Page 38 of Stolen Harmony
Chapter 11
Morning Visits
Rowan
The doorbell rang like it had a personal vendetta against my skull.
I woke to the relentless pounding, my head throbbing in time with each chime like someone was taking a hammer to the inside of my forehead. The taste in my mouth was bitter, metallic, last night's whiskey mixed with the particular flavor of regret that came from fucking a stranger just to feel something other than empty.
Sunlight streamed through the cheap blinds, cutting across my face like accusations. I could hear movement from the other side of the apartment, the rustle of clothes being pulled on, someone trying to be quiet and failing. Right. The guy from last night. Dark hair, easy smile, hands that knew what they were doing. I couldn't remember his name, wasn't sure I'd ever asked for it.
The doorbell rang again, insistent and sharp. Whoever was out there wasn't going away.
I stumbled out of bed, bare feet hitting the cold floor, and rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand. My mouth tastedlike I'd been licking ashtrays, and my head felt like it was filled with cotton soaked in gasoline. The walk to the door felt like moving through honey, each step requiring more effort than it should.
I swung the door wide without checking the peephole, too hungover and too annoyed to care who was interrupting my misery.
Elias stood there, framed by the pale morning light, holding a brown paper bag of groceries. His coat was zipped up to his throat against the cold, and his expression was carefully neutral in a way that immediately put me on edge. He looked well-rested, put-together, everything I wasn't in that moment.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, suddenly aware that I was shirtless, that I probably looked like I'd been hit by a truck. “What time is it?”
Before he could answer, the bedroom door opened behind me. The guy from last night emerged, all tousled hair and satisfied smile, wearing nothing but his jeans from the night before. His chest was lean and tan, marked with scratches from my fingernails that looked like small pink crescents in the morning light.
“Had a good time,” he said, grinning at me with the lazy confidence of someone who knew he was good in bed. “Text me sometime.”
“Yeah, sure,” I muttered, already knowing I wouldn't. I had his number saved in my phone under a string of meaningless consonants, and by tomorrow I'd delete it without a second thought. That's how these things worked: temporary amnesia disguised as intimacy.
I didn't look at him as he grabbed his shirt from the floor and pulled it on, muscles flexing in a way that had been appealing twelve hours ago but now just felt like a reminder of how hollow the whole thing had been. He brushed past Eliaswithout acknowledgment, treating him like furniture instead of a human being standing in the doorway.
Elias's gaze followed the man's retreating form, then returned to me. His expression remained calm, but there was something underneath it that I couldn't read. Not judgment, exactly, but something heavier. Something that made my skin feel too tight.
I grabbed a wrinkled t-shirt from the floor and pulled it over my head, the cotton sticking slightly to my skin where sweat had dried overnight. The movement made my head spin, and I had to grip the doorframe for a second until the world stopped tilting.
“That can’t be healthy,” Elias said evenly, nodding toward the coffee mug I’d moved to the counter.
I followed his gaze and realized I was already reaching for the bottle of whiskey I kept beside the coffee maker, my body moving on autopilot toward the temporary numbness that had become my morning routine. The bottle was nearly empty, amber liquid sloshing against the glass like liquid courage I could never quite manage to swallow enough of.
“So what do you want this early?” I asked, pouring coffee into a mug with hands that shook just slightly. The dark liquid splashed against the ceramic, and without hesitation, I tipped whiskey in after it. The smell was sharp and familiar, like an old friend who enabled all your worst habits.
Elias’s brow furrowed, but his voice stayed cool. “Breakfast of champions.”
“Don’t knock it,” I muttered, taking a sip. “Caffeine and whiskey? Covers all the major food groups.”
“Interesting definition of nutrition,” he said dryly, and the twitch of his mouth suggested he was fighting a smile. “Whatabout protein?”
I smirked, leaning back against the counter, mug in hand. “Guess you’ll just have to feed me.”
The silence that followed was heavier than it should’ve been, heat creeping into the back of my neck as his eyes caught mine—steady, unblinking, like he was cataloging every lie I told myself just to survive the morning. I held his gaze, refusing to blink first, and something electric sparked between us.
He exhaled slowly, almost a laugh but not quite. “You think everything’s a game, don’t you?”
“Not everything.” My voice dropped, lower than I meant it to, rough at the edges. “Just the things that might kill me if I take them too seriously.”
He lingered there, gaze sharp, reading me in a way that felt more intimate than it should. Under the kitchen light, Elias looked nothing like the version of him I remembered from the funeral—soft around the edges, always too careful. He’d grown into himself, jawline sharper, shoulders filling out that old coat in a way that made me think of strong arms pinning me to the mattress, holding me steady when the world spun too fast. For a moment, I wanted to find out if he could handle me—if he wanted to.
He cleared his throat and held up the paper bag like a shield, breaking the spell. “Thought you might need groceries. The state of your fridge was giving me secondhand anxiety. When was the last time you saw a vegetable?”
“Had a cherry in a Manhattan last week,” I shot back. “I think that counts as fruit and fiber.”
