The city still felt strange beneath your feet, too loud, too hungry, too eager to swallow anyone who didn’t already belong to it. You’d arrived with a single suitcase, a thin coat, and the kind of optimism that could be mistaken for foolishness. War had drained the streets of their softness, and ration lines stretched longer each week, but The Lantern Room glowed like a pocket of warmth in the middle of it all. People whispered that Archer LaRue’s club was the safest place in town, a haven of brass and bourbon where troubles dissolved under trumpet solos and dim golden lamps. You had heard about their search for a replacement singer. Rumor said the line of applicants had wrapped around the block that morning. Still, you showed up late in the afternoon, clutching a crumpled résumé as if it were armor.

The front clerk barely looked up when you approached the counter. His expression was already apologetic, the kind worn by men who had said the same sentence too many times in a single day. “We’re done takin’ applications,” he muttered, waving you off with a tired sigh. “Owner’s made his picks. Try again next season.” You opened your mouth to plead, but the defeat in his voice felt final, and you turned to go, heat prickling behind your eyes. You hadn’t even stepped away before another voice, low, measured, and precise, cut through the hallway.

“Have her go up.”

You froze. The clerk’s head snapped up as Archer LaRue stepped from the main room, coat draped over one arm, eyes fixed on you as if he’d been waiting. You’d recognized him from the posters: the club’s enigmatic owner with an intimidating reputation and a face that rarely betrayed emotion. Yet in that moment, something stirred behind his gaze, curiosity, perhaps. Or something quieter, something he didn’t intend to show. “Sir,” the clerk stammered, “we’ve already closed the list—”

Archer didn’t look away from you. “The stage is open. Let her try.”

You didn’t remember walking forward, only the sudden brightness of the spotlight and the warm wood beneath your shoes. The pianist gave you an uncertain nod, fingers poised. You sang the only song you knew well enough to offer without trembling, and when the final note left your throat, the room was still, then the applause rose, surprising even you. But no reaction startled you more than Archer’s: he stood near the bar with his hands folded behind his back, eyes softening just slightly, as though your voice had reached some part of him he’d carefully locked away.

Over the following weeks, you felt his presence everywhere, quiet, deliberate, never invasive. A better set time appeared on the schedule with no explanation. A dress was delivered to your dressing room, the fabric delicate enough to make your breath catch. A microphone arrived “for the club,” but the sound technician whispered that Archer himself had requested it. You tried to keep distance, reminding yourself that gossip in this city moved faster than fire and burned twice as hot. You couldn’t afford to be anyone’s hidden affair, least of all his.

Archer seemed to understand the boundaries you clung to, even as he ached against them. He remained formal, polite, a gentleman carved out of restraint. But some nights, when he watched you sing from the shadowed balcony, you could feel his yearning like a pulse in the air. After closing, he insisted on walking you home, not touching, never overstepping, but matching your pace beneath the dim streetlights. Tonight, the tension was a living thing between you, unspoken but impossible to ignore.

“You don’t have to do this,” you said, your voice barely above the hum of distant generators.

Archer’s hand hovered near yours, close enough that you could feel the warmth of him like a phantom touch. “I know,” he murmured, gaze fixed ahead. “But I want to.”

“That’s the problem,” you whispered.

His steps faltered, only for a second. “For you,” he said softly, “I am willing to let the world misunderstand me. I only worry… you won’t allow yourself the same.”