Page 17 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

The door chimes as I step inside.

Warm air wraps around my shoulders, soft with the scent of roasted coffee beans, damp coats, and old paper.

The secondhand bookstore café is half-full of students hunched over laptops, a couple murmuring over chipped mugs, and one barista with sleeves rolled up to his elbows pulling espresso shots behind the counter.

It’s quiet, save for the soft croon of jazz from a dusty overhead speaker and the occasional rustle of turned pages.

I breathe in slowly, eyes fluttering shut. I haven’t been here in months.

Before the unraveling and the things I couldn’t name began crawling into my life like smoke.

I step further in, shoulders relaxing by inches. The hardwood floors creak beneath my boots, each plank slightly warped with age. Shelves lean just enough to suggest they’d been touched by time, not neglect.

I slide my fingers along the spine of a familiar hardcover of an old edition of A Room with a View and let my breath slow.

This place has always felt like a sanctuary.

The scent of ink and dust, the low light, the anonymity of being surrounded by stories not my own.

I used to come here after class, after endless meetings, and after heartbreaks, curling into corners of the café with a book and a borrowed warmth.

I tell myself I’m here for that. For comfort and quiet. But my fingers tremble slightly as I pick up a volume from a shelf and turn it over.

I’m not afraid. I’m just…tired. That’s what I tell myself. My body is still adjusting, and my mind needs recalibration.

I’m trying to prove I still have autonomy, that I can step into a public space without feeling like my skin is on backward.

I make my way to the back, near the tall arched windows streaked faintly with rain. Outside, streetlamps are beginning to glow gold through the drizzle, their light fractured by the wet glass.

I slip a book from the poetry section and carry it to one of the mismatched armchairs. Its cushions sink familiarly beneath me.

A barista passes with a tray of lemon cake and vanilla steam. My stomach doesn’t stir.

I open the book, run my thumb over the verse, and pretend to read.

My eyes keep lifting. Once to the door. Again to the stairwell in the back that leads to the hidden upstairs loft. A third time, to the streetlight outside the window beside me, half-obscured by ivy.

I don’t know what I’m expecting. Nothing looks out of place. There’s no dark figure or flicker of movement in the glass.

Still, my skin crawls.

The front door chimes again. A pair of college students enters, laughing. One wears a plaid scarf too long for his height. The other adjusts a tote bag and begins scanning the shelves for used psychology textbooks.

I look back down, but my muscles refuse to ease. I take a sip from the cup I ordered earlier. It’s lukewarm now, the foam dissolving into the bitter surface, and I try to focus on the words again.

My skin prickles as someone approaches me.

I look up to see a man with average height and a kind smile. He seems a little too eager in the eyes and clean-shaven, with a coat that looks new and a book tucked under one arm. I peep the title The Alchemist.

He gestures to the chair across from mine. “Mind if I sit?”

I blink once. Then shake my head, offering a polite smile.

He settles in as he sets his book down on the table between them. “You don’t strike me as the Coelho type,” he says, nodding to the worn poetry in my hands. “More Sylvia Plath meets courtroom drama.”

I huff out a soft laugh despite myself. “Not bad.”

“You’ve got the look,” he says. “Sharp, sad-eyed, and slightly dangerous.”

“Is that meant to be a compliment?”

He shrugs. “Depends on if you agree.”

There’s an ease to him and a practiced charm. I recognize the type. He’s one of those people who prides themselves on conversation, and on drawing people out. In another life, I might’ve liked him.

I let my gaze linger on him for a moment too long. Then turn a page I haven’t read.

“I’m Mark, by the way.”

I offer my name with a tight nod and don’t offer more.

“You come here often?” he asks.

The corner of my mouth twitches. “You really just said that?”

He grins, unfazed. “I did. Regretfully. But still. It’s my first time. I live a few streets over. Thought I’d explore. Lucky coincidence, I guess.”

I nod slowly, my fingers still on the poetry book, even though my eyes have left it long ago.

Mark tilts his head. “You looked like you needed a distraction. Was I wrong?”

I don’t answer immediately. But then, with something between a sigh and surrender, I say, “Maybe I did.”

He orders us both drinks, something warm with cinnamon and foam. We talk about nothing and everything.

I tell him half-truths about work, books, and the weather. He laughs easily and asks questions. He seems normal in a way I can’t remember needing.

It feels…safe.

Except it doesn’t. Not really.

Because the entire time I’m nodding and sipping and trying to smother the sound of my own heartbeat, I feel a slow rising tension in my limbs. That faint prickle at the base of my neck.

As if someone has just brushed past my shoulder. But no one has.

***

I don’t notice at first.

The stranger is still talking, something about a publishing internship he once had in London, how the coffee here reminds him of a spot near Covent Garden.

I smile politely, nodding where it feels right, pretending my interest isn’t slipping like sand through my fingers.

Something has changed.

I can’t place it.

Not yet.

Outside, rain laces down the windows in slow, rhythmic streams. The café’s golden lights flicker in reflections across the glass, turning the night into something blurry and half-imagined.

Inside, the soft hum of jazz filters through the speakers overhead, interrupted only by the occasional clink of ceramic against wood or the distant sound of a milk steamer hissing to life behind the counter.

Normal.

Everything is normal.

So why does my skin feel too tight?

The stranger leans closer, brushing a crumb off the sleeve of my sweater. His fingers don’t linger, but I flinch anyway.

Not visibly, not enough to embarrass either of us, but my chest tightens. My throat tenses. I can’t help it.

He notices.

His smile falters just slightly.

In a strange pause, his gaze shifts, not at me, but behind me. Toward the window.

A single flick of the eyes.

It would’ve meant nothing on any other day.

But today, it makes my stomach turn cold.

He stands abruptly, muttering an apology. Says he has just remembered something urgent, a work thing, a forgotten commitment; he isn’t quite clear.

He leaves, nearly bumping into a shelf of hardcovers as he hurries toward the door. He doesn’t look back.

I watch him go.

Watch the door swing shut behind him.

Watch the barista glance up and then go back to wiping a mug clean.

The café is still warm. Still golden. Still humming.

But I feel like I’m in a fish tank.

The sounds are wrong now, muffled and slow, like they’re filtered through water. My hands are numb against the table. My tongue feels heavy in my mouth.

And that itch on my neck, not pain exactly. Something colder. Like being grazed by breathing.

I blink and try to ground myself.

This is ridiculous.

I pick up my phone, open the screen. No new messages. No calls.

I glance over at the bookshelf across the room, the same one I’d been browsing earlier, just before the stranger had started talking to me.

My favorite section, tucked between literary fiction and used poetry volumes.

A narrow, shadowed aisle with weathered spines and tattered covers. That’s where I found the novel. The old edition of The Secret History.

I didn’t buy it, hadn’t meant to. Just held it for a moment. It had felt strangely familiar.

Now something tugs me back. I need to confirm this isn’t where the connection was made by my stalker.

I stand slowly, my chair scraping slightly against the wood floor. It echoes louder than it should have. My footsteps are light but sharp as I cross the room and reach for the shelf.

My fingers find the same book again. Good, it’s there.

Same worn edges. Same cracked spine.

But as I open it, a sound catches in my throat.

There is something inside.

A photo.

Folded once down the middle. Tucked between pages like a secret not meant to be discovered.

I unfold it slowly.

And stop breathing.

It’s grainy, in black and white. But unmistakable.

It’s me.

Sitting by the café window.

Taken today.

The angle is from outside, through the glass, from across the street, maybe. I recognize the position of my hand, the slight tilt of my head. I hadn’t even known I was being watched.

I turn the photo over.

One word.

Scrawled in quick, deliberate handwriting:

Closer.

My heart knocks hard against my ribs.

My pulse roars in my ears.

I look around, suddenly unsteady.

No one is watching me. Or maybe everyone is. The café feels too quiet now, the warmth replaced by a hollow weight.

I shove the photo into my coat pocket, grab my bag, and leave.

The door chimes again as it shuts behind me.

I don’t look back.

***

Rain pelts the sidewalk, cool against my flushed cheeks. I don’t pull up my hood. Don’t raise an umbrella. Just keep walking.

One foot in front of the other. My shoes soak through quickly, my socks squelching inside them.

But I don’t stop.

Can’t.

I don’t know what will happen if I do.

The streets blur around me as headlights sweeping past like ghosts, shop windows glowing dimly behind fogged-up glass. I barely register any of it.

My mind won’t stop spinning.

He is here.

Not just “watching.”

Here.

I hadn’t imagined the stranger’s sudden discomfort. He’d seen something. Felt something. Maybe he even knew. Maybe someone had made sure he did.

Closer.

The word loops through my brain like a chant.

He is getting bolder.

Not just in my home. Not just in shadows.

Here, in public. While I smile at a stranger. While I try to pretend I am still someone who can be flirted with, someone whole.