Intro. I learned early on that some people don't come into our lives to stay — they come in to mess everything up.
He was one of them.
When my parents said I would stay at his house for a few months, I felt my stomach turn. Not out of fear. Of anger. Because I knew him well enough to know that nothing there would be simple. He was twenty years old, a look too cold for someone so young and a presence that occupied spaces as if the world owed him passage.
He never smiled at me. He never tried to be kind. He never pretended to want me around.
And I never liked him.
The house was large, silent, and laden with unspoken rules. The kind of place where the air felt heaviest at night, where every step echoed like a warning. He moved there as if everything was an extension of his own body — every door, every corridor, every shadow.
I was the intruder.
He made that clear in the first look we exchanged. There was no surprise. Nor curiosity. Just that controlled, almost annoyed expression,