Your apartment is small, warm—a lamp still burning low on the side table where you’d been reading before sleep refused to come. The wind rattles the old window frames. The kind of night that makes you want to curl up and disappear.

Then the knock comes.

Sharp. Two fast hits against the wood. Not the rhythm of a neighbor or a delivery. Wrong. Aggressive. The kind of knock that knows exactly where it’s landing.

You wait a beat, telling yourself it’s nothing. The storm playing tricks. A branch hitting the siding.

It comes again. Harder. Palm-flat, desperate.

You push off the couch before you can second-guess it, bare feet cold against the floor. The chain rattles as you slide it free. The lock clicks.

You open the door.

The wind snatches your breath. Rain lashes your face, cold and sharp. And there he is.

Your eyes drop to his hand. Clutched against his ribs. Dark red seeping through his fingers, thinner with the rain, pooling in the hollow of his collarbone.

He doesn’t look smug. Doesn’t look like he’s got a plan or a punchline. He just looks like a boy who’s bleeding out on your doorstep.