Page 72 of Jayson
Footsteps thunder down the hall. Slow. Heavy. Precise. Like someone used to walking into warzones and surviving.
The pantry door flies open. It’s Jayson.
Backlit by moonlight, he looks unholy. Barefoot, shirtless, wearing dark fatigues, his eyes pin me to the floor like a sniper. His chest rises and falls with silent fury, but he doesn’t say anything.
He crouches. Doesn’t touch me. Just watches. Tilts his head like I’m some specimen he needs to decipher.
I’m shaking so hard I can’t speak.
My fingers scrabble through the flour, desperate to hold onto something, anything, but I’m drowning. I’m choking. I’m gone.
Then he breathes. Deep. Measured. One hand pressed to his chest.
“In,” he says. “Four seconds. Now.”
I try. I fail. My lungs are frozen, locked in place.
He shifts closer, just enough for his voice to crack the ice.
“Again. In. Four. Out. Six.”
I match him. Just barely. The breath is ragged, but it moves. I focus on his voice. His breathing. The movement of his eyes as they track me. The cadence of survival.
Slowly, my body stops fighting me.
Slowly, I come back.
He doesn’t say a word as he picks up the cereal box, turns it over once in his hand, then sets it down face-first on the shelf.
Gone. Just cardboard now.
I curl into myself, still trembling. He finally speaks.
“What did you see?”
I shake my head.
His jaw tightens. But his voice stays soft, like worn leather.
“You can’t outrun ghosts if you keep feeding them.”
I look up. And he’s just… there. A man I don’t understand, but somehow trust in my worst moments.
My voice is a breath, but nothing comes out.
He looks at the mess. My body in the flour. The red rimaround my eyes. The handprint on my chest where I clawed myself trying to breathe.
He offers his hand.
And the girl who has no-one left in the world takes it.
His palm is calloused, grounding, warm. He helps me up without a word, dusts the flour from my arms, then leads me out of the pantry like we’re leaving a graveyard. Maybe we are.
As he walks me upstairs, I feel it in my bones: the monsters are not all dead. Some of them are still hunting. And some of them? They sleep in the room next to mine. But tonight… one of them held me like I was human. And for one breathless, terrifying second—I wanted to be his.
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JAYSON
