Willow's POV
I didn't move right away after I saw him. For a moment, I just stood there behind the counter, my breath slower than it should have been, my eyes fixed on the reflection in the glass like if I looked away, he might disappear before I could make sense of it. He stood across the street, partially swallowed by shadow, far enough to pretend there was distance between us, but close enough that I could feel him like he was standing right beside me. Watching, not hidden, not pretending, just there.
A strange, quiet tension settled in my chest, pulling my attention toward him in a way I couldn't explain, something that felt less like fear and more like awareness, like I had stepped into something I didn't fully understand but couldn't step out of anymore.
I forced myself to move, to breathe, to finish closing, but even as I turned away, even as I grabbed my things and headed toward the door, I could still feel him there, that presence following me without needing to move at all. When I stepped outside, the night air hit me immediately, cool and sharp against my skin, but it didn't ground me the way it usually did.
My eyes lifted without thinking, drawn straight back to where he had been standing, and when I saw that he hadn't moved, my heart tightened in a way I couldn't ignore. For a second, everything else faded, the street, the sounds, the passing cars, all of it blurring into something distant as my attention locked onto him completely.
A car pulled up suddenly at the curb beside me, the sound cutting through the moment sharply enough to make me flinch, and I turned instinctively, my body reacting before my thoughts could catch up. Ethan stepped out, his expression already focused on me, and the shift between the two moments was so abrupt it made my chest tighten.
"Willow," he said, and I blinked, the sound of my name pulling me back into reality, but not fully, not enough to shake the feeling that still lingered beneath everything. "You're early," I said, my voice quieter than usual as I stepped toward him, but his gaze moved over me quickly, checking, assessing, something tense already sitting beneath the surface.
"You finished early," he replied, but his attention shifted almost immediately, following the direction I had been looking, and my chest tightened instantly. Ethan turned his head slightly, his eyes narrowing as they fixed on the other side of the street, and for a brief second, everything felt like it stopped as I watched his expression change, subtle but unmistakable.
He saw something, or someone, and the realization made something cold settle in my chest before I could stop it. "What are you looking at?" he asked, his voice lower now, sharper, and I answered too quickly, "Nothing," even though we both knew that wasn't true.
He didn't believe me, and I could see it in the way his jaw tightened, in the way his gaze didn't leave that spot even as the silence stretched between us. Then he stepped away from the car, moving toward the street, his attention fixed, his movements controlled but tense in a way I had never seen before.
"Ethan—" I started, my voice catching slightly, but he didn't stop, and my heart started racing as I watched him cross halfway, my thoughts tangling together as panic rose slowly but steadily, everything threatening to slip out of my control.
When he reached the other side, he stopped, looked, and then there was nothing.
The space where Aiden had been standing was empty, the shadows settling back into place like they had never held anything at all, and the sudden absence made everything feel sharper instead of calmer. Ethan turned slowly, and this time there was no calm left in his expression, only something darker, something sharper, something I didn't recognize.
"He was there," he said, his voice low but tight as he walked back toward me, and I swallowed, my fingers tightening slightly at my sides as I answered, "I don't know what you're talking about."
Another lie, and this one made everything worse.
Ethan stopped in front of me, close enough that I could feel the tension radiating off him, his eyes locked onto mine in a way that made it impossible to look away. "You were staring at something," he said. "Don't lie to me again." The words hit harder this time, because they didn't feel like a request, they felt like a warning, and when I tried to speak again, "I wasn't—" he cut me off immediately.
"Get in the car." He shouted .
The tone left no room for argument, and a flicker of something uneasy settled deeper in my chest as I hesitated for just a second too long. "I said, get in the car, Willow." There it was again, that shift, not loud, not explosive, but controlled in a way that felt more dangerous, and I didn't argue.
I couldn't. I moved past him, opening the door and sliding into the seat without another word, my hands folding tightly in my lap as I tried to steady my breathing while the door shut harder than it needed to behind me.
He didn't look at me right away. He just started the car, and the silence between us felt suffocating, stretching too long, too heavy, until he finally spoke again. "You're not going anywhere alone anymore," he said, his voice controlled again, but colder now, more final than before.
"I mean it." I turned slightly, my chest tightening as I looked at him, trying to find something familiar in his expression, something that still felt safe, but I couldn't.
"Ethan—" I started, but he interrupted again, his grip tightening on the steering wheel as he said, "I saw someone, and I don't like the way you looked at him." My heart skipped, and I tried to respond, "That's not—" but he cut me off again, sharper this time.
"Don't."
The word was quiet, but it stopped me immediately, and for a moment neither of us spoke, the tension building until it felt like it might snap under its own weight. I could feel it now, clear and undeniable, the way something inside him was shifting, something that had been there all along but was finally starting to surface, something darker than I had ever allowed myself to see.
"I'm trying to keep you safe," he said again, but this time the words didn't sound like reassurance. They sounded like control, and for the first time, it didn't feel like protection at all.
As the car pulled away, my gaze drifted back toward the other side of the street, toward the place where he had been standing just moments before, and even though it was empty now, completely, like he had never been there, the feeling remained.
Because I knew he had been.
And somehow, that mattered more than anything else.