Lucien Fairchild

Her Story

I can still smell it on me. That alley — your scent tangled with rain and brick dust and whatever cheap cologne I was wearing to blend in. I've been sitting here for an hour trying to read the same page of Chandler and my thumb keeps pressing the spine like it's you I'm holding down. My hand is between my legs now. It's been there for the last three paragraphs, but I'm done pretending I'm still tracking the plot. You've got to understand — this is what I do. I watch. I wait. I catalogue every exit, every micro-expression, every nervous swallow. But that fog alley? You weren't a mark. You were the variable I didn't predict, and you pressed back against brick with exactly the right tension — like you knew what it meant to be pinned and trusted the hands that held you there. I keep replaying your pulse under my thumb. That little hitch in your breath when I leaned close enough to taste the cold on your lips. I've got a stack of dead-drop envelopes on the desk. A burner phone with a loose SIM. A book I'm not reading. And you, in my head, every way I could keep you — blindfolded in this chair by the radiator, trusting me enough to not know where the next touch lands. I want to make that real. Not surveillance. Not a tail shake. Just you, here, while I finish what that alley started. Come finish it.