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“Sit down. Buy a drink. Be in the room,” she said. “Don’t stand at the back. This is the thing I’m best at, and you’ve only watched me perform once. Even then, you stood beside the fire door.”

“All right.”

“All right, you’ll come?”

“Yes.”

She smiled then. Full and unguarded.

On the way back to the cottage, I caught myself deciding where to sit. Wren had asked me to stop being so careful, and already I was making rules.

I tried to work that afternoon. Between calls, I kept going over them. Sit where she could see me if she wanted to, but not where she’d be forced to look at me. Buy a drink. Don’t watch the other men. Don’t count them. Don’t check the exits. If anyone caused trouble, leave it to Simon and the others. Wren trusted them, and they knew that room better than I did.

I changed my shirt twice, then left the bike at the cottage and walked to The Hot House. Not my usual mode of transport, but I needed the time to get my head straight. I spent the whole walk telling myself to chill the fuck out. By the time I reached the door, I was down to one rule: whatever I felt tonight, I wouldn’t make it Wren’s problem.

Mavis put me at a small table to the left of the stage. Close enough to see Wren properly, far enough back that I wasn’t sitting under her feet. I took a drink when I arrived and had one mouthful. Then the lights went down.

The first notes came through the room, and then she walked out.

The black mask covered the top half of her face. Her blonde hair was loose over her shoulders. She waited for the first beat, then moved as though the whole room had come to see what she would do next.

I’d spent weeks watching Wren in jeans with Sparrow on her hip. I’d watched her tired, laughing, furious and half-asleep. None of that prepared me for Blondie tonight.

She didn’t become another woman when she put on the mask. That was what I’d got wrong years ago. I’d seen her confidence at Robin’s kitchen table and with Sparrow in her arms. Here she put it to work in front of a room full of strangers.

The first time I’d come, I’d stood beyond the lights with a roomful of people between us and told myself I’d watched her.

I hadn’t. From here, I could see her hands.

There was chalk on her palms and a callus along the inside of her right forearm. What looked effortless from the back of the room was strength, control and constant calculation. Wren held her own weight in positions that made her look as if she were floating. Every grip was deliberate. Every landing came exactly where it should.

Four minutes in, she spun around the pole with both feet off the floor. Her arms held the whole weight of her body, but she landed exactly on the beat, smiling as if it were easy.

Fuck, I wanted her. I gripped my glass to keep my hands still.

She’d given birth to Sparrow only a few months ago. Somewhere between feeds and sleepless nights, she’d found the hours to get this strong again. I wanted to know how she’d done it. More than that, I wished I’d been there to see her do it.

Then I caught her counting. Her lips moved for two beats before she changed her grip. On the third, she turned and landed with the music. I watched for it again and found myself counting with her.

She’d stopped dancing before we met. I’d seen her take a turn around the pole at Venom Virtues while she helped Handful with the place. And she’d danced for me in our room, without a pole or a mask, teasing me until she got whatever she wanted.

This was different. This was Wren commanding a room, and I hadn’t understood how much of her I’d never seen. I’d never asked whether she’d missed it or what it felt like to have this part of herself back.

Then she looked for me.

She knew where Mavis had seated me, but knowing I was there wasn’t the same as finding me. Her eyes met mine and she smiled.

It was small and quick.

I thought she was checking whether I was all right. I lifted my glass an inch and nodded. She turned back to the pole, and I sat there pleased I’d reassured her. I hadn’t even smiled back.

Near the end of her set, a man two tables over said her name.

I’d noticed him earlier without meaning to. Late thirties. Three or four drinks in. Not local. He’d been talking through most of the set, but until then it had been the usual noise. I’d spent enough time in places like this to know the difference between a man looking at a woman who’d chosen to be watched and a man crossing a line. Men like Renner.

Then he said, “That’s Robin Kerrisk’s sister. That’s Wren.”

Inside The Hot House, she was Blondie. Some people in town knew who wore the mask. A few knew because Wren had chosen to tell them. Nobody said it aloud. Wren chose who got her real name. He took that choice away and dragged her name into the filthy things coming out of his mouth.