The key's warmth had traveled deep into her palm now, intimate as a second skin. She pressed her thumb harder into that worn groove—someone else's habit, years of turning this same lock. A woman's thumb, she thought. Smaller. The same hesitation carved into metal.
Behind her, Damian's breathing stayed even. He didn't step closer, didn't speak, didn't fill the silence with the questions she could feel him not asking. The bass from the main room found her through the floorboards, a slow pulse that matched nothing in her chest—her heart was running its own race now, wild and uneven.
The bead of sweat at her temple broke free, tracing a hot line down her jaw. She didn't wipe it away. Couldn't spare the hand.
"How many times did she stand here?" The words came out scraped, lower than she'd meant them. "Before she stopped."
A pause. Then his voice, close enough that she felt the warmth of it on her shoulder. "I don't know." A beat. "I stopped counting the last time."
The air shifted—she smelled him now, cologne and the faint salt of exertion, something darker underneath. Her grip on the key tightened until the edges bit into her thumb pad, a clean sharp pain that kept her from turning around, from doing something stupid like leaning back into the heat of him.
"You're asking me to see you," she said, "but you don't have to stand here blind." Her voice caught on the last word and she let it. Let him hear it. "Turn the lights on, Damian. Or off. But don't leave me in the dark with a door I unlocked alone."
His exhale was long, slow—a release of something she couldn't name. Then his hand came up, not touching her, but close. She felt the air displace, the warmth of his palm hovering an inch from her shoulder blade. He didn't close the distance.
"I'm here," he said. Low. Bare. "I'm not going anywhere."
The key trembled in her grip. The door waited. And behind her, a man who'd stopped counting last times held his hand an inch from her spine, letting her decide if she wanted to feel it.
The heat of his hand reached her before his skin did—a phantom pressure, a promise her body responded to before her mind caught up. The fine hairs on her arm rose. Her spine arched a fraction of an inch, an involuntary offering, and she felt the air shift as he adjusted to match her, maintaining the exact same distance. He'd held that hover through her question about the other woman. Through her confession about the dark. Through the silence that followed. His hand hadn't wavered once.
She let her eyes drift closed. The key was warm and solid in her grip, the groove beneath her thumb a map of someone else's uncertainty. But the heat at her back—that was hers. That was now. She felt it in the space between her shoulder blades, a low thrum that traveled down her spine and settled somewhere deep in her belly, a coil of warmth that had nothing to do with the club's temperature.
"If I lean back," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, "will your hand be there?"
A pause. Then his breath, slow and warm against the shell of her ear. "It's been there. It'll stay there."
The answer undid something in her chest—a knot she hadn't known she was holding, the one that had kept her spine rigid and her shoulders squared since she'd walked into this place. She let her hand fall from the key, the metal cool against her fingertips as they grazed the door. Then she leaned back. An inch. Two. Until the space between his palm and her spine closed, and his hand settled against the small of her back, warm and solid and impossibly light for all the weight it carried.
He didn't pull her closer. Didn't slide his hand lower or higher. Just let it rest there, a point of contact that said I'm here without demanding anything in return. The simplicity of it made her throat tight.
"The last woman," Ivy said, her eyes still closed, "did she ever push the door open after she unlocked it?"
His thumb moved against her spine, a slow, unconscious stroke that traveled through her like a current. "No," he said, and the word was rough at the edges, scraped clean of anything polished. "She always turned the key. Let it hang in the lock. But she never walked through."
Ivy opened her eyes. The door was grey, industrial, a seam of light at its edges where the seal had worn thin. Behind her, his hand was still against her back, waiting without pressure. She thought about the woman who'd worn the groove into the key, who'd stood in this same spot with the same choice, who'd turned away. Thought about the version of Damian who'd watched her leave, who'd stopped counting last times, who'd learned to hold his hand an inch away and wait for someone to decide they wanted to feel it.
She reached up with her free hand—the one not on the key—and laid her palm flat against the cool metal of the door. "I'm not her," she said. "But I need you to know something." She felt his hand still against her spine, waiting. "I'm not sure I'm brave enough to walk through this door alone. But if you're with me—" She turned her head, just enough to catch the edge of his face in her peripheral vision. "If you're with me, I think I can do it."