Page 52 of Drawn to Death
“No,” I agree. “I’m not.”
“So who are you?” he asks, turning a little so he can see my face.
I look at him. This artist. This dreamer. This man, who’s seen through my eyes and still wants me close. Who held a gun to my head and couldn’t pull the trigger. Who followed me into exile, no questions asked.
“I’m yours,” I say. That’s it. “That’s enough for now.”
He smiles, soft and real, and leans back against my chest. My arms tighten around him, protective and possessive. Out past the porch, the ocean keeps moving, waves building and breaking in the dark. Invisible now, but still there. Still constant.
Same as whatever this is, growing between us. Careful, fragile, but real. Not just a thing with a name. Not just a dynamic. But something deeper. An understanding. A kind of promise.
I press my lips to his temple. He shivers.
“Cold?” I ask.
“No,” he whispers. “Just happy.”
The pasta’s probably ruined. The sauce is definitely burned. But it doesn’t matter. We have time. Tomorrow, and the day after that. Time to cook and eat and talk. Time to figure out what we are, now that we’re not running.
For tonight, this is enough. Quell in my arms. The ocean, somewhere out there in the dark. And honesty, for once, where nothing has to hide.
Chapter twenty-six
Quell
We've spent seven nights in Talon’s seaside house, and I haven’t screamed once. I don’t know what that means, really. The dreams have always come; sharp, bloody, someone else’s last moments, seen through a killer’s eyes. But something’s shifted since we came to the beach house. The visions have gone quiet. Maybe because Talon, Mickey and the curly-haired lady aren't killing any more. Two stopped because I watched them die; one stopped because I watched him live. The nightmares' absence is calming. Like the tide pulling back, leaving only smooth, untouched sand.
I dab a little more orange into the gold on my palette and press it onto the canvas, watching the sunset turn the clouds into burning silk. The sky isn’t bleeding tonight. It’s burning gold.
My brush moves steadily and sure, each stroke building something I thought I’d lost, a kind of beauty that doesn’t come with warning, or with death. Just color, just light. The sea stretches out in front of me, endless and alive, the waves tipped with amber as the sun fades. Seven days of peace. Seven nightswithout waking up tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, my throat raw from screaming. Only the ocean’s rhythm, and Talon’s warm body beside me, solid and certain.
I no longer spend my afternoons forcing myself to the coffee shop for air and human contact. Now I sit on the pier with my canvas and paints, putting the landscape on canvas like building new memories. Painting for no purpose other than enjoyment.
A couple stops behind me. I hear their voices, soft and admiring, but I don’t turn. I just keep painting, letting their words drift over me like the surf. This is still new. Being seen, being watched. Making things people want instead of fear. Earlier, I sold two small canvases to tourists: a sunrise over the pier, and waves breaking on the rocks at low tide. Simple things. Beautiful things. Nothing to do with the last twitch of someone’s life. I never signed my art before, so adding the initials of Talon’s grandmother instead of my own doesn’t bother me. Rather than autographing my own work, it feels like the family seal of approval.
“That’s gorgeous,” the woman compliments, leaning in. “Do you sell your work?”
I nod, focused on getting the shade right where violet meets orange at the horizon. Her proximity doesn't bother me like it used to. “This one isn’t finished, but I have smaller pieces if you want to look.”
Her husband checks his watch. “We need to get dinner, honey.”
They move on, but others linger. A family with loud kids who point and ask questions. An old man who stands in silence for ten minutes. A teenager snapping a photo with her phone, thinking I won’t notice. I don’t mind. There’s something freeing about painting here, out in the open, with nothing to hide. No darkness leaking through my hands. Just color and light, and the honest work of turning what I see into something real.
The wind shifts, bringing the smell of salt and fried food from the boardwalk. I push a strand of hair behind my ear, leaving a streak of gold on my temple. I don’t bother wiping it off. My stomach growls, reminding me of the lunch Talon packed that I forgot to eat. Jam sandwiches with the crusts cut off, even though I never told him I liked them that way, fruit in a sealed tub, and a thermos of tea that’s still warm hours later.
Talon packs my lunch like I’m someone worth fussing over. Like keeping me fed is as crucial as keeping me breathing. He never says it out loud, but I can feel it in the way he lines up my vitamins every morning, how he stashes water bottles where I’ll stumble over them, the way he watches to make sure I actually eat what he made.
I drop my brush and dig for the empty thermos in my bag, suddenly parched. The tea is long gone, but Talon slipped in two bottles of water, because of course he has. One’s already empty. I crack open the other and chug, remembering what he said this morning: “Hydrate. The sun’s stronger than you think.” He said it while wrapping my sandwich in wax paper. His hands, the same hands that have ended lives with the kind of precision you read about in crime novels, moving with ridiculous gentleness.
Sometimes the contrast still makes me pause. The killer who counted out my vitamins. The guy who once put a gun to someone’s head without blinking, now folds my laundry while it’s still warm. The precision never changes, just the mission.
I go back to my canvas, moving faster now as the light shifts, violet bleeding into indigo at the edges of the sky. The colors change every minute, each moment a one-off, impossible to redo. I’m painting futures now. Not endings. Every brush stroke is a maybe, not a period.
“That’s coming along well.”
I don’t jump at Talon’s voice behind me. I’ve been expecting him, even if I didn’t hear him coming. I can just feel him, theway you feel a storm rolling in before you see the clouds. I turn, grinning, taking in his casual lean, the way his eyes scan the promenade before landing on me.
“Hey,” I say, wiping my hands. “I sold two today.”
