Ashley's POV
The dark stain on my neck—Roman's mark—felt radioactive under Crestwood High's fluorescent lights. It pulsed like it had its own heartbeat, syncing with mine. Less than twelve hours since his last command: "You will not cover your neck. Not even at school."
So I walked tall, chin up, backpack pressed tight against me. A soldier in disguise. A prisoner pretending to be free.
Whispers chased me down the hall. Not curious whispers—hungry ones. The kind that smell blood.
Mia caught up, eyes locking on my neck before she even met my gaze. "Ash, that looks worse. You really need to—" She stopped herself, the lie catching in her throat. "Uh, Mia's competitive streak is wild, huh?"
I smiled, brittle as glass. "It's fine. Just proof my boyfriend's obsessed with me."
The joke fell flat. It always did. The bruise was no longer a secret or a love mark. It was a message. He owns me. And everyone could see it.
Every stare felt like a hand around my throat. Every laugh, a warning. Math, History, Civics—they blurred into static. The only real thing was the promise I felt coiling in my gut: the day wasn't over until I saw him again.
By the time the final bell rang, my mask was cracking. I rode my bike home through air that felt too still, like the world was holding its breath.
No Roman on the corner. No car in the driveway.
That was wrong. He was always watching.
I lifted the garage door. The metal groaned like it was mourning something. Inside—nothing. The kind of quiet that hums under your skin.
My backpack hit the floor. My pulse climbed the walls.
"Hey, sweetheart," Mom called from the kitchen. Her voice sounded far away, like a radio tuned to another frequency.
"Hi, Mom." My throat was dry. "Where's Daniel? In his room?"
The chopping stopped. "Oh, honey. No. They're both gone. Didn't you see the note?"
Gone.
She kept talking—something about Roman packing everything, about Daniel going with him, about an urgent trip abroad. The words didn't fit together. They floated, slippery and wrong.
Roman doesn't leave. He hunts.
And he'd taken my brother.
Not to protect him. To keep him close. To keep me tethered.
This wasn't absence. It was strategy.
Upstairs, the house pressed in around me. The air felt too thick, as if Roman's breath still clung to the walls. His ghost lingered in the folds of my blanket, in the smudge of his handprint on my mirror. I could almost hear his voice—soft, precise, laced with danger. Don't lie to me, Ashley. Don't even think about it.
I sat at my desk, staring at my open Civics book. The pages looked waterlogged, letters bleeding into one another. The questions mocked me: What defines control? What are the limits of power? Cute. Real cute.
My neck throbbed—slow, rhythmic, alive. Like it knew something I didn't.
Dinner passed in a blur. Mom and Dad talked about Daniel like he was on vacation. I nodded at the right moments, pretending to chew, pretending to exist. My parents floated through denial like it was oxygen. Maybe they had to. Maybe they couldn't afford to see the horror living under their roof, wearing my boyfriend's smile.
That night, I went through Roman's old messages. Hundreds of them. "You're safe because I love you." "You only exist when I see you." "If you run, I'll find you." Each word was a chain link. And I'd worn every one of them willingly.
Until now.
Then—my phone buzzed. A new message. No contact name, but I didn't need one.
A photo.
Daniel sleeping. His small hand gripping the edge of his blanket. His hair messy from dreams. In the corner of the frame, a shadow. Roman's shadow.
Below it, a text:
"You forget who you belong to, and he doesn't wake up."
My heart stopped. Then restarted too fast, like it was trying to outrun the words.
I could taste metal in my mouth. The room spun in slow motion. I wanted to scream, to throw the phone, to erase the image from existence—but my body wouldn't move. Roman's voice filled my head again, low and tender: See? I keep what's mine safe.
My fingers shook as I typed back—something stupid, something small like please. But before I could send it, the typing bubble appeared. Then vanished. Then appeared again.
And then, another message:"You're not allowed to miss me yet."
The world tilted. I pressed my palm to my throat. The bruise pulsed, faintly warm, like it was answering some invisible signal.
He's not gone. He's closer.
I dropped my phone. The clatter made me jump. For a moment, I thought I saw a shadow move in the corner of my room—a flicker, quick and deliberate. My rational brain whispered lighting trick. My instincts hissed Roman.
When I finally crawled into bed, the silence felt sentient. Watching. Listening. The air was too still, too careful. Even the house seemed afraid to creak.
Sleep came in shards.
In my dream, I was back at Crestwood High, only the halls were empty and dripping. Fluorescent lights hummed like insects. My reflection in the trophy case turned its head before I did, smiling with Roman's mouth. "You didn't think it'd be that easy, did you?" it said. "You think absence means safety?"
I woke gasping, drenched in sweat, my bedsheet twisted around my legs like restraints.
The bruise burned again, faint but insistent.
He's not gone, it whispered. He's closer than ever.
The room looked the same, but something had shifted. My mirror faced the wrong way. My window, usually cracked open, was shut tight. The scent of his cologne—smoke and something sharp—hung in the air like memory refusing to die.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell someone. But who believes the girl who stayed? The one who said, He loves me. He just gets intense.
So I lay there, heart pounding, pretending not to notice the faint indentation on my bedsheet beside me. The place where someone might have sat. The place that still felt warm.
Outside, a car door slammed. My breath hitched. I waited for footsteps, for his voice curling through the dark like smoke. Nothing came.
The silence laughed at me.
I stared at the ceiling until morning bled through the blinds. When my alarm went off, I almost laughed too. School again. Pretend again. Survive again.
The bruise on my neck had darkened overnight, almost black now, like a stormcloud trapped under skin. The mark of a promise he never needed to say out loud.
He doesn't vanish. He evolves.
Roman had always been good at disappearing without leaving. He didn't need to haunt houses when he could haunt people. And I was his favorite ghost.
When I finally left for school, I looked back once, half-expecting to see him leaning against the gate, smiling that sharp smile that made every part of me flinch. But there was only the wind.
Still, I felt him—inside the space where fear and memory overlap. In the quiet moments between heartbeats. In the echo of my own footsteps.
Roman wasn't gone.
He was just learning new ways to stay.
And I was learning new ways to break beautifully.
Author's Note:
Roman may have ghosted, but let's be honest—guys like that don't disappear. They just respawn as cautionary tales and emotional support demons. Ashley's out here doing her homework while spiritually possessed by bad decisions and an even worse ex.
And me? I'm sitting here like, "What if we make trauma sound like poetry and call it character development?"
Anyway, if someone ever says, "You're mine," just remember—you're not a coupon, you're a human. Rip up the receipt and run. Preferably into therapy, or at least into a group chat that loves you.
Stay hydrated. Stay haunted. Stay unclaimed.– Vaanni 🖤