The rain in the city had a way of tasting like copper and regret.
Elena sat at the far end of The Velvet Oak, a basement bar that smelled of spilled bourbon and old secrets. It was the kind of place where people went when they didn't want to be found, and tonight, Elena wanted to disappear.
On the mahogany bar top sat a single shot of cheap tequila and a crumpled photo of a boy with a lopsided grin. Leo. It had been exactly ten years since the world stopped turning, yet the ache in her chest felt as fresh as a raw wound. Every October 19th, she made the same pilgrimage: a drink for the brother she lost, and a silent prayer for the death of the man who took him.
"You're staring at that glass like it owes you money," a voice rumbled from the shadows beside her.
Elena didn't turn. "It owes me more than money. It owes me a memory."
The man moved into the light of the flickering neon sign. He was draped in a charcoal overcoat that looked like it cost more than her apartment, but his face told a different story. He looked haunted. His eyes were a piercing, turbulent blue, the color of the ocean just before a storm hits.
"To memories, then," he said, signaling the bartender. "Double scotch. Neat. Keep them coming."
This was Julian. But to Elena, in this moment, he was just a stranger with the same hollow look in his eyes that she saw in her own mirror every morning.
"Bad day?" she asked, her voice raspy from the cold.
Julian let out a short, humorless laugh. He stared at his hands—large, steady hands that were currently trembling just enough to notice. "A bad anniversary. Ten years of trying to outrun a ghost. Today, the ghost caught up."
Elena felt a strange pull toward him. They were two broken halves of a dark coincidence. She didn't know that while she was drinking to find a killer, he was drinking to forget he was one.
"My brother," she whispered, pointing to the photo. "Ten years today. A hit-and-run. The coward never stopped."
Julian froze. For a heartbeat, the entire bar seemed to go silent. The ice in his glass rattled against the crystal. He looked at the photo of the boy on the bike, and for a second, his face went deathly pale. But Elena was three drinks deep, the grief blurring her vision. She didn't see the terror in his eyes; she only saw sympathy.
"I'm sorry," Julian said, his voice barely a whisper. "He looks... he looks like he had a lot of life left."
Elena stared into her glass. "Ten years. You'd think the memory would fade, like an old photograph left in the sun. But it doesn't. It just gets sharper. It cuts deeper."
Julian shifted his weight, his glass of scotch clinking against the wood. "Some things aren't meant to fade. Some things are weights you're supposed to carry until they crush you."
Elena turned her head slightly, catching the profile of his jaw. "You sound like someone who's been carrying a lot."
"I've forgotten what it feels like to be light," Julian replied, his voice a low, gravelly hum. He finally looked at her, his blue eyes searching hers. "What was his name? The boy in the photo."
"Leo," she whispered. "He was nineteen. He was supposed to start college that Monday. He had his whole life packed into cardboard boxes in our hallway. Instead, we spent that Monday picking out a casket."
Julian flinched, a microscopic twitch of his eyelid. He took a hard swallow of his drink. "And the driver? They never found him?"
"No. He vanished into the rain. A coward who valued his freedom more than a human life." Elena's voice turned cold, like shards of ice. "My father says people like that don't deserve the air they breathe. He made me promise that if I ever found him, I wouldn't go to the police. I'd make sure he felt every bit of the pain he caused us. A life for a life."
Julian's hand tightened around his glass so hard Elena thought the crystal might shatter. "And you? Is that what you want, Elena? Or is that just your father's ghost talking through you?"
"It's my blood talking," she snapped. "Wouldn't you want the same? If someone tore the heart out of your family and drove away laughing, wouldn't you want to see them bleed?"
Julian looked away, staring at his own reflection in the dark liquid of his glass. "I think... I think some people spend their whole lives bleeding in ways you can't see. I think for some, living with what they did is a slower, more agonizing death than anything a blade could do."
Elena let out a bitter laugh. "That's a very poetic way to defend a murderer."
"I'm not defending him," Julian said softly, almost to himself. "I'm just saying... sometimes the hunter and the prey are both trapped in the same cage. Different sides of the bars, but the same cage."
He turned back to her, his gaze dropping to her lips. The air between them shifted, the grief suddenly curdling into a dark, desperate hunger.
"You talk too much for a stranger," Elena murmured, her breath hitching as he stepped closer, invading her personal space.
"And you look too beautiful for a woman who wants to be a killer," Julian countered. His hand rose, hovering near her neck, the heat from his palm radiating against her skin. "Why are we here, Elena? Truly?"
"Because the silence at home is too loud," she admitted, her voice trembling. "And because tonight, I just want to forget that I'm a daughter, or a sister, or a vow. I just want to be... nothing."
"I can help you with that," Julian whispered, his thumb finally grazing the line of her jaw. "I can help you be nothing. Just for tonight."
When Julian finally reached out and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, his touch felt like electricity hitting a parched wire.
"I don't want to be alone tonight," Elena confessed, her pride drowning in the amber liquid.
"Neither do I," Julian replied. There was a desperation in his voice, a plea for sanctuary.
When they left the bar, the air was freezing, but the heat between them was suffocating. They didn't make it to a hotel. They stumbled into the back of his sleek, black sedan—the irony of the vehicle lost on her in her drunken state.
It was frantic. It was messy. It was a collision of two people trying to escape their own skins. Julian held her with a terrifying intensity, his fingers bruising her hips as if he were trying to anchor himself to the earth. He kissed her like a dying man gasping for air, and Elena took everything he gave, using his body to shield her from the memory of a rainy street ten years ago.
In the quiet aftermath, as the windows fogged up and the city hummed around them, Julian looked at her with a look of pure, agonized devotion.
"I don't even know your name," he whispered, his forehead resting against hers.
"Elena," she breathed.
He flinched at the name, but he didn't pull away. Instead, he pulled her closer, hiding his face in the crook of her neck. He didn't know who she was yet, but he knew one thing: he was already sinking, and she was the only thing keeping him from the bottom.
Elena closed her eyes, feeling the steady beat of his heart against her own. She felt safe. She felt seen.