Janet sighed when someone leaned down and whispered in Torie’s ear. Torie looked up just in time to see Tosh lay his hand on another woman’s thigh. He hadn’t grieved long.
“Why does she let him do that?” Cass whispered.
“Because she’s in love with him,” Harmony answered.
“With Tosh?”
“With theideaof him,” Harmony said. “Different addictions. Same ending.”
Tosh’s gaze drifted across the bar and found Harmony’s. For one brief moment, she saw sorrow there, raw and unguarded. He blinked, and it vanished, leaving something else in its place. Guilt, maybe. But guilt for what? Before she could decide, the blonde beside him tugged his attention back, and the moment broke.
Mario leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, watching the room with a gentle smile that reached his eyes. You never knew what he was thinking. That was part of his charm.
“You ladies good?” he asked.
“Always,” Cass said brightly. She was faking it. Cass refused to live inside sadness for long; if it got too close, she outran it with glitter and jokes.
Mario chuckled. “Good. Stay that way. The island’s restless tonight.”
As he spoke, Harmony caught a flash of tan and green near Serpentine Wall, a deputy pausing just long enough to scan the bar before moving away. She couldn’t tell which one it was. Lately, the uniforms seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once.
Candy was singing again, barefoot, swaying like she could outdance her own heartbeat. Her voice cracked beautifully on the high notes. When she finished, Tosh applauded first, smiling too brightly.
Torie didn’t clap at all. Janet murmured something, trying to soothe her, but Torie’s eyes stayed locked on Candy, betrayal and exhaustion written all over her features. Janet’s expression held sympathy and resignation; there was only so much she could do for a friend determined to break herself.
Torie turned at last, her gaze catching Harmony’s.
“Why are you always studying us like microbes on a slide?” she asked while swirling her drink. Her eyeliner was smudged like she’d been crying most of the day.
Harmony offered a small, empathetic smile and didn’t bother denying it. “Someone needs to capture the chaos.”
“Do you capture it,” Torie asked, “or control it?”
“I don’t want to control anyone,” Harmony said. “I just write what I see and hope I can make the moment last.”
Torie shook her head and turned away.
After a while, the noise became too much. Harmony slipped out of Luau Larry’s without anyone noticing. They were too wrapped up in their own storms. Before the murder, a person could disappear in Avalon without fear. Now, every shadow felt like a choice.
She passed a couple near the alley, faces close, their voices low and urgent. Harmony paused, waiting for the argument to erupt. Instead, the woman laughed and threw her arms around the man, her new engagement ring flashing in the light.
Harmony blinked, shaken by how wrong she’d read the situation. It wasn’t often she misjudged people. Being unsettled enough to doubt her instincts scared her more than she wanted to admit. She’d already lost too much; she couldn’t lose the way she saw the world, too.
She walked a long stretch of quiet streets in The Flats before she found Zach working on a deck by lantern light. Dirt and sweat clung to him like part of his uniform. His movements were slow and deliberate.
“You’re working late,” she said.
He didn’t look up right away. “It’s calmer at night,” he said. “Most people are asleep.” A beat. “Or they pretend to be.”
His gaze flicked past her shoulder into the darkness beyond the lantern’s reach, like he was making sure they were truly alone.
“Do you ever tire of fixing things?” she asked.
He smiled faintly. “Things break. It’s what I do.”
Her eyes dropped to his hands—rough, strong, scarred—with fresh scratches near the knuckles. The skin was reddened in a way that saidrecent. A tool? A fall? Or something else? When he flexed his fingers, the tendons jumped as if he’d strained them.
“That looks painful.”
