The day I was finally going to meet my brother Caleb’s fiancée, I was kinda nervous. My brother has always been the “golden boy,” and his standards are impossibly high. But once I got to his place with my boyfriend, Luke, I started to relax. Luke has that effect on people—he’s charming, steady, and always knows exactly what to say to make me feel like the only person in the room.
We were all joking around in the living room when Rachel walked in—and immediately dropped the plate of pasta she was holding. Like, full-on crash. Shards of ceramic and marinara sauce sprayed across the hardwood. She scrambled to clean it up and kept apologizing, but something felt… off.
At dinner, the atmosphere was brittle. Rachel’s hands were shaking so hard her fork kept clicking against her teeth. She looked at Luke, her eyes searching his face for something I couldn’t identify. Then, she cleared her throat.
“Luke… don’t you look familiar?” she murmured. “I think I knew you back in—”
Luke cut her off real quick. “I have one of those faces, Rachel. I get that a lot.” His voice was smooth, but his grip on his wine glass was so tight his knuckles were white.
Weird, right? Then she “accidentally” spilled iced tea on my lap. I went to the bathroom to clean up, and she followed me, locking the door behind her. I decided to just ask: “How do you know Luke?”
She looked me dead in the eyes and whispered, “RUN FROM HIM. PLEASE.” I stared at her, confused. “What? Rachel, you’re scaring me. He’s my boyfriend.”
Her eyes were wide and full of genuine, bone-deep fear. “Get away from him,” she said again, this time serious as hell. “He isn’t ‘Luke.’ His name is Mark, and he—”
Suddenly, the door handle rattled. Then came a heavy thud. Luke was in the hallway. He immediately began pounding on the door, his voice muffled but dripping with a forced, terrifying calmness. “Honey? Is everything okay in there? Rachel is being a bit clumsy today, isn’t she? Let me in so I can help you clean up.”
Rachel grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my skin. “There’s a window,” she hissed, pointing to the small frosted glass pane above the toilet. “Go. Now. If he sees us talking, he’ll know I told you.”
“Told me what?” I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
“He doesn’t leave survivors,” she breathed. “I barely got away three years ago. I changed my name. I moved states. I thought I was safe with Caleb.”
The pounding on the door stopped. Silence is always worse than noise. I heard Luke’s footsteps retreat, then the sound of him talking to my brother in the kitchen. “Caleb, man, I think the girls are having a moment. Why don’t we go check out that vintage car in the garage you mentioned?”
Rachel’s face went pale. “He’s getting Caleb away from the house. He’s going to come back for us.”
I didn’t wait for another word. I scrambled onto the vanity, kicked out the screen, and wriggled through the narrow window. I tumbled into the damp mulch of the flowerbed outside, gasping for air. Seconds later, Rachel tumbled out behind me. We didn’t head for the cars—Luke had the keys. We ran for the woods behind the property.
As we crouched in the shadows of the treeline, I watched the house. The kitchen light went out. Then the porch light. A few minutes later, the back door opened.
Luke stepped out. He wasn’t the man I’d spent the last six months with. His posture was different—cold, predatory. He held a heavy flashlight in one hand and something long and metallic in the other. He didn’t call my name. He didn’t sound worried. He just started walking toward the woods, whistling a low, tuneless melody.
“He found my old journals,” Rachel whispered, her voice trembling. “That’s how he found me. He didn’t date you because he loved you. He dated you to get to my brother. To get to me.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket. A text from Luke.
“I can see your reflection in the stream, sweetheart. Don’t make this difficult. Rachel is a liar. Come back to the house and we can talk about this like adults.”
I looked at the stream. There was no reflection. He was bluffing, trying to flush us out.
We waited until he drifted deeper into the brush, then doubled back toward the driveway. My pulse was a deafening roar. We reached Caleb’s truck just as the garage door creaked open. Caleb walked out, looking confused, holding a toolbox.
“Caleb! Get in the car!” I screamed.
He looked at me, then at Rachel’s tear-streaked face. He didn’t ask questions. He saw the terror and reacted. We piled into the truck, and as the engine roared to life, the headlights swept across the edge of the yard.
Luke was standing there. He didn’t run. He didn’t hide. He just stood in the center of the beam, staring at us with a blank, empty expression. As we sped away, I looked in the side mirror. He was simply watching the taillights fade, as if he knew this wasn’t the end.
The police found “Luke’s” apartment empty the next morning. It was scrubbed clean—no fingerprints, no DNA, no personal photos. The name Luke Miller belonged to a man who had died in a car accident five years prior.
I’m staying at a safe house now with Rachel and Caleb. We don’t stay in one room for long. Sometimes, when the wind rattles the windowpanes at night, I think I hear that tuneless whistling.
Rachel was right. I ran. But I don’t think I’ll ever stop running.
