The silence that answered was worse than any sound. There was no sigh, no movement, no cold touch on my neck. Just the awareness of being watched by something that didn't need eyes to see me.
A sharp buzz against my thigh made me jump so hard my knees hit the underside of the keyboard. My phone. The screen was a blinding white rectangle in the gloom. Rowan:Where are you?
I looked back over my shoulder. The dark corner behind the piano where the presence had felt most suffocating was empty. Stacked chairs and an empty mop bucket. But the air still felt occupied, like a room that had just been vacated by a crowd.
I stood up, my legs unsteady. I grabbed my coat and moved toward the door, fumbling with the locks, my hands shaking so badly the keys chimed against the metal. When I stepped out into the night, the fog swallowed me whole.
I walked fast, my boots striking the pavement in a hollow rhythm. I reached up and gripped the pendant around my neck. It was warm, warmer than it should have been.
Rowan was still awake when I got home. He was sitting in the dark of the living room, his shape barely visible against the window. He didn't ask where I'd been. He saw my face and stood up.
"It happened again," I said. I sat on the arm of the sofa because my legs wouldn't carry me any further. "The melody took over. I couldn't stop playing it. And then something was behind me, Rowan. Standing right behind me. I could feel it breathing."
"Did you see it?"
"I didn't look." My hands were still trembling. I pressed them flat against my thighs. "I could smell it. That cologne. The one that follows Oleander. It was in the bar, right behind me, and it was so strong I could taste it."
Rowan crossed the room and crouched in front of me, his hands covering mine. His grip was warm and steady and I held onto it like it was the only real thing left in the world.
"It's getting bolder," he said.
"It's not just getting bolder," I said. "It's learning. The melody changes every time I play it. It's adding notes, Rowan. It's composing through me. Whatever Dominic left in this town, it's not just haunting. It's building something."
Rowan didn't say anything for a long time. He just stayed there, his hands on mine, his eyes on my face, the quiet of our apartment holding us both.
"We need to talk to Oleander," he said finally. "All of us. No more waiting."
eighteen
OLEANDER
The hallway was narrow, the air inside Rowan and Julian's apartment smelling of cedar and old paper. I stood at the threshold, my hand still gripping the brass key in my pocket. It wasn't the whiskey talking this time. There wasn't a drop of it in my system, which made the vulnerability feel like a raw nerve.
Julian was the one who opened the door. He didn't look surprised to see me, though his dark eyes held a weary kind of recognition. He stepped back and gestured for me to enter.
"He's waiting for you," Julian said, nodding toward the bed in the far corner.
I walked past him, my arm brushing his sleeve. I expected him to close the door and leave, to seek the sanctuary of the bar or thestreets, but he simply walked toward the kitchen. He didn't close the bedroom door as I passed it. He left it wide, an invitation or a witness, I wasn't sure which.
Rowan was sitting on the edge of the bed, his broad back a wall of solid muscle against the pale light filtering through the window. He waited until I was standing right behind him, until the heat radiating from his skin began to dissolve the chill that had been following me since I left my own apartment.
"You're late," he said, his voice a gravelly rumble. He turned then, his pale green eyes tracking the movement of my hands. He looked at me with a terrifying kind of clarity, stripped of the shadows that usually cloaked him in the bar.
"I wasn't sure I was coming," I admitted. "But I'm here now. I'm choosing this."
Rowan stood up, his height forcing me to tilt my head back. He reached out, his thumb catching my chin, tilting my face up so I had nowhere to look but at him. There was no alcohol to blame, no desperation to hide behind. I was awake, I was sober, and I was looking at the man who was currently the only thing keeping the ghosts at bay.
"Good," he murmured, his grip firming just enough to be a command. "Because if you're here, Oleander, you're mine. All of you. Even the parts you're trying to drown."
He fisted his hand in my hair, pulling my head back until a small gasp escaped my throat, and his mouth crashed against mine. I leaned into him, my hands finding the heavy fabric of his coat, pulling him closer until there was no space left for the cold to seep in. I could hear Julian in the other room, the soft clink of a glass, the low hum of a melody that sounded like the one that had been haunting me. The knowledge that he was there, just feet away, transformed the moment from an act of escape into a deliberate submission.
Rowan pushed me back toward the bed, his weight following me down, heavy and certain. He stripped me with a focused intensity, his eyes never leaving mine. When he saw the bruises I'd been hiding, the ones from the shadows, the ones I couldn't explain, his jaw tightened, but he didn't ask. He just leaned down and pressed his lips to each one.
His cock was thick and hard as he knelt between my legs, the tip already glistening with pre-cum. I watched him, my breath hitching, as he reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the small bottle of lube along with a condom. He slipped it on and then flipped the cap with his thumb before pouring a generous amount into his palm. Then he slicked himself in slow, deliberate strokes, his eyes locked on mine the entire time.
He didn't rush. He pushed two slick fingers between my cheeks and worked them inside me, stretching me open with steady, unhurried movements. I exhaled hard, my hands fisting in the sheets as he crooked his fingers just enough to make my back arch. Only when he was satisfied did he pull them free, line himself up, and press the blunt head of his cock against my hole.
He thrust into me in one long, deliberate movement, his size stretching me wide around him. "Fuck, you feel good," he groaned, fisting both hands in the sheets beside my head. He started to move, his pace relentless, each slam of his hips against mine a reminder that I was alive. I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, my nails raking down the broad expanse of his back.
