I've been watching her for 732 days.
Not that she knows.
Not that anyone does.
She walks through life like she's invisible, as if the world wouldn't even flinch if she disappeared. But I see her. I've always seen her. Every shy glance she hides behind her lashes, every time she bites her lower lip when she's nervous, every damn time she forces herself to smile even when her eyes are drowning.
Arielle Torres.
Eighteen. Fragile. Soft-spoken. Untouched.
And completely, irrevocably... mine.
I saw her for the first time in the rain—barely fourteen, hiding under a rusted bus stop, soaked to the skin and hugging a sketchbook like it was the only thing keeping her from falling apart. I should've walked away. But something about her... it tore something loose inside me. Something dangerous.
From that moment, I started collecting pieces of her.
Photos. Videos. A forgotten scarf. A torn notebook page she tossed into the trash.
She had no idea the boy sitting three rows behind her in physics would one day own her. That I built my world around her without ever touching her.
But now she's in my world.
Same university. Same campus. Same orbit.
She thinks she's here for a fresh start.
She has no idea she's just stepped into my web.
No idea that I made sure she got accepted.
No idea that every hallway she walks down has already been walked by me.
Every professor she meets, every dorm she tours, every scholarship she receives—all because of me.
The time for watching is over.
Now, I want to feel her break.
I want to taste her fear, hear her heartbeat stutter when she realizes the devil she's dating isn't a stranger.
It's me.
Her stalker.
The boy in the shadows who never stopped watching.
The man who made a bet to make her fall, just to see her crash.
And if I'm lucky...
Maybe I'll break her so beautifully, she'll never recover.
But the thing about obsession?
It never ends how you plan.
Especially when the hunted starts to feel like home.