Page 91 of Controlled Burn
Chapter 33
The Watcher
Talia
The first time she felt it, she blamed her imagination.
A draft across her neck while she changed in the locker room. A prickle between her shoulder blades. The heavy press of eyes that vanished when she turned.
Paranoia, she told herself. Just guilt. Just trauma echoing off the walls of her skin. But the feeling clung to her like sweat after a fire call, soaking in, never quite letting go.
It followed her everywhere. Down the halls. Across the bay floor. Into the bathroom stall where she sat alone, heart jackhammering, convinced someone stood just outside the door—waiting, silent, close enough to hear her breathing. It was always there, humming under her skin.
Dean wouldn't meet her eyes. Jake watched her too long and smirked when she caught him. Ryan kept his distance. Brooks was marked by awkward silences and sidelong glances. The firehouse was too loud and too quiet, every moment thick with unsaid things.
Boots clattered against tile. Radios buzzed. Someone made a joke about her ass in the kitchen, just loud enough for everyone to hear. Nobody corrected him. She didn't flinch anymore. She just waited. Waited for it all to break open again.
She was pulling her hoodie from her locker when she saw it.
A folded slip of paper. No name.
Her stomach dropped. Her pulse spiked, echoing in her throat, a frantic, sick drumbeat.
Fingers trembling, she opened it.
Please do it again—this time with the lights on.
Typed. Clean. No handwriting to trace. She stared at the words until they blurred, until they seemed to carve something into her throat that felt like a scream.
Her first thought was Jake. Her second—Dean. Her stomach turned. Her breath caught.
Her third? Someone else.
Someone had seen. Someone had watched. Someone had waited. Someone had spied on her coming apart in the dark, alone and shameless. They had seen the way she touched herself and waited for more.
She crumpled the note in her fist, but didn't throw it away. She didn't know why. Maybe because it confirmed what she already suspected: her body wasn't hers anymore. Someone had claimed it. Tasted it, owned it, at a distance. She pressed the paper to her lips, breathing in the faint, chemical tang of printer ink, and felt her thighs squeeze tighter.
Or maybe—maybe she liked being seen. No. Not liked. Craved.
That was the worst part. The itch under her skin. The way her thighs pressed together at the thought of eyes in the dark. A camera. A breath she didn't hear until it was too late.
She slammed her locker. The noise echoed in the empty room. She glanced around, every hair on her body rising. She scanned the vents above the showers, checked the ceiling corners for the glint of a tiny lens, and peered under the benches for wires or a telltale red dot. Was someone watching her now? Was there a peephole? A gap in the cinderblock wall? Her skin tingled, cold sweat beading at the back of her neck.
She told herself she hated it. Hated the not-knowing. The vulnerability. The risk.
But when she sat on the edge of her bunk, heart pounding, cold sweat slick on her spine, she realized something else: She was wet. Her body didn't understand safety; it only knew hunger.
Memory came in brutal, relentless flashes—the scrape of Dean's stubble against her jaw, his hand on her throat, voice a growl in her ear: You like this. You want to be ruined. The hot, stinging stretch of Jake and Ryan inside her, the shame and euphoria tangled so tightly she couldn't tell them apart. The glare of a phone screen, the camera lens catching every gasp, every shudder, every filthy, desperate plea. The knowledge that someone might be watching, right then, stroking themselves to the show she couldn't stop putting on.
She waited until the room cleared—shifts staggered, Brooks gone, Kennedy outside smoking, Ryan asleep. Then she moved. Quiet. Swift. Like prey pretending to be a predator.
The bunkroom bathroom reeked of mildew and bleach. The mirror was streaked, warped, and the light above it flickered like a dying pulse. She locked the door, her hand shaking, and rechecked the ceiling for a camera, as well as the corners for a hidden phone.
Nothing she could see.
But that didn't mean there wasn't something watching.
Her breath hitched. Her thighs throbbed. Shame and anticipation twisted inside her.
