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TORI
The dream always came the same way.
I lay curled up in bed, every nerve stretched thin as I clutched a cold metal handgun beneath my pillow, my fingers trembling around its grip.
Shadows stretched across the room, spilling from corners and doorways that didn’t exist.
They pooled closer and closer until one of them unfurled, coalescing into a figure standing at the foot of my bed.
I couldn’t see his face—couldn’t make out anything more than a silhouette.
But the way he held himself, the familiar tilt of his head, the simmering rage in his stance, made my chest tighten in recognition.
It was Marcus. I felt him in my bones, in the heavy press of dread that sat like a weight on my heart.
Slowly, the shadows slithered away, revealing his features one by one—the narrowed eyes that once looked at me with kindness now dark with malice.
The hard line of his mouth twisted into something that barely resembled human.
I wanted to scream, to raise the gun from beneath my pillow and aim it at him, but my arms wouldn’t move.
I was frozen, locked in place by the same fear that had shackled me for years.
Marcus stepped closer, his face tightening with rage as he leaned over me, his voice a snarl that shredded through my veins.
“You thought you could leave me?” he spat. “You thought I’d just let you go?”
My breath caught as his hand shot out, fingers wrapping around my wrist, pinning me to the mattress.
The gun slipped from my grip, clattering uselessly to the floor.
His grip was vice-like, squeezing until pain radiated up my arm and tears pricked my eyes.
I was powerless, just as I had been when I left, just as I had been every time he’d made me believe that I was nothing, that I’d always be his.
My heart pounded against my ribs, adrenaline flooding my veins as panic clawed at me, desperate and raw.
And then I woke up.
I shot upright in bed, my heart racing, skin damp with sweat, chest heaving as I gulped in breaths of cool morning air.
It took a few seconds for my brain to catch up, to tell myself that I wasn’t that helpless woman anymore.
That Marcus wasn’t looming over me, ready to tear apart everything I’d built.
I ran my hand over my face, trying to steady my breathing, to ground myself in the present.
Five years. It had been five long years since I’d escaped him, left behind the broke, terrified girl I once was.
I was Tori Blake now, the proud owner of a boutique in Oakridge Bay.
The sound of my shop’s name alone helped soothe my rattled nerves. I’d worked so hard to create a life he could never touch.
And yet, even now, Marcus’s ghost haunted me in my sleep, a specter of memories I wished I could burn away forever.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, feet meeting the cool floor as I steadied myself.
I am not her anymore.