The Rituals (Her POV)

...Character Introduction...

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...Name: Isabella Everhart...

...Age : 20 years old...

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...In...

...New york city...

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The winters never felt the same after that night.

Sometimes she told herself she was imagining it — the weight of eyes on her back, the faint hum of footsteps that fell into rhythm with her own before vanishing, the pull of silence thick enough to choke her in empty streets. But no amount of logic quieted the truth that lived in her bones. For five years now, a presence had been stitched into her life, patient and unrelenting, like a shadow she could never peel away.

Every birthday reminded her she wasn’t wrong.

That morning, snow drifted in lazy spirals past her window, the world outside hushed in white. She lay in bed long after waking, staring at the ceiling, already knowing what waited on the other side of her door. The anticipation was worse than the discovery itself. Her breath dragged, shallow, as she finally pushed herself up. She dressed slowly, hands trembling as she buttoned her sweater, as though buying time might make the ritual disappear.

It never did.

She paused at the door, palm hovering over the knob. For a moment, she thought she heard the soft echo of someone’s steps retreating down the stairwell. Her skin prickled, and her heart raced with the painful certainty that whoever had been here was gone only seconds before. She opened the door.

There it was.

A bouquet.

Always the same placement — not tossed or leaned carelessly, but set against the doorframe with quiet precision, as though it had been cradled into place. White lilies and red roses, bound together in paper so soft it looked like skin. No ribbon. No card. No note. Only the flowers, stark and silent against the gray hallway.

Her knees weakened. She crouched, fingers ghosting over the petals, cold from the winter air. They were always fresh, always perfect, as though chosen with the devotion of a lover. She swallowed hard. Different apartments, different addresses, yet the bouquets had never failed to find her. Every birthday morning, as though her life was marked on his calendar.

Her friends laughed about it. Teased her. Called it romantic. A mysterious admirer, too shy or too poetic to reveal himself. She forced laughter each time, even played along, because it was easier than telling them the truth — that the flowers filled her not with warmth but with dread. That when she carried them inside, her hands shook, and when she placed them in a vase, she could almost feel his breath on her skin.

The vase waited for her, like it always did. She hated herself for keeping one ready, as though she had resigned to this ritual, surrendered to its inevitability. She slid the stems into the water, the dark liquid creeping up the stalks. The lilies bent slightly, their white blooms glowing in the dim light of her kitchen. The roses bled crimson against them, a violent sort of beauty.

It wasn’t just the flowers.

It was the other things. The moments that convinced her she wasn’t crazy.

The same dark coat glimpsed at the far end of a crowded street.

Footsteps that stilled the second she turned her head.

The faint trace of cologne lingering on a stairwell she had just climbed.

The shadow in a window across from hers that vanished when she dared to look too long.

He was always there. Always waiting.

Her throat tightened. The words came out before she could stop them, whispered into the still air of her apartment:

“Why won’t you leave me alone?”

Silence. As always. But silence from him was louder than any answer.

She lifted a lily to her nose. Its fragrance seeped deep, cloying and heavy. Shame flared hot beneath her skin, because even now — even after five years of this ritual — some small, traitorous part of her still wondered. Still ached. Why her? What did he see in her that chained him so tightly? What did he want after all this time?

And most terrifying of all — why did she still remember his eyes from that snowy night? Dark, electric, almost tender. Eyes that had looked at her like she was something to be kept.

Her lips parted. Her whisper was softer this time, almost a confession.

“I know you’re there. I always know.”

Across the street, just beyond the drifting curtain of snow, a man in a dark coat stood. Motionless. Patient. He lingered only long enough to see her silhouette framed in the window, her head bent toward the flowers. Long enough to drink in the sight of her whispering to no one.

Then he turned. Not hurried, not guilty — deliberate, unhurried, as though he owned the moment. The snow swallowed him as he vanished into the white, leaving nothing behind but the bouquet on her counter, glowing like a secret, like a promise.

A promise that one day, when the moment was right, he would no longer remain unseen.

And deep inside, though her body trembled, she feared she already knew what that moment would feel like.

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