"Kate…"

I whisper her name to myself, like a broken prayer.

An impossible wish, a wound that never heals. I don’t have the courage to tell her how I feel, and I’m not even sure if what I feel is love. Maybe it’s just obsession, or need, or maybe only loneliness dressed up in something cleaner. But not the way she believes. She thinks I'm a good guy, someone noble, someone who looks after her. Her adoptive uncle’s protégé, her vulnerable charge, her silent shadow. She’ll never know that every time she looks at me, something inside me dies because I can't have her — because I can't be the man I truly want to be.

Bitterly, I remember the last time I saw her. It was two weeks ago, maybe longer — I’ve stopped keeping track.

——🩶🐺🩶——

Suddenly, the moon appears, emerging from behind the clouds like a cold, inquisitive eye watching everything about to unfold. Its silver light spreads across the beach, covering everything in a tense, heavy silence. The sea churns restlessly, as if it kno