Part 60
(Alex's POV)
She wasn't looking for him when the news appeared; it simply found her, the way everything about him always did.
A fan account reposted a picture: Adrian's car slipping through a toll gate outside the city, timestamped that morning.
The caption read, "He's back."
Alex stared at it for a long time, the glow of the screen flickering across her face.
For weeks she'd lived in the rhythm of digital echoes—rumors, guesses, traces of his life in lowercase letters.
Now the noise condensed into one clear tone.
He came back.
Her pulse steadied. The tension that had been scattered in all directions began to draw inward, quiet and heavy.
The plan had worked faster than she expected.
Or maybe he'd simply reached the point she always knew he would: the need to reclaim his story.
She opened her notebook, the one she used for the details that never appeared online.
Pages of handwriting met her—dates, locations, press schedules, habits remembered from another time.
She added a single line beneath the last entry:
Returned. 14:05. Apartment lights on.
Her pen didn't shake this time.
She closed the book carefully, almost tenderly, and leaned back in her chair.
Outside, the afternoon light shifted across the walls of her small room, thin and golden.
In that light she let herself smile—small, restrained, nothing like triumph.
He's facing it now, she thought. He wants to make the noise stop. He'll look for the source.
She turned her phone facedown, letting the hum of the city through the window mix with her breathing.
She didn't need to chase anything tonight.
All she had to do was wait for him to find what she had already left behind.