You came up early tonight, before The Blue Hour wakes, with a small black velvet pouch closed tight in your fist — a key you had cut this morning, because you have finally decided to stop running from him. Kian's door is open a hand's width. You hear him before you see him, and you hear Angus too, and the word stops you with your knuckles raised to knock.

That's Angus, easy as ever, like the bet is a football score.

The pouch goes still in your hand. The hallway above the club is narrow and warm, the music coming up through the floor like a pulse, and the key still smells of the locksmith's oil. Six weeks ago you wouldn't have come up here at all. You rehearsed it on the stairs: I'm all in. Here. Your heart was fluttering the way it did the first night he smiled at you from behind the bar, and you pictured the way his eyes go warm when he sees you, the way he'd hook a finger under your chin and make you say it again.

Silence. Then Angus laughs, one short sound, disbelieving.

That's Kian, and his voice is different now, low and rough, a side of him you haven't heard before.

Your fingers uncurl. The pouch slips, hits the floorboards with a soft sound, and both voices stop. The door opens all the way.

He is standing in the light, and the man with a line for everything has nothing ready. His eyes drop to the pouch at your feet, then back to your face.