She didn’t need to check the clock. The sun was bleeding out on the horizon, same as yesterday. Same as the day before.
Lucy flicked the cigarette into the gravel and watched the embers die. She’d told herself she wouldn’t look back, but her feet had a different idea.
The bar was just a smear of neon now. A place where his voice still echoed, where he’d whispered things that made her feel like she was fire, not just another ghost in this nothing town.
But he was gone.
She’d made sure of that.
A truck rattled past, its tires spitting dust. Her hands clenched, nails biting into her palm. No one had found the body. Not yet. Maybe they wouldn’t. The river took things. It always had.
She exhaled slow. Maybe she’d keep walking.
Or maybe she’d go back.
Her legs wavered. Then she saw it—just a flicker in the rearview mirror of a parked car. A shape. Too tall, too still. A shadow that hadn’t been there before.
Her breath caught.
He was dead.
Wasn’t he?
She took a step forward. The shape moved.
And Lucy, for the first time in her life, ran.
