I turned my head just enough to see Oleander. His brown eyes were wide, tracked with exhaustion and terror, but he wasn't looking at the corner. He was looking at me. He was looking at Julian and Theo. He was looking at the life he had accidentally built while he was busy trying to disappear.
"We stay," I said. "All of us. We stay until the sun comes up, and then we stay after that."
There was no vote. The shape of the room had settled into something permanent. Julian moved to the small table and sat down, his hands resting on the wood, his eyes fixed on the hallway. Theo sat on the floor near the window, his camera finally still in his lap.
I didn't move from my spot. I was the lock on the door. I felt the darkness press one last time, a desperate shove against my chest, and I simply didn't move.
Oleander stepped closer, his arm brushing mine. He didn't say thank you. He just stood there, his presence a quiet defiance that made the shadows retreat an inch, then two.
I watched the dark corner until my eyes ached, but the silence that followed wasn't predatory. It was just the quiet of a room full of people waiting for the morning.
The fog outside pressed against the glass, white and blind. But inside, the air began to clear, the cologne fading into the smell of whiskey and the salt of our own sweat. We didn't talk. We didn't need to.
I stood guard while the world stayed broken. It was the only thing I knew how to do, and for once, it was enough. I could still feel where Julian's hand had been in mine and where Theo's shoulder had been against my arm.
thirty-three
OLEANDER
The air in the apartment felt thin, as if the oxygen were being replaced by something ancient. I stood at the center of the living room, the floorboards groaning under the collective weight of four men who had no business being in the same room, let alone the same life. On the coffee table, Dominic's notebook lay open, its manic symbols seemingly vibrating against the wood, the ink appearing wetter and darker than it had a moment ago.
Rowan stood to my left, a wall of muscle and silent fury. To my right, Julian leaned against the wall, his long fingers twitching against his thighs as if he were trying to play a piano that wasn't there. Theo was behind me, his camera strap clicking against hischest, but he wasn't looking through a lens. He was looking at me.
"It's happening," Theo whispered. "The light. It's not reflecting off the walls anymore. It's being swallowed."
He was right. The shadows weren't just pooling in the corners. They were rising, thick and oily, flowing toward the center of the room like a tide. The temperature plummeted until I could see my own breath. Then, the smell hit like it always did, added with the sharp scent of the soap Dominic used to buy from some boutique he loved.
The darkness hardened. One moment there was only a blur of grey-black static, and the next, Dominic was standing there. He looked more real than I'd seen him since the funeral. He was wearing the charcoal suit I'd picked out for his final gallery opening, the one he'd told me made him look like a man who knew exactly how much the world owed him. His dark hair was perfectly faded, his jawline sharp, his eyes locked onto mine with a terrifying, familiar intensity.
He tilted his head, that slight, predatory movement he used whenever I was about to apologize for something I hadn't done. He looked like the man I had loved for nearly a decade, and that was the cruelest part of the haunting. The expression on his face was a blend of adoration and absolute, unyielding ownership.
"Oleander," he said. His voice didn't come from the air. It came from inside my head, vibrating against the back of my teeth. "You look tired, darling. You always did let yourself go when I wasn't there to mind you."
I felt a tremor start in my knees, the old, reflexive urge to straighten my posture, to become the version of myself that he found acceptable. I felt Rowan step closer, but I held up a hand. This wasn't a fight for a protector. This was a conversation I should have had while he was still alive.
"I'm not doing it, Dominic," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "I'm not looking away this time."
Dominic's smile stretched, a fraction too wide. "You were always so dramatic. It was one of your few charms. Come here. Let's close the notebook. We can go back to how it was. Just the two of us, in the quiet."
I looked at the notebook, then back at him. I had spent years treating his love like a storm I had to survive, rather than a partnership I was supposed to enjoy. He had used my avoidance, my quiet nature, my desperate need for peace, as the very tools to build my cage.
"I loved you," I said, and the words felt like they were being pulled out of my throat by a hook. "I loved you so much that I let you erase me. I watched you buy those books, Dominic. I watched you draw those symbols in the margins of our life, and I stayed silent because I was afraid that if I spoke, you'd stop looking at me. I was a coward. I let my own silence become the soil for whatever you were growing."
The darkness around his feet began to pulse, matching the beat of my heart. His expression shifted, the adoration curdling into fury. "You would be nothing without me, Oleander. You were a flickering candle when I found you. I gave you a hearth. I gave you a name that meant something."
"You gave me a name that was poison," I countered. "And you were right, I was a flickering candle. But you didn't give me a hearth. You built a chimney and waited for me to burn out so you could keep the ash. I should have stopped you. I should have walked out the first time I saw you looking at me like I was a piece of furniture you hadn't finished staining. I will carry the guilt of that, Dominic. I will carry the fact that I let this happen. But I am done carrying you."
The air erupted. A sudden, violent surge of pressure that sent the furniture skittering across the floor. The coffee table crackeddown the middle, the wood splintering. The windows shattered simultaneously, glass raining inward.
Julian was thrown backward, his back hitting the wall. Rowan moved faster than I could track, catching him before he could slump to the floor, shielding him from the glass. Theo lunged forward, his hand clamping around mine, his fingers cold and trembling but his grip absolute.
"Oleander, get back!" Rowan roared over the wind.
I didn't move. I was the anchor, the weight at the end of the line, and the only way to stop the sinking was to cut the rope. The shadows were clawing at me, cold fingers dragging across my skin, trying to pull me into the center of the vortex where Dominic stood, his face a mask of distorted rage.
"I'm closing the door," I said. "Do you hear me? I'm closing it!"
Dominic's form blurred, his features stretching. "You don't know the words! You don't have the power to stop what I started! You are the bridge, Oleander! You are mine!"
