The floorboards hum through the soles of her heels, a low vibration that travels up her calves and settles somewhere in her chest. The stage light hits her face, hot and bright, and she blinks against it, her shadow stretching long behind her across the polished wood.
The mic stand is cold. She wraps her fingers around it, and the cut on her palm stings—a sharp, clean reminder of the glass, of his hand on her face, of the deal she made without knowing what it cost. Her thumb finds the edge of the wound and presses, just once, testing.
At the side bar, Adrian stands with his hands flat on the marble. His silhouette is motionless, cut against the dim amber glow of the back wall, and even from here she can feel the weight of his gaze—a pressure that doesn't lift, doesn't blink, doesn't ask permission.
She hasn't decided what she'll do after the last note fades. Her mind is a blank wall, a door she's afraid to open. But her body already knows. Her hips sway as she adjusts her stance, her fingers tightening on the metal, her breath coming shallow and fast in the heat of the stage light.
The first chord of the backing track rolls through the speakers, low and slow, and she opens her mouth. The sound that comes out is not the practiced one. It's rougher, rawer, a voice that hasn't been warmed up, that's still carrying the weight of everything she didn't say at the bar.
She sings about a woman who waits by a window. A woman who counts the hours until a door opens. The lyrics feel stupid now—she wrote them months ago, before the scandal, before the Velvet Room, before a man with a scar through his eyebrow told her she was terrified of stopping.
Her voice cracks on the bridge. She doesn't recover. She lets it break, lets the note splinter into something ugly and true, and she feels the silence in the room deepen around her like a held breath.
When the track ends, the last note hangs in the air for a moment before dissolving into the hum of the cooling amps. She doesn't turn around. She keeps her hand on the mic stand, her palm pressed against the cold metal, the cut throbbing in time with her pulse.
Behind her, the bar is silent. She hears the clink of a glass being set down—deliberate, unhurried. Then footsteps. Not toward her. Away. Toward the back hallway where the door to his office waits, always slightly ajar.
She turns. His silhouette is already halfway there, his hand rising to push the door open, and he doesn't look back. But he pauses. Just for a second. His fingers resting on the doorframe.
Then he steps inside, and the door closes behind him with a soft click that she hears even through the ringing in her ears.
Her body knows where it wants to go. Her feet are already moving before she tells them to, her hand leaving the mic stand, her palm stinging as she crosses the stage and steps down onto the floor. The club is empty. The lights are low. The door at the end of the hallway is closed, but she can see the crack of light beneath it, thin and yellow and waiting.
Her palm meets the wood. The heat from the light beneath seeps through the grain, warm against her skin, and she presses flat, her fingers spreading, her arm straight. The cut on her palm remembers every moment of the last hour—the glass, the blood, the way his thumb brushed her cheek before he pulled away. The heat isn't just the bulb. It's him. The space on the other side of the door, breathing, waiting.
She doesn't knock. Her hand stays where it is, the wood smooth and worn under her fingers, and she feels the vibration of her own pulse traveling up her wrist. The hallway behind her is dark. The club beyond it is a dead room of cooling amps and empty glasses. There's nothing left to run toward. He said that. She hated him for saying it. But her palm is flat against his door, and she hasn't lifted it yet.
She thinks about the woman in the song. The one who waited by a window, counting hours. She wrote that woman from the inside, from the safety of metaphor, never imagining she'd become her. But here she is. Palm against a closed door. Waiting for something to open—or for herself to walk away.
The heat grows. She feels it through the wood now, not just the bulb but the space behind it, the room where he sits in his leather chair, his hands flat on the desk, his eyes on the door. She knows he's watching it. She knows he heard her footsteps stop, knows he's counting the seconds between her arrival and her choice. He's patient. He's always patient. That's the weight of the silence—his patience, pressing against the wood from the other side.
Her breath fogs the air in front of her face, a thin mist that coils and disappears. The hallway is cold. The rest of the club is cold. But her palm is hot against the door, and the heat spreads up her arm, across her shoulders, settling in her chest like a held ember.
She could turn around. The door is not locked. The door is never locked, she's realized—it's always slightly ajar, always waiting, always an invitation disguised as a barrier. The lock is in her, not the wood. And she's not sure she knows how to unlock herself.
Her fingers curl. The tips press into the grain, testing, and she feels the door shift—a millimeter, barely perceptible, but enough. The crack of light beneath widens, and a sliver of amber spills across her bare foot, warm and accusatory. She catches her breath. Holds it. Doesn't move.
The silence from inside the room is absolute. He hasn't spoken. He hasn't moved. But she feels him in the stillness—a presence that waits, that doesn't need to rush because it knows the outcome. And that certainty, his cold certainty, is what makes her press harder. Not because she's surrendered. Because she wants him to know she's not afraid of the door. She's not afraid of what's behind it. She's not afraid of his patience or his rules or the way he watches her like she's already his.
Her thumb finds the cut in her palm and presses against the wound. The pain is clean and sharp, and she lets it ground her. Then she lifts her hand, turns it over, and presses her palm flat against the heat a second time—deliberate, claiming it, the heat and the wood and the man behind it.
She knocks. Three short raps. The sound is small in the empty club, a bird's heartbeat against the larger silence. And then she waits, her hand still on the door, her breath shallow, his name rising in her throat like a question she's not ready to ask out loud.