Fuck.
I tug my phone from my pocket and shoot off a text to Stone.
"Deals smooth?"
The reply comes fast.
"Clean. You?"
I don’t respond. I don't have time.
I push through the heat and noise, cutting across the crowd toward the bar. Cass is slinging drinks with her usual bite, snapping gum between pours.
I slap the bar. “You see the girl from earlier?”
Cass doesn’t even glance up. “You’re gonna have to be more specific, Dagger. I sell a lot of drinks to girls, and you deal with more than half of them.”
“The one with the split pink and purple hair. Little holographic outfit. Glitter on her cheeks. Freckles.”
Cass finally looks up, eyes narrowing, mouth twitching like she knows exactly who I’m talking about. “Oh,that, girl. You know she kinda?—”
I arch a brow. “Cass.”
She rolls her eyes. “Relax. She grabbed another drink. She looked spun as hell. I think she headed out the side door maybe half an hour or so ago.”
My stomach knots.
“You sure?”
Cass leans on the counter. “Pretty sure. You know, Dagger, you’re not the only one who doesn’t forget faces.”
I get her point, but I don’t reply because I’m already moving.
Blair might think I gave up the minute Noir dragged her away, she might think I walked away. But I didn’t, and I won’t.
The side door slams behind me, muting the bass to a low, throbbing pulse buried under brick and distance.
Out here, the night’s alive in a different way—less bodies grinding, more shadows moving. A few smokers linger near the door, clouds of nicotine haze curling around neon cuffs and fishnets. Some guy’s perched on a bike, cigarette between his lips, bored eyes tracking nothing. Laughter drifts from a cluster of ravers sprawled in the grass, cheap liquor sloshing in glow-up cups.
I ignore them all.
The gravel crunches under my boots as I move forward, past a strip of overgrown grass, where a worn path winds toward the ocean. Moonlight glints off beer bottles tossed in the weeds.
“Yo,” one of my guys calls from the edge, hoodie up, eyes bloodshot. I tip my chin at him. He nods, goes back to scrolling.
I follow the breeze.
Down the slope, toward where the air shifts—thicker with salt, cooler, wilder.
And then I see her.
Sitting in the sand like she’s part of it. Toes buried. Her platform boots lie abandoned beside her, forgotten like they didn’t just walk her through hell and back. Hair whipping around her face in pink and purple braids. Glitter catching in what little moonlight slips between clouds.
Still high, and glowing.
Still the only fucking thing out here I want to look at.
Blair.
