Sad eyes, a lingering trace of jazz in his voice, an unshakable attitude, and an air of detached cool. Lando was a contradiction in every way — unbreakable on the surface, yet with a temper that revealed cracks in his armor. That was how you’d come to describe him, though you suspected there was always more beneath the surface than he let on.

You knew where you stood, though. He was the kind of man who left people in his wake, a fleeting presence in the lives of many. You weren’t naive; you understood that you couldn’t fix him. Still, there was something about him that pulled you in, like gravity defying logic. And when the phone rang in the middle of the night, when it was your name on his lips and not someone else’s, you felt a spark of something rare — something that made you feel special, even if you tried to convince yourself otherwise.

“I need you, now…” his voice was low, heavy with urgency, as he spoke on the other end of the line. “I’m at MacLaren’s pub.”

His words echoed in your mind as you threw on your coat, your heart beating a little faster. You didn’t know why you always answered his calls, why you were the one he turned to when the walls of his carefully curated persona began to crumble. But you did know one thing — you’d go, because Lando had a way of making you feel like the only light in his otherwise shadowed world.