No flowers for the dead - Chapter 23: Chapter 23
You are reading No flowers for the dead, Chapter 23: Chapter 23. Read more chapters of No flowers for the dead.
The city hadn’t changed.
Its skyline still glittered with steel and hunger.
Traffic still snarled by 8 a.m.
And ambition still moved like blood in its streets.
But they had changed.
And for once, that was enough.
⸻
Elias stopped working weekends.
Alina started laughing again—real, body-deep laughter that came from nowhere and everywhere at once.
They bought a brownstone. Not for the view, not for status. For the stillness.
The rooftop was bare. The kitchen had bad lighting. The floors creaked.
But every inch of it felt like theirs.
⸻
They made new routines.
Sunday morning coffee with bare feet and music that didn’t belong to any particular decade.
Midnight walks through neighborhoods they didn’t own.
Cooking badly together—and not caring when it went wrong.
They learned to slow down.
They learned to be bored.
They learned that intimacy wasn’t always about fire—it was about folding laundry together, about sharing toothbrushes and inside jokes and the way she always stole his hoodies.
⸻
Alina caught him one night in the doorway, just watching her.
She was tying her hair up, humming off-key, barefoot in one of his old shirts.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
But what he meant was everything.
Because this—this quiet, ordinary moment—was the kind of miracle he never thought he’d survive long enough to witness.
⸻
But peace always comes with echoes.
Sometimes Alina would pause during the day, phone in hand, and remember how easily everything could be shattered.
Sometimes Elias would wake from a dream with clenched fists, body ready for a fight that no longer existed.
Trauma doesn’t disappear.
It softens.
It reshapes.
⸻
One night, they stood on the rooftop. The sky stretched low with stars. Their hands entwined, sleeves brushing.
“Do you ever wonder,” Alina whispered, “what would’ve happened if we hadn’t made it?”
Elias turned to her. “No.”
She smiled. “Why not?”
“Because I wouldn’t have survived it.”
Silence fell again.
Comfortable.
Full.
⸻
Downstairs, the headlines flashed about a royal cousin caught in scandal, a billionaire imprisoned, a new heir emerging somewhere else in the world.
But none of it touched them anymore.
They had outlived the narrative.
And now they were writing a new one.
Together.
One with no flowers.
No mourning.
Just this strange, tender bloom that came after the fire.
Its skyline still glittered with steel and hunger.
Traffic still snarled by 8 a.m.
And ambition still moved like blood in its streets.
But they had changed.
And for once, that was enough.
⸻
Elias stopped working weekends.
Alina started laughing again—real, body-deep laughter that came from nowhere and everywhere at once.
They bought a brownstone. Not for the view, not for status. For the stillness.
The rooftop was bare. The kitchen had bad lighting. The floors creaked.
But every inch of it felt like theirs.
⸻
They made new routines.
Sunday morning coffee with bare feet and music that didn’t belong to any particular decade.
Midnight walks through neighborhoods they didn’t own.
Cooking badly together—and not caring when it went wrong.
They learned to slow down.
They learned to be bored.
They learned that intimacy wasn’t always about fire—it was about folding laundry together, about sharing toothbrushes and inside jokes and the way she always stole his hoodies.
⸻
Alina caught him one night in the doorway, just watching her.
She was tying her hair up, humming off-key, barefoot in one of his old shirts.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
But what he meant was everything.
Because this—this quiet, ordinary moment—was the kind of miracle he never thought he’d survive long enough to witness.
⸻
But peace always comes with echoes.
Sometimes Alina would pause during the day, phone in hand, and remember how easily everything could be shattered.
Sometimes Elias would wake from a dream with clenched fists, body ready for a fight that no longer existed.
Trauma doesn’t disappear.
It softens.
It reshapes.
⸻
One night, they stood on the rooftop. The sky stretched low with stars. Their hands entwined, sleeves brushing.
“Do you ever wonder,” Alina whispered, “what would’ve happened if we hadn’t made it?”
Elias turned to her. “No.”
She smiled. “Why not?”
“Because I wouldn’t have survived it.”
Silence fell again.
Comfortable.
Full.
⸻
Downstairs, the headlines flashed about a royal cousin caught in scandal, a billionaire imprisoned, a new heir emerging somewhere else in the world.
But none of it touched them anymore.
They had outlived the narrative.
And now they were writing a new one.
Together.
One with no flowers.
No mourning.
Just this strange, tender bloom that came after the fire.
End of No flowers for the dead Chapter 23. Continue reading Chapter 24 or return to No flowers for the dead book page.