The Counting - JaiLynne Marie

How many times can you count before you lose control?

For thirty years, she has lived by numbers.

One lock for safety.
Two locks for security.
Four breaths in. Four held. Four out.

Control is survival.

In a quiet farmhouse tucked between fields and creek, her life is carefully ordered-predictable, contained, safe. Until the night she hears it.

Tink.

A single tap against the window.

By morning, a white rock waits outside.

One rock means he's there.

It shouldn't be possible.
He's been gone for decades.
Dead-according to the only proof she ever had.

But then there are two rocks.
Then three.

Each one a message she hasn't forgotten.
Each one dragging her back into a past she barely escaped.

As the numbers climb, so does the terror-and the certainty that someone is watching, waiting, counting.

But she is not the same girl who once followed those rules.

This time, she will not run.
This time, she will not obey.

This time... she will finish the count.