AI The key sticks in the lock for the third time that evening, and I yank it hard enough to bend the enameled head, shouldering the door open before I remember I tripped over a fire escape rung on the way up. My shoulder slams into the frame, and I blink away stars, straight shoulder-length black hair falling into my eyes, ready to snarl at whoever loitered on the landing, only to freeze mid-insult.
He’s leaning against the red brick wall beside the door, slicked-back platinum blond hair glowing silver under the sodium streetlight. Tailored charcoal suit, crease sharp enough to cut paper. Ivory-handled cane hooked over one arm, the faint scrape of concealed blade against metal pricking at my senses, a familiar sharp prickle I’d tried to forget for six months. The faint smell of sandalmwood and citrus, his cologne, drifts across the narrow landing, and my throat goes dry before I can speak.
What the hell are you doing here?
I don’t bother shifting the crumpled delivery bag slung over my arm, red and gold embroidery of Golden Empress still bright despite the rain that soaked through the lining halfway through my King’s Cross run. He pushes off the wall, one hand coming down to rest on the cane, and the scrape of the blade grows louder, a quiet reminder of the night we met in Silas’ bar, when he pulled that same cane on a pair of vampiric loan sharks who’d been threatening the bartender.
I have a lead. He nods at the order slip peeking out of the bag, the one for Mrs. Hassan’s extra-spicy bhuna, the one she’d demanded after her grandson’s exam results. On the off chance you’d stop ignoring my calls.
I step back, the heel of my boot slamming into a stack of unmarked law essays I left by the door last week, the ones I abandoned mid-proofreading after a 90-minute delivery to Croydon. I yank the door shut halfway, fumbling with the chain bolt until it clicks into place, pressing my palm flat against the cold wood between us.
I told you I didn’t want your help.
My voice cracks, and I hate it, hating that he can still crack me like this, hating that the smell of stale beer and pickled onions drifts up from Silas’ bar below, mixing with his cologne, taking me back to the night we danced to scratched Tom Waits records in the back room, when he’d sung *Rainbow Connection * off-key because I’d said I hated that song but smiled when he did it.
You left a delivery vest at the bar last night. His voice is lower now, not angry, just steady, like he’s reciting a fact he’s double-checked three times. The name tag was pinned crookedly. I saw your wrist. The scar. You flinched when the parcel scissors snapped shut.
My free hand flies to the crescent-shaped mark on my left wrist, the one Evan slammed in a window sash when I tried to leave him three years ago. I’d covered it with plastic bracelets for months before I finally stopped caring, stopped letting him control how I looked.
You stalk me?
I didn’t stalk you. He taps the cane against the landing boards once, sharp and deliberate, the sound echoing down the empty corridor. I’ve been standing two floors down every night since I saw that vest . Keeping an eye on the perimeter. Last night, a man lingered by your fire escape. Took a photo of your window with his phone.
My blood runs cold. I’d written off the shadow I saw lingering by the metal ladder an hour earlier as a drunk binman, just a stupid paranoia from months of looking over my shoulder. I hadn’t texted Eva, hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, because I didn’t want to drag my only friend in London into this mess, didn’t want to admit how small I felt, how tired I was of carrying this alone.
How do I know this isn’t a trick?
I press my forehead to the door, the cold seeping through my hair, staring at the scuffed toe of his leather shoe, the one with the chipped sole from when he tripped over a pub table that same Tom Waits night.
You flinched when I touched your wrist that night at the bar. He taps the cane again, and this time, the blade slides out just a fraction, the silver metal glinting under the streetlight. You didn’t flinch when I touched your face. You didn’t flinch when I pulled you close and kept you warm while the rain lashed against the windows.
I fumble with the chain bolt, my fingers shaking, and unclip it with a sharp clatter. I can’t lie to myself, can’t keep pushing him away when he knows exactly what I’m feeling, exactly how scared I am. When the chain hits the floor, he doesn’t move right away, just stands there, his heterochromatic eyes fixed on mine, one amber, one black, like he’s trying to read every unspoken thought in my head.
I don’t have anywhere else to go.
I say it before I can stop myself, before I can hide how raw this all feels, how I’ve been waking up every night reaching for the empty spot next to my bed, how I’ve been ordering extra bhuna just to have someone to share the food with, even if it’s just me eating alone in my flat.
He steps forward then, slow, like he’s approaching a skittish stray cat, and stops just out of arm’s reach, his eyes darting to the pepper spray canister tucked under the doormat, the one I bought after a stranger followed me home from the tube last month. I nod, barely perceptible, and he reaches out, his long fingers brushing the edge of my scar, not touching it, just hovering, like he’s asking permission. When I don’t pull away, he rests his palm against my skin, warm even through the thin cotton of my jumper, and for a second, the weight of the last six months lifts, just a little, like someone took an inch off my shoulders.
I should have called.
His voice is quiet, so quiet I almost miss it over the thrum of the traffic on the main road below. I should have fought harder to stay.
I open my mouth to say something, to apologize, to tell him I missed him too, to tell him that I’ve been replaying that night in the bar a hundred times in my head, that I’m sorry I ran, that I’m sorry I left him with nothing but a note slipped under his bar door three days before I drove south. But then we hear it.
Heavy, slow footsteps coming up the fire escape stairs, the metal rungs creaking under someone’s weight .
My blood turns to ice. I yank my hand away from Lucien’s, fumbling for the pepper spray under the doormat, but he grabs my wrist before I can reach it, his fingers tight but not painful, his black eye narrowing, his amber one flaring bright, like something primal just woke up in him.
It’s him.
His voice is sharp, dangerous, the same tone he uses when he’s negotiating with supernatural gangsters in East London, the same tone he used to tell me to leave Evan before it was too late. I don’t move, my thumb slipping on the pepper spray canister, staring at the shadow that scrolls across the bottom of the front door, broad shoulders, the same shoulders that slammed me against a wall three years ago when I tried to walk out with only a single suitcase.
The footsteps stop outside our flat door.
Then a fist pounds against the wood, hard enough to shake the framed wildflower print my grandmother gave me above the couch.
Rory. I know you’re in there. I can see your delivery bag by the door.