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Chapter thirteen

Chapter Ten

Noir

Idon’t sleep.

Not really.

The apartment stays dark except for the low blue glow of the TV bleeding across concrete walls and polished floors while rain taps steadily against the balcony windows. Somewhere below, the city keeps moving anyway. Tires hissing across wet pavement. Headlights dragging through the streets in long blurred streaks beneath the building.

Dagger passed out maybe an hour ago stretched across the opposite couch, one tattooed arm hanging off the side while some shitty late-night horror movie flickers forgotten across the screen.

Even asleep, he still looks tense.

Jaw tight.

Brows pulled slightly together.

Like his body never fully learned how to relax without expecting violence afterward.

Protective even unconscious.

Doesn’t surprise me.

If anything I can relate.

I sit near the balcony door with a cigarette burning low between my fingers while smoke curls slowly toward the ceiling, ocean air drifting through the apartment cold and damp from the storm outside.

Every couple minutes, my eyes drift toward the hallway.

Toward Dagger’s bedroom where Blair’s asleep.

I’ve crossed the apartment more times than I’ll admit tonight just to check she’s still there.

Curled up beneath Dagger’s blankets.

Still asleep.

Still breathing.

Not because I think she’s actually capable of sneaking past both of us in her current condition, but because every time I see her still there, something tight and ugly inside my chest loosens a little.

The realization should probably concern me more than it does.

That I’m sitting here at four in the morning making sure Blair hasn’t disappeared again like some paranoid fucking guard dog.

But every time I close my eyes, all I can picture is waking up to an empty apartment.

Her gone. Again.

Somehow that possibility feels worse than admitting the truth.

Because somewhere along the line, this stopped being grief.

That’s the part eating me alive tonight. Not the obsession, or the possessiveness.

Not even the fact I’d bury half this city myself before letting Dante touch her again.