Velvet Rain

The rain started just before midnight soft, deliberate, like fingers tracing the skin of the city. From his apartment window on the twelfth floor, **Eli** watched the streets blur into ribbons of red and gold. Down below, the club signs pulsed through the mist like veins of neon. The city after dark had always been his muse and his undoing.

He took another sip of bourbon, the ice long gone, and stared at the blank canvas waiting for him. He hadn’t painted in months. Not since *her*.

A knock echoed through the silence.
Three times. Slow.

When he opened the door, **Mara** stood there drenched, shivering, eyes glinting like wet glass. He hadn’t seen her in a year.

“Hi, Eli.” Her voice trembled, half-laugh, half-confession.
“I was in the neighborhood.”

“You’re lying,” he said, but he stepped aside anyway.

She walked in, leaving a trail of rainwater and perfume that smelled like memory. Same black coat. Same scar on her wrist. Same woman who’d once told him she didn’t believe in forever and proved it.

He poured her a drink without asking.
“Still bourbon?”
“Always.”

They sat across from each other, the city humming beneath them. The silence was a third presence in the room, heavier than the smoke curling from her lips.

“You look tired,” she said finally.
“Painting does that to you.”
“You haven’t painted in months.”

He laughed, bitterly. “Still know where to stab.”

She smiled, soft and sad. “Still bleeding?”

He looked at her then not the way lovers do, but like someone studying a photograph of their own ghost. “Why are you here, Mara?”

“Because I saw your light on,” she said. “And because I need to tell you something.”

She told him about a man. Rich, married, dangerous. Someone she thought she loved. Someone who owned her more than he ever touched her.

“I stole from him,” she said, voice cracking. “A drive. Something he wasn’t supposed to lose.”

Eli frowned. “And you brought it here? To me?”

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

He exhaled slowly. The room felt smaller now.
“Mara, whatever this is, I don’t”

“Please,” she whispered, eyes pleading. “Just for tonight. Then I’ll disappear again.”

The rain outside grew heavier, drumming against the glass like panic.

He nodded. “You can stay. One night.”

Later, when she fell asleep on his couch, he opened her bag.
The drive was there a black rectangle, unmarked. He plugged it into his laptop.

A folder opened.
A single video.

He clicked play.

Static. Then a room he recognized *his own studio.*
And in the frame, Mara… kissing him. Laughing. Then whispering to someone *off-screen.*

A man’s voice replied:

> “Good. He trusts you. Keep it that way.”

Eli froze. The video ended abruptly, like a blade pulled from a wound.

He looked at Mara, sleeping under his coat. The same lips. The same lies.

He unplugged the drive and stepped toward the window. Outside, a siren wailed through the rain, sharp and distant.

When he turned back, she was awake watching him.
“You looked,” she said quietly.
“You used me,” he replied.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like that.”

He almost laughed. “It never is.”

She reached for him, slow, trembling. “Eli, please”

But then came the knock again. Three times. Slow.

Her face went pale.
“They found me,” she whispered.

The door burst open. Two men in black suits. One pointed a gun. The other took the drive from Eli’s hand.

“Smart,” the taller one said. “Should’ve wiped it.”

Mara tried to speak, but the shot came first. A flash of red, a gasp, then nothing but the hiss of rain.

The men left as quickly as they came. No names. No threats. Just silence.

Eli knelt beside her, hands trembling, her blood warm against his skin. She looked up at him with fading eyes.
“I just wanted… one more night,” she whispered.

When it was over, he stood by the window again, the city flickering below him. He took his brush and dipped it into the red pooling on the floor.

By dawn, a new painting hung on the wall her face half-lit, half-lost. The city behind her a storm of color and regret.

He called it *Velvet Rain.*

And when the first light of morning touched the glass, Eli finally understood
The city after dark doesn’t destroy you.
It just paints you in the colors you tried to hide.