“Instead, the road felt tighter now, the headboard pressing in, the comforter heavy, as if the island itself were closing its grip.”

Between those two anchors—the mountain’s unyielding spine to his right and the ocean’s slow, breathing mass to his left—he should have felt held, like he belonged here, cradled in a narrow seam the island kept sacred between earth and water. Instead, the road felt tighter now, the headboard pressing in, the comforter heavy, as if the island itself were closing its grip. If the big city was his hell, Waimānalo had always been his heaven. But not tonight. Tonight, fear coiled tight. Not of the dark—of what might be using it.