Chapter 9: Blood and Neon
The shirt lived on her desk chair for three days. A faded blue ghost. She didn’t wash it. Sometimes, in the dead hours of the night, she’d wake up and pull it on over her tank top, bury her nose in the collar, and try to separate the scents: desert, whiskey, him, her own fear. It was getting harder.
The fourth morning, the world outside her bubble cracked.
She was scrolling through her phone over watery dining-hall coffee, the buzz of student chatter a dull roar. A local news alert blipped at the top of her screen. Remains Found in Red Canyon Identify Missing Hiker. She tapped it. A grainy photo of a smiling man in his forties. Last seen at a trailhead. Evidence of “foul play” suspected. The article was clinical, spare. It mentioned blunt force trauma. It mentioned the body being discovered in a remote wash by off-roaders.
Red Canyon was an hour north of the desert overlook.
Her coffee turned to acid in her throat. The dining hall noise receded, replaced by a high-pitched ring. Coincidence. The word felt flimsy, a paper shield. The desert was vast. People disappeared. Things happened. She thought of the tire iron, glinting under the flickering garage light. The casual way Colson had wiped it down. Her fingers, sticky with tiramisu, dealing cards under a infinite sky.
She tried to call him. It went straight to voiceline, his voice a cool, recorded monotone. Leave a message. She didn’t. She texted: Saw the news. You okay? The blue bubble sat, unread, for hours. Then days.
His absence was a physical void. The silence from his phone was one thing, but the silence in her world was another. No late-night engine growl outside her window. No cryptic invites. No presence at all. It was like he’d been deleted, and the proof of him—the shirt, the memory of stars, the phantom taste of loss at cards—felt increasingly like artifacts from a dream that was curdling into a nightmare.
Friday night, Maya dragged her out. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost and made friends with it. We’re getting a drink.”
The bar was a dive called The Lock-Up, popular with art school kids for its cheap wells and tolerant bouncer. The air was a solid thing, humid with breath and spilled beer, vibrating with bass from blown speakers. Neon from the “Last Call” sign buzzed and flickered, staining everything a sickly red. Delaney felt detached, floating through the crowd in a worn-out sweater, the noise slamming against her but not penetrating.
She was at the bar, waiting for two overpriced beers, when a guy materialized beside her. He was handsome in a generic way, clean-cut, with a frat-bro confidence that announced itself in the way he leaned on the sticky rail.
“Hey,” he shouted over the music. “You’re in my ceramics seminar. Delaney, right?”
She nodded, offering a polite, tight smile.
“I’m Greg. You looked lonely over here.” He edged closer. His cologne was aggressive, fighting a losing battle against the smell of fried food and bleach.
“I’m waiting for my friend,” she said, turning back toward the bartender.
“She can wait.” He touched her arm, his fingers damp from a condensation-covered bottle. “Wanna dance? They’re finally playing something with a beat.”
The touch was a violation. It wasn’t the cards-for-clothes gamble, which had a terrifying, mutual consent. This was just… taking. “No, thanks.”
“Come on. One dance. You think too much, I can tell.” His hand slid down to her wrist, his grip firming. “Live a little.”
A cold, familiar fury ignited in her gut. It wasn’t fear. It was the same clarity she’d felt staring at a losing hand, deciding to raise. “Let go of me.”
He laughed, not unkindly, like she was being adorable. He tugged, just slightly, pulling her away from the bar. “Relax.”
Then he was gone.
One second his face was inches from hers, smiling. The next, there was a blur of black leather, a sickening, wet crunch, and Greg was stumbling backwards, clutching his nose, blood spurting through his fingers. He hit a table, sending glasses shattering to the floor.
Silence ripped through the immediate area, the music thumping on obliviously.
Colson stood between them, his back to Delaney. He was just… there. He must have come in behind her, unseen. He didn’t look at Greg, who was now wailing, “My nose! You broke my fucking nose!” He was looking at Delaney, over his shoulder. His expression was chillingly calm. No rage. No triumph. Just a flat, surgical assessment, checking if she was alright.
The bouncer was plowing through the crowd. Colson turned, faced the man, said something low she couldn’t hear. He pulled out his wallet, extracted a thick fold of cash, and pressed it into the bouncer’s hand. He gestured briefly at the bleeding Greg, then at the broken glasses. The bouncer looked at the money, then at Colson’s empty eyes, and nodded once. He turned and started urging Greg, who was still cursing, toward the door for some air.
Colson finally turned fully to her. The red neon flashed across his face, making him look momentarily skull-like. “Let’s go.”
All the confused worry of the past days exploded. “Are you insane?” she hissed, stepping closer so she wouldn’t have to shout. “You just… you vanished! For days! And now you show up and break a guy’s nose?”
“He was touching you.”
“I was handling it!”
“Were you?” His voice was quiet, cutting through the bassline. “Looked like you were about to be dragged onto a dance floor you didn’t want to be on.”
“That’s not the point! You can’t just… do that. Where have you been?”
He didn’t answer. He just watched her, letting her fury crash against him. He reached for her elbow, gentle now. “This place is trash. I’m taking you home.”
She yanked her arm away. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Yes,” he said, with absolute certainty. “You are.”
She shouldn’t have. After the news alert, after the silence, after the violence that seemed to follow him like a shadow, she should have run. But the sight of him, the solid reality of him after the void, was a gravitational pull. And underneath the anger was a terrifying, giddy relief. He was here. He was real. And he’d seen her being pulled and he’d made it stop.
She didn’t speak to him in the car. She stared out the window, watching the neon streets blur. He drove with his usual focused calm, as if he hadn’t just rearranged someone’s face.
He pulled up to her apartment. She got out, slamming the door. He got out too, following her to the building’s exterior stairs. She climbed them, her heart hammering against her ribs. At her door, she fumbled with her keys, her hands shaking.
He stood a few feet away on the narrow landing, hands in his pockets, watching the quiet street below. The night was cool. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving a hollow, quivering mess.
She got the door open. She turned to him, a final, angry dismissal on her lips.
He was already looking at her. The porch light painted his face in harsh relief, all the softness from the desert night gone. He was just a man who disappeared and reappeared with the weather, who carried violence in his wallet like loose change. A man who might know something about a body in a canyon.
“Goodnight, Delaney,” he said, his tone final. He turned to go down the stairs.
It was the dismissal in it. The assumption that he could dictate every end, every exit. The desert had ended when he decided. Tonight would end when he decided.
Before her mind could catch up, her body moved.
She crossed the space between them in two quick steps, grabbed the front of his leather jacket, and pulled him to her. She kissed him.
It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t a question. It was a collision—lips, teeth, a year of confused wanting and three days of sick fear and the metallic taste of someone else’s blood still hanging in the air. She poured all of it into him, a challenge and a surrender.
He went utterly still. For one heartbeat, two, he didn’t respond. He was a statue, shocked into stone.
Then she felt it—a tension coiling in him, a heat, a readiness to engage. It was like touching a live wire just as the current surges.
She broke away, panting. She didn’t wait to see his expression. She didn’t say a word.
She spun, ducked inside her apartment, and closed the door. She clicked the deadbolt, the sound deafening in the sudden quiet.
She stood there, back against the wood, hearing only the frantic drum of her own heart. She listened for his footsteps on the stairs.
She heard nothing at all.