He was silent for a long time.
"Why do you stay?" he asked. "You talk about this place like it's a war zone. You're a protector, Rowan. I see the way you look at Julian. I see the way you look at the door. So why stay in a place that's trying to eat you?"
I reached for my glass and stopped. He was looking at me with that unguarded honesty he carried everywhere, and I couldn't lie to it.
"Because I did something here I can't undo," I said. "Leaving feels like running from it. And in Hollow Vale, if you run, the thing you're running from just grows bigger in the rearviewmirror. I'd rather be here, where I can see it. Where I can stand between it and the people who don't know how to fight yet."
Oleander just nodded. He reached out, his hand hovering near mine on the bar, not touching but close enough that I could feel the static of his presence.
"Okay," he said. "I understand staying for the ghosts. I think I'm doing the same thing."
We sat in that silence until the music from the corner stopped. Julian had finished his set.
Julian slid onto the stool on my other side. For a moment, the three of us sat in a line, and the tension between us shifted into something I couldn't name.
"You played the melody again," Oleander said, turning to Julian. His voice was soft.
"It wouldn't let me play anything else," Julian replied. He reached over and took a sip of my rye. "It's louder tonight. I think it likes that you're here, Oleander. I think it's trying to introduce itself."
"That's a terrifying way to put it," Oleander said, but he smiled. It was small and fragile, but it was there.
The door opened again and Theo came in, his camera bag swinging against his hip. He saw us and headed straight for the bar, sliding onto the stool next to Oleander. He looked at the three of us, his amber eyes bright.
"Well, look at us," Theo said, a nervous smirk playing on his lips. "The four horsemen of the local apocalypse, all lined up and ready for a drink."
Oleander laughed. A real, genuine sound that cut through the gloom of the bar. It was so unexpected that I turned to stare at him. His face opened up when he laughed, and for a second he looked like a completely different person.
Julian caught me looking. Under the bar, his knee pressed against mine and I pressed back.
"So," Theo said, leaning forward to catch my eye. "Are we actually going to get a drink, or are we just going to sit here and look atmospheric? Because I've got film to develop and a very strong urge to celebrate whatever the hell this is."
"It's a disaster, Theo," I said, finally picking up my glass.
"The best kind of disaster," Oleander murmured, his eyes meeting mine.
I raised my glass and took a long drink. Julian's hand found the small of my back before he turned to talk to Theo. The four of us sat there in the dim light of the bar, and for the first time since Oleander had arrived in this town, the silence between us felt like something worth keeping.
fifteen
OLEANDER
Rowan had leaned over the bar and told me the address. He didn't ask if I was free. He didn't ask if I was ready. He simply stated that I should be there at eight, then turned away to finish a conversation with a regular that I hadn't even noticed was happening.
I stood on the sidewalk outside their building. The fog was sitting heavy and low, hugging the base of the Victorian rowhouses. I expected a confrontation.
When Rowan opened the door, the air that hit me was cool and smelled faintly of cedar and rain. The apartment was a shock of white space and hard lines, monastic, almost startlingly sparse for a man as physically loud as Rowan. A bed in the corner,neatly made with dark grey linens. A table with three chairs. Books stacked in towers against the far wall, organized by height rather than subject.
"You're exactly on time," Rowan said. He wasn't wearing a shirt, just a pair of dark trousers that hung low on his hips, his skin a map of scars and muscle. He stood there, waiting for me to choose to walk past him.
I stepped into the room. Julian was sitting on the kitchen counter, his long legs dangling, a book open in his lap. He didn't look up immediately, but the set of his shoulders was relaxed, making it clear this wasn't a secret meeting.
Rowan closed the door and the click of the latch felt final. He walked into the center of the room and looked at me. "We aren't going to dance around this, Oleander. I don't have the patience for it, and Julian doesn't have the stomach for it."
"Dance around what?" I asked, though the answer was already burning in the back of my throat. Julian raised his head. His dark eyes were calm, but there was a weariness there that mirrored my own.
"I want you," Rowan said. He said it like he was reporting the weather. "I want you in this bed. I want you in this life. And I want you knowing that Julian knows exactly what I'm saying. I want you knowing that Theo is already halfway under your skin, too. I don't do things halfway, and I don't do them in the dark."
I thought of the notebook hidden under my mattress. I thought of the shadows in my apartment and the cologne that clung to the curtains. Rowan was offering transparency and I was built out of half-truths.
