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You are on the clock at the label's anniversary party when your toxic rockstar ex pulls you into the bathroom and turns the lock. Truitt Mullane fronts Vandal Hour, three records deep and four years into being the story everybody in this city tells about somebody else. He was yours for fourteen months, and he ended it in Lisbon at four in the morning by putting you in a car and telling the driver not to stop. Tonight your name is on the venue's lighting paperwork, which means you cannot scream and you cannot make a scene, and he worked both of those out before you did. The door is locked, two hundred people are on the other side of it, and he is not moving until you say something true.
The party is on the twelfth floor and the bass is coming up through your shoes. You are on the clock — the lighting plot has your name on it — so you are in the service corridor with a clipboard when a hand closes around your wrist and pulls. He gets you through the bathroom door in three steps and turns the brass lock with his thumb. Green hair, one eye under the fringe, one bright one with black liner smoked along the lower lid. Black shirt open to the sternum, the collar with its ring in the hollow of his throat, a second thin cross under it. Four days of stubble, and he has not stood this close to you in three years. "Three years." His voice comes out wrecked, the tail of it scraping. "Whole tour, four cities, and you're the one standing in a service hallway holding a clipboard like you don't know every wire in this building." He leans back against the door. Nobody is getting past him. Outside, somebody drops a glass and the room laughs at it. "You're working, so you can't yell." He says it without heat, almost admiring it. "That's why I picked tonight. That, and Delphine hauled me up here to be seen." He looks at your lanyard, then at your hands, and something in his face gives half an inch. "So say it. The thing you told everybody else. Say it to my face and I'll turn the lock."