she couldn't explain when she woke up gasping in her bed. The dreams followed her into the day. A whisper brushing her ear when she was in class. Footsteps behind her on the streets she walked alone. Reflections in dark windows that didn't quite match her movements.

Hazel told herself it was stress - anything but the truth creeping in at the edges of her thoughts. Until one night the man stepped out of the dream.