Raina's POV
The first knock dies in the air, but its echo stays.
The second one is softer — but it hits deeper.
Precise.
Timed.
Familiar.
I stand perfectly still in the middle of my living room.
The yellow lamp hums faintly in the corner.
The black rose on the table catches that light and glows dark, as if it's absorbing every drop of warmth this room ever had.
I can't move for a moment.
My body is listening.
Every instinct is whispering the same thing: don't.
But another voice, quieter, older, the one I trained to sound logical, tells me that fear is irrational.
That I'm safe.
That I'm not twenty-four anymore.
That this is my Beverly Hills apartment, not that old December apartment where blood smelled like metal and time stopped breathing.
Still, my legs feel like lead.
The sound of my pulse grows louder than the knock itself.
I force myself to inhale, slow, through my nose.
Exhale.
Steady.
It doesn't help.
The air feels heavier now, like it's thick with static.
My fingertips tingle.
I take one step forward.
The floor creaks — a small, betraying sound that echoes in the stillness.
I stop again.
Another knock.
Gentle.
Measured.
Exactly the same rhythm as before.
He used to knock like that, years ago.
Even when he was angry.
Even when he was pretending not to be.
A rhythm that said I already know you'll open the door.
I squeeze my eyes shut and tell myself to stop imagining.
But the past is not a ghost.
The past is muscle memory.
I start walking again, slow, each footstep deliberate, as if I'm counting down to something inevitable.
The hallway stretches longer than usual.
The framed photos on the wall blur as I pass them, like my vision refuses to focus on the present.
All I can hear now is breath, mine, uneven, shallow.
When I reach the door, I stop inches away.
The silver handle catches a sliver of yellow light.
My reflection stares back at me from the peephole, distorted, warped.
I lift my hand.
My palm hovers above the handle, not touching yet.
And then it begins.
The air changes.
The temperature drops.
Somewhere deep in my body, memory pulls the emergency switch.
The room shifts.
Suddenly, the yellow lamp isn't in the corner anymore.
It's December again.
The same smell, faint burnt wood and smoke, fills my nose.
The same silence after the last scream.
I can hear the wind outside, hitting the old balcony door of my previous apartment.
That door never closed properly. It used to rattle when the wind pushed hard.
I blink, but I'm not in Beverly Hills now.
I'm standing in that old living room.
Tiny. Dim.
Walls a shade of off-white that always looked dirty no matter how much I cleaned.
The faint scent of chai from the morning.
A flickering tube light.
The sound of my own voice shaking.
"Please—just go—please—"
He was angry that night.
Not shouting.
Not violent at first.
Just angry in that quiet way that men are when they think they've been made small.
We fought.
He accused.
I defended.
Then the gun —
No.
Stop.
I don't want to see it again.
But my mind doesn't ask permission.
It shows me anyway.
The gunshot.
The flash.
The noise that split the air like lightning through my chest.
And then that voice — calm, steady, detached — a voice that didn't belong in that chaos.
"Rai."
The same way he said it in the video.
The same way he said it in my clinic.
The same way it's echoing now through the door.
"Rai."
My eyes fly open.
I'm back in my Beverly Hills hallway.
But I can't breathe.
I can't move.
The door handle is cold beneath my fingers, real, grounding, but my heart is somewhere else entirely.
The lamp behind me flickers once, a tiny electric pulse, and in that split second of darkness I see his face again, not as memory, not as imagination, but as if he's standing right behind the door.
Hazel eyes.
Calm expression.
Southern drawl waiting behind lips that never tremble.
He's not shouting my name.
He's not begging.
He's not threatening.
He's just calling it.
"Rai."
The syllable slides under my skin like a blade dipped in honey.
My knees almost buckle.
The handle slips from my hand.
No sound after that.
No footsteps.
No movement.
Just silence.
I press my ear to the door, slow, careful, terrified of what I might or might not hear.
Nothing.
Only my own breathing, ragged and uneven.
My palm flattens against the wood.
The surface is cool, solid, unyielding, but it feels alive, like something is breathing on the other side.
Another whisper.
Same tone.
Same precision.
"Rai."
This time it's quieter.
Almost tender.
And that's what terrifies me most.
Because tenderness from him was never safety.
It was always the calm before the next storm.
I pull my hand back slowly, as if touching the door any longer might pull me through it, back into that December, back into the blood, the smoke, the sound that still rings inside my head like a bell that never stopped echoing.
My vision blurs.
Tears mix with the cold air.
I don't even wipe them.
I step backward once, still staring at the door — every nerve in my body waiting, listening.
But no more sound comes.
Not a word.
Not a breath.
Not another knock.
Just my heart, beating like it's trying to remember how to survive the same night twice.
I whisper to myself, voice cracked and almost gone:
"He can't be here. He can't."
But I already know the truth.
He is.
Because he always finds me when December does.
And it's December again.