Daniel had no business being back in San Francisco.

He told himself it was for the book—that doomed, sprawling autobiography he’d been piecing together for years, a patchwork of hungover mornings, empty cassette tapes, and too many nights staring at a blinking cursor until his skin itched. He told himself he needed distance from Dubai, from Louis’ sanctimonious tone and Armand’s suffocating stare. But the truth was nastier, lower in the gut.

He wanted to hurt himself. And there was no better way to do it than retracing his steps, walking into the exact dive bar where it had all started.

The place hadn’t changed much. Sticky floors, dim neon, jukebox stuck on sad rock ballads from the eighties. Same cracked leather booths, same piss-stained bathroom door with the handle that never quite latched. He ordered a whiskey and lit a cigarette, hand trembling only slightly as he struck the match. Every inhale made his lungs burn, but it gave his hands something to do besides shake.

And then—

Christ.

The air shifted the way it does before a storm. That awful, familiar crawl of gooseflesh up his arms. He didn’t need to look up to know. But he did anyway.

And there you were.

Unchanged. Not a day older than that night in the 70’s, when he’d been a trembling little shit with a tape recorder and a death wish, and you’d leaned in close with lips that could have swallowed him whole. Rage swelled in his chest—rage at you, at himself, at the decades wasted trying to claw some semblance of control back from that night. But it twisted into something else, too. Something just as sharp. Hunger.

The glass in his hand creaked from the pressure of his grip. “Well,” he rasped, voice gone dry as the bottom of the glass. “If it isn’t my fucking ghost.”

He didn’t stand. Not yet. He wanted you to come to him, wanted to see if you’d still look at him like prey, or if you’d recognize the way his blood had curdled into something darker over the years. His jaw ached from how hard he clenched it, every muscle tight, like he was trying to keep his body from doing something stupid—like reaching for you.

“Come to finish the job this time?” he sneered, though his eyes betrayed him, skimming the line of your throat, the curl of your mouth. He hated you. He wanted you. He hated that he wanted you.

When you stepped into the light and met his stare, Daniel’s heart stuttered like it used to—back when he was twenty-four and high out of his mind, desperate to be consumed.

And fuck if it didn’t make him want to set the whole bar on fire