Rain has a memory.
I learned this at seven years old, watching my mother's coffin disappear into wet earth while the priest's words dissolved into static. That was the first time I understood: water isn't always cleansing. Sometimes it's a burial . Tonight's storm carried that same weight—not washing anything away, just making the wounds glisten.
The Steinway's ivory keys felt like tombstones beneath my fingers, B-flat minor. The key of funerals and forbidden desires.
Around me, the gala pulsed with counterfeit life, Women in couture laughed behind gloved hands, their diamond chokers catching light like delicate nooses . Men discussed stocks and mistresses with the same casual greed. And I played the way I breathed. Shallow ,Careful. Like anything deeper might drown me.
The Chopin nocturne unfolded like a secret, my wrists dipping and rising with the melancholy of a hundred dead love stories. Music was safer than people. Notes didn't leave. They didn't press bruises into your ribs and call it affection.
A waiter passed with champagne flutes. I caught my reflection in one— pale face, dark eyes, lips parted around unsaid words . The ghost of a girl who used to believe in princes.
Then the glass trembled.
Not from my touch.
From the shift in the room's gravity .
I didn't need to look up to know someone had entered who didn't belong here—not really. These events were zoos for the ultra-wealthy, but this man was no exhibit.
He was the hunter.
My fingers slipped. A dissonant chord rang out, ugly and honest.
Look up.
Don't.
The war lasted three heartbeats. I lost.
And there he stood—a silhouette cut from the night itself, one shoulder leaning against the marble pillar. He wasn't watching the crowd.
He was watching my hands.
His gaze traced each movement with forensic intensity, as if he could see the scars beneath my sleeves, the calluses earned from years of clinging to music instead of people.
I played faster.
He tilted his head.
The nocturne twisted into something darker, my pulse thudding in time with the bass notes. I could feel it—the exact moment he understood.
This wasn't performance.
It was confession .
His lips parted slightly. A shadow flickered across his face—not pity. Recognition.
The song ended too abruptly. Applause scattered through the room like broken glass. I stood, my black dress whispering against my thighs, and turned toward the terrace—
"You let them hear the pain, but not the rage."
The voice came from directly behind me. Low. Smoky. A blade dragged across silk.
I didn't turn. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't I?"
His breath grazed the nape of my neck. Warmth and whiskey and something unforgivable.
Every muscle locked. The scent of him invaded my lungs-leather and bergamot and the faintest hint of gunmetal.
Run.
Stay.
His hand appeared beside mine on the piano lid. Not touching. Just… presenting . A sculptor's fingers. A killer's palms.
"Play something real," he murmured.
I finally turned.
Mistake.
Up close, his face was a study in contradictions—the cruel slant of his brow, the unexpectedly soft curve of his lower lip. His eyes weren't just dark. They were black holes pulling at my orbit.
"I don't take requests," I lied.
One corner of his mouth lifted. "Everyone takes something, Evelyn. The question is what you'll steal in return.
He knew my name.
The realization slithered down my spine. Before I could react, he reached past me to press a single key—**middle C, pure and devastating.
The note hung between us like a challenge.
Then he walked away, leaving the imprint of his heat against my side and the terrible understanding: Some storms don't pass,
They rewrite your geography.
The Moment Before the Fall, the terrace air should have cooled me. Instead, it clung—damp and suffocating—as if the storm had followed me outside just to whisper *"he's coming"* against my skin.
I gripped the railing. The city below blurred into streaks of gold and shadow, like a Van Gogh painting left out in the rain
Breathe.
Don't think about his hands.
But my body remembered. My nerves still hummed from the phantom weight of his stare, the way it had mapped my spinethrough the fabric of my dress.
A clink of glass.
He didn't announce himself.
Men like him never did. They entered rooms sideways, through the cracks in your periphery.
"You play like someone told you pleasure was a sin."
His voice poured over me—honey and ground glass. I didn't turn. If I looked at him now, with the moonlight sharpening his edges, I might lose the ability to lie.
"Maybe they were right," I said.
Ice cubes shifted as he took a drink. I could *feel* the movement—the way his throat would work around the bourbon, the way his lips would glisten after.
"Turn around."
A command. Not impatient, not cruel. Just absolutely certain of being obeyed.
I turned.
Mistake.
The moon carved him out of the darkness—a study in hunger and control. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, revealing tendons and veins that looked like they'd been drawn with a scalpel. The scar cutting through his left eyebrow gleamed silver.
I hated that I noticed. Hated that I wanted to trace it with my tongue.
He tilted his head. "You're cataloging my flaws."
"No." My voice came out too soft. "I'm counting your weapons."
A slow smile. Dangerous as a cocked trigger.
He stepped closer. The scent of him intensified—smoke and salt and something feral beneath the cologne. My pulse kicked like a spooked horse.
"You're afraid," he murmured.
"Of course I am."
His gaze dropped to my mouth. "Liar. You're exhilarated."
The truth of it burned. Because he was right—the fear wasn't about him hurting me. It was about how much I wanted to let him.
A raindrop landed on my collarbone. His eyes tracked its path down my chest.
I should have left.
I leaned back against the railing instead.
His nostrils flared. "Testing me?"
"Testing myself."
Another step. Now the heat of him licked at my skin, even though we weren't touching. My dress felt too thin. My lungs too small.
He reached out——and plucked a fallen eyelash from my cheekbone.
"Make a wish, Evelyn."
His thumb brushed the corner of my lip. A mockery of tenderness.
I didn't blink. "What if I wish for you to walk away?"
"Then you'd be lying again." He held the eyelash between us. "And we both know I can taste it when you lie."
The challenge hung there, throbbing like a second heartbeat.
Somewhere below, a car backfired. The sound snapped the moment—but not the tension. Never the tension.
He tucked the eyelash into his pocket. A keepsake.
"Until next time," he said.
Not goodbye.
A sentencing.
As he walked away, the storm inside me twisted into something new—not fear, not anger.
Addiction.
And the terrible, thrilling certainty:
He wouldn't wait for me to fall.
He'd teach me how to jump.