Page 33 of Prospect’s Curvy Vinyl Girl

I pick a record from the last box out of Crimson Hollow. I know what I’m choosing.

"Take the rest of the crate to the back door," I tell him. My voice is quiet. Final.

Tyler lifts the crate with one hand. He sets it by the exit, joining the stack of packed inventory. The reality of my life, boxed up and ready for transport.

I walk through the beaded curtain into the back room.

The mattress is still on the floor. The surveillance dossier is still shoved into a messy pile near the wall. The thrifted lamp casts a warm, amber glow over the small space. It’s cramped. It smells of dust and our combined heat. It’s the only safe place left.

Tyler follows me inside. He drops the beaded curtain, sealing us in the warm, dim light.

I walk to the milk crate holding the turntable. I slide the black vinyl out of the battered sleeve. The weight of the record is familiar. Perfect. I set it on the platter. I lift the needle. I drop it onto the outer groove.

The soft, rhythmic static fills the tiny room. A second later, the low, melodic bassline of the B-side begins to play. The same song that was playing yesterday. The song that will play until we finally lock the doors for good.

I turn around.

Tyler stands in the center of the room. The deep-cover operative. The enforcer. The ghost. The man who holds two deaths in his hands and twenty more in his past, looking at me like I’m the only reason he still draws breath.

"No more covers," I say over the music.

"Never again." Tyler steps forward. The space between us vanishes. He wraps his arms around my waist, lifting me off the floor. My boots dangle in the air as he buries his face in the crook of my neck. He breathes me in, a ragged, desperate inhale that sounds like a man finding water after a decade in the desert.

I wrap my arms around his broad shoulders. I bury my hands in his dark hair. I hold on, anchoring myself to the man who burned his own identity to keep me safe.

The building is empty. The legacy is packed in cardboard. The Syndicate can have the rotting floorboards and the broken glass.

I made my choice. I’m taking the music, and I’m keeping the monster.

10

Tyler

The brass deadbolt slides into place with a definitive, metallic crack.

The sound rings through the hollow shell of the Vinyl Vault. The streetlights from the Crimson Hollow main drag bleed through the front display window, casting long, warped shadows across the scratched floorboards. I reach up and tap the plastic sign hanging in the door. It has read CLOSED against the glass since dawn—the Vault never opened today. The sharp plastic clatter is the only other sound in the room, cutting through the warm dust hanging in the air.

We packed the shop into cardboard boxes. The barricades of her life are stacked by the back door, sealed with packing tape. The record bins are empty. The display racks are stripped bare. The soul of her mother’s legacy is boxed up, ready to be hauled back over the county line to Pine Valley. The physical trap is dismantled.

The only light left in the room comes from the amber glass lamp sitting on the oak counter in the back.

Wendy leans against that counter. The same solid block of wood where she stood for many years, carrying the suffocating weight of this dying town on her shoulders. The same counter where she counted out extortion money for the Tuesday Enforcer while the Silver Serpent Syndicate slowly bled her dry.

The vintage turntable behind her is still spinning. The needle tracks through the final grooves of a Fleetwood Mac record. The B-side. The same vinyl that was playing the very first afternoon I walked into this shop and she grabbed my arm in the soft rock aisle, claiming a total stranger to save my life.

I stare at her across the empty floor.

The ghost of my deep cover is dead.

For four long years, my existence was a filing cabinet of fabricated identities. A phantom skin I put on and zipped up to the chin, hiding the hollow rot underneath. The club needed intel. I became the operative. A man erased by his own mission.

But the fated strike didn’t care about covers. The lock-engagement tore straight through the lies in the millisecond Wendy’s fingers wrapped around my elbow. She didn’t flinch when the Syndicate goons cornered me. She claimed me. She gave me my real name.

Tyler.

Standing in the amber light, looking at the messy dark hair spilling over her shoulders and the fierce, exhausted defiance in her stance, the last scrap of "Tom" burns away into ash. The operative is gone. The man standing in the shadows of the locked shop is just Tyler. Her lethal protector. Her mate. The man who will slaughter anyone who tries to cage her ever again.

I step away from the front door.