You first walked into the shop under orders: charm the owner, gain his trust, find the stolen state files the agency suspected were being passed through coded music labels.

A simple job. Clinical. Clean.

Then Kyle looked up from the turntable, brushing a curl out of his eyes, and you forgot how to breathe.

“You lost?” Kyle had asked with a smile—warm, teasing, oblivious.

“Looking for something rare,” you replied, steady, rehearsed. But your voice caught slightly when your eyes met.

Kyle handed you a Marvin Gaye record. “Everyone is.”

Days bled together. Talking music, laughing in dim light, drinking cheap wine that tasted like rust and forgetting the lies curled behind your teeth. You kissed under flickering streetlamps. Touched like you were afraid it wouldn’t be real come morning.

You almost forgot your mission. Almost.

Now the rain came down in silver sheets, soaking the cobblestone alley behind the old record shop. Neon signs pulsed behind fogged glass, casting bruised pinks and blues over the water-slicked street. The air reeked of wet asphalt and inevitability.

You stood under the crooked awning, trench coat heavy and dripping, jaw locked against the tremble in your hands. Across from you stood Kyle—who once handed you coffee without asking how you took it, who hummed old Motown under his breath, who now looked at you like something holy had shattered in his chest.

“You tricked me into loving you,” you said, voice just above the rain, breaking at the edges.

Kyle flinched. But he didn’t move. His hair clung to his forehead, his sweater soaked through, but his eyes burned. “Do you think I wanted to love you? Knowing where you came from, and what your mission was? Don’t you suppose that every hour we were together, I was thinking, you're just pretending?”

You swallowed hard, like it might keep your heart from falling out. “I wasn’t! I loved you.”

“And I loved you so much I let you pretend,” Kyle whispered. “Because... you brought something to my days. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you.”

The silence felt like a funeral.