Page 2 of Let Me In

He’s older. Clearly.

Not too much.

Just enough.

Enough that it makes thirty feel young in a way I didn’t expect. Off-balance. Wrecked.

There’s a stillness in him that doesn’t feel empty; it feels deliberate. Heavy. Like he’s rooted. Like he’s not a man who chases. He waits. Watches. Decides.

His eyes are a kind of gray I’ve never seen before. Not cold. Just unreadable. Stormglass. Like you could drown in them if you weren’t careful—and maybe even if you were.

He doesn’t look like someone who’s hiding.

He looks like someone who’s done running.

I barely glance at him as I pass. My eyes stay forward, helmet down, heart slamming against my ribs like I’ve been caught doing something worse than trespassing—like I’ve been caught wanting. Wanting to be seen.

Wanting him to be the one seeing me.

I don’t look back.

I don’t stop.

I stay away for a week.

Longer than I want to admit.

I ride the long trail instead—the one with the steep climb and the switchbacks that make it feel more like a workout than the escape I mean for it to be.

I pretend it’s for the solitude. For the view.

But it’s not.

Every time I crest a ridge, I look west. Toward the cabin.

And every time, my chest aches in the silliest way, like I’m somehow missing something I was never supposed to find.

So when I finally take the familiar curve again this evening, I tell myself it’s just about the shortcut. Just about air in my lungs and dust on my boots.

Not about the man.

But he’s there.

Not on the porch this time, but in the gravel drive.

Closer.

Wearing another dark thermal, sleeves pushed to his forearms. That steady stance. Like he belongs to the land. Like the cabin rose around him, not the other way around.

He looks up the second he hears me. Doesn’t flinch, and doesn’t frown, either. Just lifts a hand—half-wave, half-stop—and the movement hits me like a gravity shift.

I stop the bike.

The Surron’s electric motor fades into silence beneath me.

I don’t cut the ignition.

My heart’s hammering again, just like before. Only harder now.

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