Page 5 of Lost to the Woods

Ghost taps his fingers against his thigh, his rings making the clicking metal sound, his leg bouncing slightly. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’re safe with me.”

I scoff, but my face is growing warmer again. “Oh, please. You just wanted to chase me.”

“I’ll protect you from everything and everyoneexceptmyself.”

I look for a comeback, but I’ve got nothing, and I know somewhere under that mask, he is smiling.

It’s like he wants me to regret… or does he want me back?

Maybe—just maybe—he’s still into me.

Which would be a recipe for disaster since I never stopped being into him either.

3. Ghost

Iwatch her move through the room to go change before we leave. And I have no shame admitting that I gawk at her sweet little ass in those tight, pink leggings as she climbs up the stairs. There are no perfect people, but to me, she is perfect. Or perhaps that’s the pedestal I placed her on. Yet, she still owns every inch of my attention, just the same as when I first saw her.

It was Halloween this past year. I knew which influencer party she was going to. I’d known for weeks. That’s the only reason why I even accepted an invitation and flew to NYC in the first place. I normally avoided any large gatherings. Or people, in general. But I was weirdly fucking excited about that night. About finally seeing her in person—no screen between us, no camera filters, no WiFi signal diluting the raw perfection of her.

I’d spent over a year obsessing over her, unapologetically. She’d done a collab with my buddy Dev, and that’s how I heard about her. Of course, I checked out her YouTube after that—she didn’t post long-form content often, but the little she did was enough to pull me in. Come on, a pastel sweetheart talking about ghosts? It was like a fever dream for me.

The spiral was quick, and eventually, I downloaded fucking TikTok just to see more of her. She was posting on there constantly—two, three times a day. It wasn’t just her telling scary stories, but doing cosplays, trending dances, mukbangs, and other viral shit. And I was hooked, rewatching freeze frame after freeze frame of every single video she’d ever posted, memorizing every fraction of an inch of her body, studying every fucking micro expression she made, drinking in every goddamn word that left her mouth.

Iknewher. And I could see it—clear as day—she wasn’t happy. Not in her relationship with that douchebag. She was lonely, restless, bored. She wanted more, she needed attention. And he? He wasn’t even looking.

Then came OnlyFans. Transparent as hell. She wanted him to notice. To care. Which, of course, he didn’t, too busy chasing his Hollywood dream that mattered more than her.

ButIdid.

She kept it pretty tame, all things considered. No full nudity. Still, I made sure to subscribe to her from ten different anonymous accounts, just in case she blocked one. I kept messaging her—weird requests, yeah, but harmless. To me, anyway. I just wanted to see how far she’d go, how much of her she’d give away before I creeped her out.

Eventually, she shut it all down.

Fuck, I was relieved when she stopped posting those lingerie pics of herself. Sure, I missed seeing them, but at least now, no one else got to see her, either.

That’s when she came clean to her boyfriend and told him she thought she had a stalker. And he lost his shit. Finally, he gave a damn. But it was too late. That was the beginning of the end for them. Constant fighting. He wanted her to nuke all her socials, which was hilarious considering it was her full-time job. Pretty fucking bold, if you ask me.

And guess who she came crying to?

Me. I was there, always. Listening. Comforting. Feeding the fire. I was secure in the friend zone because I knew I wouldn’t stay there. Not for long. Not once I ruined her.

Still—even after every fantasy I’d conjured inside my head—I wasn’t prepared for the sight of her in real life.

And when I saw her, I felt it. Like a sharpened blade pressing against my chest, and I knew then and there that she would be the only one to cut my heart open and make it bleed.

My little bunny.

Her cotton candy pink hair was so long and luscious it reached the small of her back, the kind of hair that made you want to fist it just to see if it felt as soft as it looked. The black latex suit clung to her like a second skin, so tight it might as well have been painted on, obscenely flaunting every little curve and crevice of her petite figure. She matched it with a bunny-eared, glossy mask that covered half of her cute face and over-the-knee heeled boots. It was a bit scandalous, the kind of outfit that belonged in a fetish club, not a fancy penthouse. And I couldn’t decide whether she was truly that clueless or that calculated.

No, she had to know how she looked.

Because that body…

That fucking body.

She looked like something made to be worshiped.

Orravaged.

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