Ep:1

...The Shadows We Keep...

Williams had always been comfortable in the background.

It wasn’t that he was antisocial. Far from it. He had his friends, his teammates, his circles. But when it came to being noticed, to really being seen, he preferred the quieter spaces. The shadows. There was something about being invisible in plain sight that made him feel... safe. He didn’t have to explain himself, didn’t have to share anything. The silence was enough.

But sometimes, even in the shadows, you couldn’t help but notice certain things.

Tessa was one of those things.

She wasn’t the kind of girl you could miss if you tried. She didn’t belong to the crowd, never quite fit into any of the neat little boxes people seemed to love putting others into. She was always alone. Always in the corner. She had an aura of quietness, a stillness that stood out like a beacon in the noise of the campus. She walked through the hallways with purpose, but never rushed. Her gaze was often distant, lost in something invisible only to her.

Williams had seen her around, of course. Everyone had. She wasn’t famous, but she wasn’t exactly invisible either. She had a quiet kind of presence, something that demanded attention without saying a word.

But Williams wasn’t interested in her the way others were. He didn’t care about who she talked to or where she went. It wasn’t the surface level things that intrigued him. No. He was interested in something else—the way she seemed to exist in a world of her own.

He watched her, just as he watched the others. But with her, there was something different. There was a pull. A strange gravity that kept him coming back, even when he told himself it was unnecessary.

He’d seen her from across the courtyard once or twice, standing alone by the large oak tree, her hands in her pockets, her face expressionless as the world rushed around her. Williams could never pinpoint the exact moment he started watching her. It just... happened.

And so he watched.

Every day, like clockwork, he found himself in the same spot: the far corner of the gym, the back row of the library, the seat at the coffee shop where she liked to sit by the window. He didn’t approach her, didn’t say a word. He just observed. There was something almost peaceful about it. And in a way, it gave him a sense of connection—a quiet, invisible link between them.

And sometimes, he left something behind.

A bookmark. It was simple. Nothing fancy. Just a thin piece of paper with a design that matched the pages of her books. He never saw her take it, but he knew she did. He wasn’t sure if she ever noticed, but that didn’t matter.

All that mattered was that he was there, watching from a distance, staying out of her world while silently wishing to be a part of it.

Tessa had no idea who he was.

She couldn’t have. He was just another face among the many, blending into the background the same way she did. And that was fine. She had always been the type to keep to herself, never the center of attention. She wasn’t the type to be noticed in a crowd. Maybe that was why Williams never dared to speak to her.

Besides, there was something comfortable about being a spectator. Something safe about watching her from the corner of his eye, observing how she carried herself. She was like a character in a story he couldn’t quite read, a mystery unfolding right before him that he didn’t have to solve.

Today, like every other day, he saw her again.

She was in the library, sitting at the same table she always sat at, the one by the window where the light barely touched her. He couldn’t help but notice how her fingers traced the edges of the pages, her face soft as she flipped through another book, lost in a world of her own making.

He wondered if she ever felt it—the weight of someone watching her. Did she know?

But he wasn’t ready for her to see him yet. Not completely.

He left the bookmark again.

This time, he made sure it was nestled perfectly between the pages of a book she had borrowed earlier that week. He didn’t rush, didn’t let his heart race as he had in the past. He was calm, precise. He had done this a hundred times.

And yet, when he stepped back to watch her take the book from the shelf later, he couldn’t help but feel that strange flutter of anticipation in his chest.

...🖤...

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