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…