Page 38 of Infamous
I swallow hard, shaking it off. Impossible. It has to be my imagination, another phantom memory stirred by exhaustion and the way grief distorts everything.
But the air is thick with it, and for a moment, I almost believe he’s here.
Lately, I’ve been dreaming the past into the present. Waking with the taste of him still on my tongue, the weight of his hand pressed into the small of my back as if he never left. Some mornings I can’t tell if I’ve slept at all or just replayed the same memory until it frays.
It’s been a year. I tell myself that. A full year since Ford burned to the ground, since the news fed on his death like vultures. Yet still, I see him.
In the crush of bodies on the street, in the flicker of movement at the corner of my eye, in every shadow that lingers too long. Sometimes it’s a face in the crowd that looks too much like his. Sometimes it’s the way a stranger tilts his head, or the quiet patience of a man waiting in line. He’s everywhere and nowhere, stitched into every moment, scraping against my soul like he refuses to let go.
I know it can’t be real. I know it’s only wishful thinking - phantoms my mind conjures because it can’t bear to live without him. And yet, the doubt is there, whispering, digging claws into the back of my mind.
I wonder if I should see someone. A therapist. A doctor. Anyone who can untangle this blur of memory and madness. Because I don’t trust myself anymore. My judgment is cracked, my reason fractured. I can’t tell the difference between grief and delusion, between what was and what will never be again.
But then my eyes start to catch details I shouldn’t notice.
The balcony door is still locked, just as I left it this morning. The latch hasn’t been forced, no scratches around the frame, no sign of entry. It should reassure me. But it doesn’t. Because outside, on the small table by the railing, the ashtray has been disturbed.
I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life. Not once. And yet there they are: two fresh butts, pressed down with deliberate care, not tossed or forgotten, but extinguished with precision. The faint tang of smoke clings to the night air that seeps through the tiny crack at the frame. It curls into my lungs, acrid and alien, and my chest tightens as if it’s trying to push me back.
And then my eyes drift to the kitchen counter. Tucked into the corner where it doesn’t belong, sits a single flower. But it’snot just any flower. A gardenia. White. Delicate. Fragrant. My favorite.
The flower I used to keep in vases all over my apartment, small clusters of them brightening spaces that didn’t deserve their beauty. I stopped buying them years ago.After Lucian. After the trial. After the fire. Gardenias became another ghost I couldn’t live with, one more thing I buried.
No one else knows that. No one alive should remember that detail. And yet here it is.
I step closer, each movement deliberate, cautious, like I’m approaching an IED that might detonate if I breathe wrong. My gaze fixes on the bloom, its fragile white petals almost glowing under the dim kitchen light. My pulse thrums in my ears, my heart hammering too hard against my ribs, betraying me.
Trauma doctors aren’t supposed to break. We patch bullet holes, stop arterial bleeds, carve through chaos with hands that don’t shake. I’ve walked into operating rooms slick with blood and death hanging heavy in the air, and I never faltered.
But this? A flower. Two cigarette butts. A scent on the air. This unravels me in a way blood never could. Because it’s not random. It’s not coincidence. It’s personal.
I move through the apartment like it’s a crime scene, every step measured, every nerve stretched to breaking. Some one has been in my apartment. My eyes catalog details with surgical precision, but it’s my skin that prickles first. The silence is thick, unnatural, the kind of silence that feels placed here, staged, like someone tucked it into the corners of the room and left it waiting for me to walk into.
At first glance, everything else is untouched. My books are stacked in the same neat tower on the shelf. The half-finished cup of coffee I abandoned this morning still sits on the table, a thin film curdling across the surface. My throw blanket is folded with careful precision on the arm of the couch, just the way I leftit. But the air… the air isn’t right. It knows. It presses against me like a second skin, charged, watchful, alive with something that doesn’t belong.
But then I notice something…something so small, half-hidden beneath the coaster on which the coffee sits. A scrap of paper. Nothing extraordinary. Nothing that should stop my heart. But it does.
My hand hesitates, trembling despite myself, before I reach for it. The paper crinkles under my fingers, fragile, deliberate, as though it has been waiting for me all day.
Two words.Still waiting.
My breath catches sharp, a knife in my throat. My whole body jolts like I’ve brushed against a live current, electricity snapping through every vein.
For one breathless moment, the world tilts. I swear I canfeelhim, as though he’s stepped into the room with me. The shadow I once loved, the man who carried his scent like a warning: oud and sandalwood, cigarettes curling on a balcony, the heavy weight of his stare pinning me down.
Lucian.
It has to be him. Who else would know? Who else would dare to play with the fault lines of my memory?
But then, my stomach twists, tightening until I feel hollowed out. My chest caves, the rush of adrenaline collapsing into something sharper.
Because the handwriting isn’t his. And he didn’t respond to any of my numerous letters when he was in prison. Why then, would a dead man now start corresponding with me after all these years from beyond the grave?
The absurdity of the tricks my mind is playing on me makes me scoff. I look down at the note, smooth a hand over the paper. This isn’t from Lucian. I would know his scrawl anywhere. Jagged, slanted, letters leaning like they’d been carved in stonerather than written in ink. This isn’t that. This is cleaner. Neater. Smaller. The strokes careful, deliberate. And heartbreakingly familiar in an entirely different way.
Michael.
My pulse spikes, slamming against my ribs. Heat rushes up my throat, bile burning as the room around me spins.
