—Uh, heyo, so... it's technically Sunday, but... I'm a v bit high annnnd sí who is ready to see Luz take charge?? 😎 Y'ALL AIN'T EVEN READY FOR THE LUZ THAT DRAKE REALLY KNEW: COMING SOOOOOOOOFHN to WP near YOUUU 👀
❝i know that look you didn't want,
you're all i've got;
i heard you fucked it up again.
i know something doesn't feel right.❞
☽
IT'S HIS BEDROOM, where I'd... spent all night with him. His slow-swaying curtains, parting against a dark pane of glass, foggy from our breathing as I'd fucked him.
"I told you, your enemies are my enemies." Drake glares at it quietly. "Now they know that, too."
They were here, able to find us, hear us, watch us? They knew? Everything is too vague, too empty, too dark to fit together. They don't want to hurt us. They want to scare us? They're waiting to hurt us?
Your move, Melo.
It was Medina. He had Luz.
"They know."
They know, by now, about a less than graceful escape last night.
"Mm." Drake picks up a loose chunk of gravel, jutted from the crumbling curb, and sifts it between his palms, warming up. I've seen it. I take a step back. He levels it, planting his feet, angling back, winding up, and throws it. His follow-through, a long, lean gesture, from foot to fingers. Shhhl! His bedroom window shatters, explodes inward, in a tumbling torrent, stray shards of red-scrawled glass glittering in a hazy blue dawn. "They know I'm not going to bring you to them."
Fuck. My heart stirs.
They.
"So, you're with me?"
"Stop doubting it, jeva, they're trying to fuck with your head," he mutters. "It's a hit. I'm a fucking deserter, and you're a trophy. It's for us."
Us.
Lights flicker, a silent incantation of a broken cycle, as Portland stirs, roused awake by a smashed window, an anomaly by its sleepy, bedroom city reputation.
"It's us against Portland," I say halfheartedly, hoping Drake will say something, tell me something.
He doesn't.
His lips rig up into a soft grin. "It always was, huh?"
It wasn't. It couldn't be. Who had been looking into his bedroom? Who had been close enough to see us? When? Why? Who...
Tyler? Was Tyler on the Ferry to Peaks Island? Did Tyler Oullette follow us back to Hanover and Cumberland?
"They're coming for us, Luz."
Who? Palurdos with Deerslayers?
Who saw us together last night? Before?
Who followed us home—to a sleepy, pseudo-safety in his bedroom? Them?
"Ciara."
Her name rolls off long, a snake-like hiss to it, slithering through my subconscious. Ciara, before I'd been bagged, a set-up in The Purple Caterpillar. I'd recognized her, and I...
"Ciara?"
I need my sketchbook. I'd drawn her, in another life, and I can remember vague details I'd noted: a careless spattering of freckles, a careful composition of ink, a heart, close enough for her lashes to kiss in each flirty blink. Behind her, a grey-ish blur in my memory of a sleepless night, sluggish, barely able to bring myself back to Bushwick. Drunk. I need to...
YOU ARE READING
Dark Places
Mystery / Thriller[UPDATES ON FRIDAYS] It's been three years since Luz Melo left Portland, Maine... and Drake Medina. ☽ When her "borderline" alcoholic lifestyle in NYC falls apart, leaving her girlfriend in rehab, her grades trashed, and her scholarship revoked, th...
