Writeblr • writer type: pantser ✧ genre: romance, erotica ✧ sub genres: post apocalyptic, dystopian, suspense, crime, new adult, paranormal ✧ rating: mature/explicit ✧ tropes & themes: plus size characters, enemies to lovers, characters finding themselves, age gap, found family, living is more than surviving ✧

History • I’ve been writing since I can remember but seriously started getting into the craft about nine years ago. In that time I have finished five significant works, between procrastination and burnout: Sid (43,397 words) ✧ The Secrets of Cranerise Valley (32,173 words) ✧ Coming of Age (100,863 words) ✧ Sweet Dreams (94,095 words) ✧ The Night We Met (181,988 words)

Goals • I don’t plan to publish. Writing is my joy and if I can continue to create worlds, characters and stories consistently, that would be my ultimate dream. I’d love to make friends in the community who share that love of creation and writing (who may also enjoy the romance genre).

I also write fanfiction for multiple fandoms when I’m not working on my original stories and love to talk about anything fandom and fanfic writing related as well.

If they leave now and Buck gets suspicious they’re together, there’s a chance he will enforce road blocks so they can’t leave the city. But the alternative is letting Daniel tell a lie he won’t be able to keep up with for long. Either way, they don’t have a solid plan and it terrifies her.

Daniel should be packing while she finds them a ride. They should be on the road before the sun comes up. They should’ve left last night instead of falling into bed but they both needed the time together. There’s a whole hell of a lot of shoulds to consider but way too many unknowns that keep her paralyzed.

“What should I tell him?”

“Why is he calling?”

Daniel lets out a deep breath and messes with his hair some more. “Probably to talk about BB.”

Her heart drops. Why is this girl always in the middle of things? “What about BB?”

“Did you know about City Without Fear? I’m assuming you did if you were with Daredevil and Karen Page.”

Of course, she knows about it. The Resistance is widespread but she wasn’t really looking at the small details. She admits she was one track minded. “I heard of it.”

“Well, BB is the one making it.”

She does know that and she’s not happy about it, about what kind of position it puts him in. “And Buck knows?”

“Yeah, sure, but he doesn’t have proof. Unless she sent the false information I gave her to Ellison.”

Wow. She didn’t think BB was big enough of a player to be in touch with the Bulletin. If she wasn’t pissed at her for continually putting Daniel in danger, she might be impressed.

Teresa hasn’t been very good at seeing everything the way she used to. Not since Daniel. She thought Daredevil would kill Fisk—or hoped he would— but it’s certainly not looking that way now. Matt’s not angry enough about what happened to his friend. If that had been Daniel, Wilson would be six feet under already.

“Buck will ask you to play her, to bring her to him so he can take care of it.” She sighs. “It’ll be a nonnegotiable order. Another test.”

“I know.”

She doesn’t want him to do it but it’s choosing between BB’s life and his own. And if it were up to Teresa, she’d pick Daniel every time. But he’s a good boy, and she knows he won’t be able to do it. “Don’t worry. We’re going to get out of here before anything happens, okay?”

He nods.

And his phone starts ringing again.

“Tell him you were sleeping. Make him think you’re going to give him BB. Buy us time.” Her heart pounds as she gives him the instructions. “And put it on speaker.”

Daniel’s hand shakes as he reaches over and slides the button on the screen over to answer the call and taps the speaker icon. “Hey, man.”

“Daniel,” Buck’s thickly accented voice comes through the other line.

“Yeah? I’m here. Sorry about the wait. I . . . I was tired, man.” He looks at her for approval and she nods. “What’s up?”

There’s a tiny beat of silence, then, “Is Miss Hawke there with you?”

The air sucks out of the room. Damn it. This can’t be happening.

“Daniel, can you hear me?” Buck’s voice echoes in the apartment.

Panicked eyes meet hers, his mouth dropping open in terror. They’ve already been caught. He looks at her for answers but she doesn’t have any. Their options are slowly slipping away. And it’s all her fault.

“Yes,” Teresa says. “I’m here.”

Daniel slams his hand down over the phone and mutes their side. “Goddamn it, Teresa! Why? Why are you doing this?”

“Act like you’re turning me in.”

He tears at his hair. “He won’t believe me!”

“Well,” Buck says, between their arguing. “It’s good to know you’re in the same place.”

“Daniel, please, do what I say.” She begs him with her eyes. “No matter what, just tell him what he wants to hear.” She unmutes them.

He’s standing so still he looks like his bones might crack under the pressure she’s just put on him. He stares at the phone, tired and hurt, and it makes him look like a little boy. “What do you want me to do here, Buck?”

“Stay where you are. I’ll be there in a tick. Did you do what was asked of you, Daniel?”

“Yeah,” he answers, completely defeated. “I found the leak.”

“Good man.” There is quiet white noise for a moment. “Sit tight, Teresa. We’ve got a lot to talk about, the three of us.”

The line goes dead and the silence rings in her ears. This is about to go so sideways, she’s not sure they can come back from it. But she won’t let Daniel see how scared she is. If they can follow through and say all the right things, they might still make it out of this. She has to believe that. But now he’s quiet in a way that makes her ache with regret. She’s done it again. This time she hasn’t left him but still hurt him. She might as well have kicked him in the stomach and ran out the front door. The look on his face says it all.

“Don’t . . .” she starts, but the words cease to come.

He narrows his eyes at her. “Don’t what?”

“Give up.” She joins him on his side of the counter but doesn’t touch him. It seems they’ve done too much of that tonight. She should’ve made him go with her the second she got there but she was selfish and stupid. So very stupid. “It’s gonna be hard for a while. But we let it play out.”

“Let it—the Task Force shot you, Teresa!” He stares in disbelief when she doesn’t react. “Buck gets here and he finishes their job. You want that?”

“He’s not going to shoot me.”

“You don’t know that!”

She throws her arms around him and squeezes him as tight as she can. It feels like maybe it’s the last time. “You’re right. Okay. But listen,” she whispers and holds his face so he can’t look away. His eyes are wet. “I need you to act like you don’t care about me. Don’t let Buck see it.”

“What?”

“I came here tonight, asking about getting back in with Fisk. I tried to manipulate you—”

“Stop.”

“Daniel, we don’t have time for this.”

“We can go right now. Shirts on our backs. I don’t care.”

“We wouldn’t make it out of the city. Not now.”

“Then we don’t but at least we’d be together.”

For a moment she can’t catch her breath, clutching her chest as her heart stops. She’s incapacitated, unknowing what to do.

This is all wrong. This isn’t how it was supposed to go.

He’s willing to die trying and she can barely stand to hear it. But how careless had she been with her life? All in the name of protecting him. Maybe it’s time she lets him decide for himself. Maybe it doesn’t sound all that bad to try, even if it comes to an end. At least they’d be together when it happens.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” He waits hopefully.

“We can . . . We can do it.”

A loud knock on the door makes them both jump. They lock eyes and scramble away from each other.

“We’ll go out the sliding door,” Daniel says, grabbing her hand. “We’ll find a way down the balcony.”

She hesitates a second too long and the door busts in. She pulls her hand away and wants to kill herself for the way she knows it’s gonna break his heart. It’s already breaking hers.

It’s not Buck that comes through the door but Connor Powell, loud and proud asshole leader of the Anti-Vigilante Task Force, followed by his posse of wanna-be Punishers. They wait behind him like little minions.

He smirks when he sees her and stalks into the room with one intention—to finish what he started. “Get on your knees, Miss Hawke.”

“Not for you,” she bites.

He raises his gun and Daniel steps forward. “Woah. Buck said we were just gonna talk.”

“Did he now?”

Teresa feels a sick kind of protectiveness over Daniel that floods into her so suddenly she’s sure she could rip Powell’s throat out with her bare hands or teeth if he made one wrong move. Whichever got the job done quicker. She hopes to hell Daniel doesn’t provoke him.

“Look,” Daniel says, quietly, hand out in front of him like that might stop a bullet. “When Buck called, he didn’t really mention anything about killing someone in my apartment. Ya know, where I live.” Oh, good boy. He listens. Act unattached. “So maybe we should wait for him to show up.”

“He’s already down stairs waiting for ya, dough-boy.”

Teresa’s jaw cracks under the pressure of her grinding teeth. She wants to say something but she holds her tongue.

“Then call him,” Daniel says, more calm in his voice than she expects. Maybe this is the side of him Fisk saw potential in.

Powell stands there for a breath too long before he lets out an incredulous laugh. “Fine. We’ll all walk down together.” He turns on his heel and the other AVTF agents imitate the movement.

Teresa gives Daniel one last look before she follows.

Daniel walks with a heavy step to stop himself from reaching out and wrenching Teresa’s arm out of Powell’s grasp. He shouldn’t be able to touch a woman at all, let alone his woman. It takes everything in him not to stake that claim. She told him not to let it show. So he won't.

Down in the parking lot, Buck leans against his sleek black car. He cocks his head in their directions as the Task Force separates Teresa from him, manhandling her roughly into the back of their van. Buck will expect that he protests so he doesn’t. And it's the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. He doesn’t watch as the double doors close, just keeps his eyes on Buck, and pretends like it’s not killing him. Like Teresa is nothing.

“Come on, Daniel,” he says, opening the car door.

He joins him and a chill of dread slithers down his spine. It’s a body in the trunk all over again, only this time it’s worse. “What’s going on, man?”

The engine rumbles to life and the car starts rolling. “You tell me.”

“I dunno. It’s been a shit day. Mrs. Fisk’s funeral, the leak with BB, and now Miss Hawke shows up talking about . . . realigning with the mayor.” He sighs, trying to slow his breathing. “I mean,” he says with a nervous laugh. “I dunno what kinda pull she thinks I have.”

“Perhaps she thinks you're simple.” He doesn’t look at him. “Easy.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“You’re not.”

“No, Buck. You didn’t have to bring the Task Force. I would’ve brought her down to you. I would’ve done whatever you said to do.”

The car goes eerily quiet for the rest of the ride.

Daniel isn’t sure where they’re going or how long it’ll take to get there and he’s too nervous to ask. The only comfort he has is that they’re still following the Task Force van. In some way it means he’s still with her, that they will probably be in the same place together soon. This isn’t where things end. At least not yet.

They pull into a warehouse lot he’s never been to before. Lights reflect off the waters from a nearby dock onto a silver building. A logo of some sort has faded from the metal siding. It looks like it might’ve been a canning company at one point but he isn’t sure.

“Buck, what are we doing here?”

Dark eyes glare at him as the engine shuts off. “The mayor is here to take care of some business. We are here to watch.”

He gulps and unbuckles his seatbelt a little too fast. “What does that mean?”

“Daniel,” Buck says simply but there’s even an edge in that. “I need to ask. Do you have any existing feelings for Miss Hawke?”

Two separate sides of him begin to war—one part wants to obey Teresa, lie, but the other part is sure that Buck will know. No matter how hard he tries to hide what he feels for her, it’ll be written all over his face. And he’s fuckin’ terrified that either way, he loses her tonight. For good.

“Sure,” he says decidedly. “I mean, we worked together. I care—I cared about her. But she left, ya know, and that was it.”

Buck sighs like even that isn’t sufficient enough. “I’m going to tell you the truth and I need you to hear the warning in it. Teresa had been with the mayor a very long time, longer than I have, and every step she took was in his desired direction. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, totally,” he says but doesn’t fully. If this was all about loyalty then where did the betrayal start? She wasn’t always a turncoat as Buck called her.

“Are you aware there are security cameras in the mayor’s office?”

Daniel’s blood runs cold. Memories come rushing in unstoppable waves. How could he sit in the mayor's chair that night and the thought never cross his mind that he was being watched? How could he not even worry for a second that someone else might see what he and Teresa had done? He can’t speak. Or move. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t breathe.

“Don’t worry.” Buck turns more toward him, somewhere between jolly and threatening. “The mayor never saw the video. But he knew.”

“I . . . I was the one who . . . That wasn’t . . .” he stutters, mouth so dry that it hurts to swallow. “He fired her because I . . .”

“No. He fired her because of what she did. She made the wrong choice.”

“Why didn’t he fire me?”

“Because your only weakness is the same as any man.” He smiles. “Pretty women.” Daniel looks away because he knows it’s true. Buck makes a small tsk noise. “BB Urich. Teresa. You’ve got a lot on your plate, haven’t you? The mayor can be sympathetic to a point. So, Daniel, is your head where it needs to be?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Your fondness of the fairer sex won’t prevent you from taking orders?”

“No.”

“You won’t interfere with what the mayor decides to do with Miss Hawke or Miss Urich?”

His heart beats so hard he can hardly hear past the rushing of blood in his ears. “I told you, Buck. I’ve been loyal. Like you said, Fisk changed my life. I’m not gonna throw it away now.”

“Good.”

It’s the last thing he says before exiting the car but Daniel can’t move yet. He’s frozen to the seat, staring ahead out the windshield as Buck walks past toward the loading dock at the back of the warehouse. It isn’t until Powell kicks open the Task Force van doors and drags Teresa out that he finally moves.

She doesn’t look at him, doesn’t fight, just walks calmly to what might be her death. And no matter what he just told Buck, he can’t let that happen. He doesn’t know how he’ll do it but he will save her if he has to. Even if he does it while taking his last breath, he’ll do it.

The overheard fluorescent lights in the warehouse are bright and turn everyone a sickly green. Especially Mayor Fisk, in his white suit, who comes forward from the shadows into the room like a predator from the underbrush. It’s the first time Daniel’s seen the real him and not some manufactured figure of success. It’s the first time he’s seen any man with bloodlust in his eyes.

“Is this the meeting you were hoping for, Teresa?” Fisk booms.

Powell throws her onto the concrete floor and it takes everything not to run forward and catch her. She still doesn’t glance in his direction and that scares him. Maybe it’s better that she doesn’t though because if she looked at him asking for help, he would go to her in an instant. No hesitation. No second thought to if it could get them killed. He’d just move.

“I fear your olive branch comes too late.”

Teresa pulls herself to her knees. “This is what it’s come to? After everything.”

Her voice is so quiet, Daniel can’t make out some of what she says. Fisk steps forward and grabs her by the hair, yanking her up off the ground. She doesn’t struggle or make a noise and it makes him feel like throwing up. His fists curl and his toes press hard against the inside of his shoe. He can’t watch him kill her. He won’t.

“I’m sorry about Vanessa,” she says softly, practically dangling from Fisk’s hands.

“Don’t speak of her.”

“She was as much my friend as she was your wife, Wilson.”

Fisk snarls, shaking her. “You are nothing.”

“Is that right?” She holds her own even as she trembles. “If I was easy to kill, you would’ve done it already.”

His hands fly to her throat and she snaps backward on impact, hacking as he squeezes. Daniel steps forward and a hand slams across his chest. Buck’s hand. They share a look and he’s surprised to find that Buck is just as afflicted as he is. The only difference between them seems to be the amount of control they have to stop themselves from stopping this.

She struggles, paint-chipped nails ripping Fisk’s hands to shreds.

Daniel can do nothing but stand and watch as her energy fades. He and Buck both gasp at the parting of her last breaths and the hand over his chest tightens around his shirt to hold him in place. The realization that he’s watching her die hits and he loses himself, his body giving out the same hers is, but Buck keeps him balanced. There won’t be a life to live without her.

He gives up.

Teresa’s lips move. He hears nothing. They move again but from where he’s standing he can’t make anything out. She stops fighting. She stops moving. One last whisper passes her lips, inaudible.

And Fisk lets go.

She hits the ground, wheezing, too weak to move herself off his shoe. He kicks her over.

“Take her,” he barks.

Powell moves at lightning speed, scooping her off the ground roughly until she stands on wobbling feet. “Where to, sir?”

“15th Precinct.”

For a moment, Daniel’s so dazed he hardly understands what’s happening. Somewhere in the haze he’d prepared himself, somehow, to watch her die and to die himself. He’d gone numb. And now they’re taking her to jail?

Things start moving fast and before he knows it he’s back outside, following Buck to the car. He watches as Teresa is dragged toward the Task Force van once again tonight. She turns to look at him, eyes watery, head hanging limply. But she’s alive. God, she’s alive.

“Do I have authority to kill this bitch if she tries anything?” Powell asks, pulling her against him by the hair.

Daniel wants to kill him.

“Yes,” Buck spits like he hates the way the word tastes. “You will have permission.”

Teresa’s eyes stay on Daniel, she doesn’t look away even when she’s manhandled toward the back double doors of the van. She waits until the very last minute before she mouths, “You and me.”

Then she's taken away.