Page 35 of Drawn to Death
Maybe there won’t be another obvious move. No more Mickeys at the door, guns drawn. Vincenzo is too smart for that. He knows I am watching. He knows I’ve picked my side. But there are other ways. Quieter ways. An “accident” while I am out. A mugging gone bad. A hit-and-run with no witnesses, no driver.
Just thinking about Quell like that, in pain, or worse, eyes empty and gone, it hits me somewhere deep, hard enough to hurt. I am not used to that. I’ve always kept my distance, kept things professional. You can’t lose what you never let yourself care about. But Quell has slipped through all that. Gotten under my skin. I can’t even remember what it felt like before he was here.
I close my eyes, trying to force my breathing slow and steady. In for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight. Some old military trick that usually works. Not tonight.
A soft creak breaks the silence. The bedroom door, opening slowly, carefully. I don’t bother with the gun under my pillow; I know that step. My eyes adjust. There he is: Quell, just in pajama pants, arms rigid like he is bracing for something.
“Talon?” His voice barely makes it across the room. “Are you awake?”
“Yeah.” I push up onto my elbows. “What’s up?”
He enters fully, closing the door behind him with deliberate, almost exaggerated quiet. In the dark, his face is all sharp lines and shadow. I can feel the tension rolling off him in waves.
“I had another dream,” he says. Flat, almost like it doesn’t matter, but I catch the tremor underneath. “Not a bad one. Not like usual. But…” He stops. His throat works, like he is trying to swallow something he doesn’t want to taste. “I didn’t draw it, just like I promised. But I need…”
That makes me blink. He always draws them. Always. It is just… who Quell is. He has to get the pictures out of his head and onto paper, or they'll eat him alive.
“Who was it?” My voice comes out rougher than I want.
He shrugs, small and tight. “A woman. Older. Gray hair, all these tight curls.” He makes a vague circle around his head with his hand. “I don’t know her. She wasn’t… it wasn’t a brutal death. Not like normal.”
Some part of me can breathe again. Not someone from our world, then. Not a threat. Not a job. Not a warning.
“So why aren’t you sleeping?” I ask.
He stands there, shifting his weight from foot to foot, the silence stretching between us, full of words neither of us can quite spit out.
“I just…” He hesitates, jaw tight, like it hurts to say. “I just need a hug.” The last part barely makes it, so soft I almost miss it.
If anyone else said that to me, I’d probably laugh. No one ever asks me for comfort. No one looks at a man with my hands; the kind that has ended more lives than I care to count; and thinks: that’s where I’ll feel safe.
But Quell isn’t anyone else.
I lift the corner of my blanket. “Come here.”
He doesn’t hesitate. Crosses the room, bare feet soundless against the floorboards. The mattress dips as he slides in beside me. For a second, it is awkward, all elbows and knees and the weirdness of figuring out what is too close.
Then Quell settles in, back pressed to my chest, and that is that. His body fits against mine as if it were always supposed to be there. Like this is something we do every night, not just after bad dreams.
His skin is cool, like he’s been standing in the doorway longer than I thought. I drape an arm over his waist, careful at first,then tighter when he relaxes. His hair tickles my chin, and it smells faintly of the shampoo we both use now.
“Better?” I ask. My voice rumbles against his shoulder blades.
He nods. “Sorry,” he mumbles, barely audible. “For waking you up.”
“I was already awake.”
“Thinking about Vincenzo?”
Sometimes I forget how easy it is for him to read me now. How much he’s seen, in ways most people never could. He’s looked through eyes that aren’t his, wandered through dreams that show him more of my life than I’d ever planned to share.
“Yeah.” There is no point in pretending.
“He’s going to try something, isn’t he?” Quell’s voice is soft and resigned. Not scared, just sure.
My arm tightens around him. I can’t help it. “Maybe.”
“You don’t have to protect me, you know.” His hand finds mine, his fingers lacing through mine in the dark. “I knew what I was getting into. When I asked to come with you to see him.”
