My head drops, eyes fixed on the puddles bleeding into the concrete around my shoes. The laces are frayed, the tips soaked dark with rainwater. I can’t bring myself to move. My breath stutters out of me, uneven, and then it happens, one tear slips free. It burns hot against the cold.
I wish death could take me.
I’m so tired.
The words circle inside me like a curse, looping and looping until they’re all I know. Tired of fighting. Tired of carrying everything alone. Tired of hoping for something better only to end up back here again in the same storm, in the same silence.
The rain thickens, turning the city into a blur of smeared lights—gold, red, white, all bleeding together like the whole world is melting. And I let it. Let it pour into my clothes, into my skin. Let it soak through me until maybe there’s nothing left. Let it wash me away.
Then, suddenly, it stops.
Not the rain. Just… on me.
I blink, slow and disoriented. It takes a moment to understand.
An umbrella.
Held steady over my head.
My heart jerks. My eyes follow the line of the handle—long fingers, pale and elegant around it. My chest tightens. Against my will, my gaze drifts upward.
He looks too real for a hallucination, but I almost want to believe my mind is playing tricks on me. Because why him? Why summon him now, out of all people? Why would I want him here, of all the ghosts I could’ve imagined?
But he’s no ghost. The rain slicks his dark hair back in damp waves, beads of water running down the sharp lines of his face. His coat clings to his broad frame, heavy and dark, speckled with droplets, but his expression is untouched. Composed. Steady in a way that cuts through the chaos around us.
And then—those eyes.
Cold, crystalline blue. Ocean deep. Icy and merciless and yet, somehow, not cruel. They lock onto me like they can see too much, like they could pry open my ribs and pull out every secret I’ve ever tried to bury.
My chest tightens until I can’t breathe.
I haven’t seen him since the exhibition. Since the night he said my name, since the night I used my voice with him, sharp words I didn’t even mean. I haven’t spoken to anyone in years, not with my voice. The only exception is Tyler, and even then, it’s rare, strained, broken. I had almost convinced myself Alexander was nothing more than a strange, fleeting moment in a night I should’ve forgotten.
But now… standing in front of me in the rain, looking at me like this… I know it wasn’t fleeting. The world hums with rain.But between us, there’s silence—loud, unbearable silence. And then, finally, he speaks.
“Come with me.”
I can’t hear him, but I don’t need to. The shape of his lips is clear enough. I should say no. I know I should. Step back, shake my head, turn away. Protect myself before I get pulled into something I can’t escape. But I don’t.
Maybe it’s exhaustion. Maybe it’s the quiet resignation that’s been weighing on me all night, the same whisper that told me to just let the rain take me, to stop fighting. Maybe he’s the death that is here to carry me, or maybe it’s something, something I can’t name: that strange pull I feel toward him, the one that’s been clawing at the edges of my thoughts since the first night I saw him.
I’ve tried to bury it. Tried to tell myself he isn’t real, that he’s dangerous, that whatever this is—it’s something I should never let myself fall into.
I do not understand it. I do not understand this.
So I nod tiredly, feeling numb.
He doesn’t even look surprised. Not even a flicker of hesitation. Like he knows I’d give in. Like he knew all along that whatever this gravity is between us, I wouldn’t resist it.
He reaches out, his fingers brushing mine before he takes my hand entirely.
Warm. Solid. Real.
I let him.
And for the first time all day, for the first time in longer than I can remember—I don’t feel like I’m drowning.
SEVEN
