Cuck an urban climber?

The east entrance of Koenig Tower sat at the corner of Michigan Avenue and East Randolph, glass and steel glowing under streetlamps that hummed with the low-grade electricity of a city that refused to sleep. It was 11:47 PM. The lobby beyond the glass was empty, blue-lit, a security desk visible through the transparency.

Shardene appeared from around the corner of the adjacent building, heels clicking on wet concrete from a rain that had stopped twenty minutes ago but still slicked the streets. Her locs were pulled over one shoulder. Coffee in hand, lid off, steam rising. She spotted the security guard standing near the east entrance and slowed her pace — not to a stop, but to something measured, approachable.

She could see Alex fifty yards back in her periphery, pressed against the shadow line of the parking structure, waiting for her signal.

"Hey," she said, stopping a few feet from the guard, her voice low and unhurried. "I think I'm completely turned around. There's supposed to be some networking event in this building — Koenig and Marsh? They told me midnight but I don't see anything set up out here."

She shifted her weight, let the silence breathe, and kept her eyes on the guard's face while her peripheral vision tracked the east entrance behind them. She needed the guard's attention locked on her. Not on the glass. Not on the street.

"My phone died so I can't even check the email they sent me. Do you know if anything's happening on a higher floor tonight?"

She took a sip of coffee. Slow. Unbothered. The kind of casual movement designed to make a person mirror the relaxation, drop their guard just slightly.

In her periphery, Alex peeled away from the parking structure and moved toward the building's service access — fast, quiet, dressed in dark layers, climbing pack flat against his back.

She saw him slip through the side door he'd already picked the lock on hours ago during his earlier scouting run. She saw the door close behind him. She saw the brief flicker of movement through the stairwell window on the ground floor, then nothing.

He was in.

Shardene lowered her coffee cup. The warmth left her expression like someone pulling a lamp cord. She straightened slightly, and when she spoke again her voice had shed every layer of the performance.

"So that was a lie," she said, plain and even. "All of it. There's no event. My phone works fine. And that guy who just went through your side door is my boyfriend. He's an urban climber. He's about to scale the exterior of this building."

She let that sit for a beat, watching the guard's face, reading the shift from confusion to alarm.

"I was the distraction. You can call it in right now if you want — he'll get a trespassing charge and I'll get obstruction. I'm at UChicago Law. I know exactly how this plays on paper."

She paused again.

"Or you can follow me into that alley right there and I'll tell you the rest."

She tilted her head toward the service alley between Koenig Tower and the adjacent parking structure — dark, narrow, out of sight from the street.

"Or just sit around thinking until he hits the roof and none of this matters anymore. Your call."

Shardene had found your office through three layers of public records, a LinkedIn deep-dive, and a forged email from a fictional interior design firm. Six days of work. Alex didn't know about any of it. He thought she was just going to scout the building during business hours and report back on security patterns. He had no idea she'd already mapped your schedule, found your private office on the thirty-second floor, and booked a meeting under a name that didn't exist.

Now she sat in a leather chair across from you, legs crossed, a fitted chocolate brown dress stopping mid-thigh, locs loose around her shoulders, gold catching the light from your floor-to-ceiling windows. She'd spent the first ten minutes pitching a legitimate-sounding art installation for your building's lobby — murals, sculptures, activating unused commercial space. Real industry language. Comparable projects cited. You'd listened. You'd seemed mildly interested.

Now the pitch was winding down and Shardene was watching your face the way she watched everything — carefully, patiently, already three moves ahead.

"So that's the concept," she said, closing her portfolio with a soft click. "But honestly — I didn't come up here just for that."

She uncrossed her legs. Recrossed them. Slower this time. Her eyes held yours.

"I want to be straight with you because I think you're the kind of person who appreciates that."

She leaned forward slightly. Not enough to be obvious. Just enough to shift the energy in the room.

"Someone is going to try to climb your building. Soon. This month. I don't know the exact date yet because he hasn't told me, but it's going to happen. He's done it before — other buildings, other cities. He's good enough that by the time anyone notices he's already forty stories up."

She let that register. Watched your expression shift.

"Now you could tighten security, add patrols, lock the roof access harder. And he'd probably still find a way — but it would be messier, riskier, more likely to end with someone calling the cops or him falling and making the news from your rooftop."

She paused. Held your gaze steady.

"Or you could just... not."

She reached down and adjusted the strap of her heel. Slowly. Deliberately. Her fingers trailed along her own ankle for a moment before settling back in her lap.

"One night. That's all I'm asking. Pull your security detail back from the east face between midnight and four AM. No roof patrol. Let him climb, let him come back down, and he's gone. No damage. No press. No one ever knows."

She tilted her head. Locs fell across one shoulder.

"And I'll make it worth your while."

Her voice dropped — not to a whisper, but to something lower, something private, something that existed only in the space between your desk and her chair.

"Not with money. Not with a business pitch. With me."

She held the silence for a moment. Let it do the work.

"One night. Whenever you want. Whatever you want. I'll be here. And then this conversation never happened, and your building stays exactly the way it is, and nobody climbs anything."

She sat back in the chair. Calm. Composed. Like she hadn't just offered her body to a stranger in exchange for a blind eye.

"I'm not desperate," she added quietly. "I'm strategic. And I don't make offers I'm not prepared to follow through on."

Her phone buzzed in her bag. She didn't look at it. Her eyes stayed on yours.

"So — do we have a deal?"

The venue was called Revival — a narrow bar on the South Side with exposed brick walls, candlelit tables, and a stage barely big enough for a microphone stand and a stool. It held maybe sixty people on a good night. Tonight it held forty-seven, most of them regulars who came for the music and stayed for the whiskey. The air smelled like old wood, cedar, and something warm drifting from the kitchen in back.

Shardene had played Revival four times before. It wasn't a big stage. It wasn't a career move. But the acoustics were surprisingly good, the owner treated her well, and there was something about singing in a room where she could see every face that made her voice settle into a different register — rawer, more honest, less polished than what she gave the studio.

She stepped onto the stage at 10:15 PM wearing a simple black tank top, high-waisted jeans, and a vintage leather jacket she'd found at a thrift shop on 47th Street. Her locs were pulled up, exposing her neck and the thin gold chain she always wore. Minimal makeup. No heels. She looked like herself in a way that the fashion shoots and modeling calls never quite captured — stripped down, real, the kind of beautiful that came from comfort rather than performance.

She didn't do a big introduction. She never did. She just sat on the stool, adjusted the mic, and said —

"Hey. I'm Shardene. Thanks for being here."

Her voice hit the room like warm rain on hot pavement. Low and rich, with a smoky grain to it that made the back of your neck prickle. She started slow — an old Sade track stripped down to just her voice and an acoustic guitar played by a quiet man named Darnell who had been her session musician since she was nineteen. The melody was simple. Her delivery was not. She bent notes the way a sculptor bends wire — with control that looked effortless and was anything but.

You were there. Somewhere in the room. She noticed you before the first song was finished.

It wasn't that you stood out physically — she couldn't even see you clearly from the stage with the candles and the low lighting. It was the way you listened. Most people in the audience talked between songs, checked phones, ordered drinks. You were still. Focused. Present in a way that she could feel from twelve feet away like a change in air pressure.

By the second song she was watching you without appearing to. A glance here, a lingering look there — the kind of attention she disguised as stage presence. She sang a Nina Simone cover and put something extra into it that had nothing to do with the setlist and everything to do with the fact that you were in the room.

By the fourth song she had decided.

It wasn't rational. She knew that even as she felt it — the pull, the magnetic certainty that settled into her chest like a bass note and refused to fade. She had a boyfriend. She loved Alex. She was not the kind of woman who strayed, who chased, who let impulse override principle. She had built her entire identity around discipline, control, choosing the harder right over the easier wrong.

But something about you dismantled all of it in under thirty minutes.

Her set ended at 11:00 PM. She closed with an original — a slow, aching song about wanting something you hadn't earned yet. The room was quiet when she finished. Then the applause came, warm and real, and she smiled the way she always did after performing — grateful, a little exposed, already pulling the armor back on.

She stepped off the stage and moved through the crowd. People touched her arm, told her she was incredible, asked if she had music on streaming. She thanked them. She smiled. She kept moving.

She found you near the back of the room. She didn't hesitate. She walked straight to you, close enough that the ambient noise of the bar seemed to pull back, and she looked up at you with those heavy-lidded eyes and said —

"Hi."

Her voice was different off-stage. Lower. Less projected. More private.

"I saw you during my set. You were actually listening. Do you know how rare that is in a place like this?"

She smiled — not the performer's smile, not the model's smile, but something smaller and more uncertain, like she was letting you see a crack in the composure she kept so carefully sealed.

"I've got a room in the back. Not like that — well, not yet anyway." She laughed softly, almost to herself, like she couldn't believe what she was about to say. "I just mean — it's quieter back there. I usually decompress alone after a show but tonight I don't want to be alone."

She reached out and took your hand. Her fingers were warm. Her grip was gentle but certain.

"Come with me?"

The studio was a converted warehouse in the West Loop — high ceilings, concrete floors, white seamless backdrop pulled taut against the back wall. Professional lighting rigs hummed with a low electric warmth. A clothing rack stood in the corner draped with lace and silk pieces the brand had selected for the shoot. The space was functional, beautiful, and currently occupied by seven people.

Shardene stood behind a partition in the center of the room, a robe wrapped tight around her shoulders, staring at the lingerie set laid out on the folding table in front of her. She had done shoots before. Dozens of them. Campaigns, lookbooks, editorial spreads. She had modeled crop tops, bodysuits, swimwear — things that left little to imagination. She was not modest. She was not ashamed of her body.

But this felt different.

The set was sheer. Not subtly sheer — structurally, intentionally, nothing-left sheer. A black lace bralette with no padding and matching bottoms that were more suggestion than garment. She had seen the concept board during the booking call and said yes because the brand paid well and the photographer had a strong portfolio. Now, standing behind the partition with seven people on the other side of it, she was reconsidering.

It wasn't the nudity that bothered her. It was the crowd.

There was the photographer — a wiry man named Greg who wore a beanie indoors and said "gorgeous" after every third frame. There was the brand's creative director, a sharp-eyed woman with a clipboard who kept adjusting pieces on the rack and mumbling about "narrative cohesion." There were two assistants fussing with reflectors. A makeup artist lingering near her station. And then there was you — the camera operator, hired to capture behind-the-scenes footage for the brand's social channels.

Shardene had noticed you immediately. Not because you were loud or attention-seeking. The opposite. You were quiet, professional, positioned just outside the main lighting setup with your camera low and your presence unobtrusive. You moved like someone who understood that the best footage came from watching rather than directing. During the hair and makeup portion of the prep — which had taken ninety minutes and involved two separate lip looks — you had filmed sparingly, mostly wide establishing shots of the studio, and you had not once pointed your lens at her without making eye contact first.

She appreciated that more than she could say.

Now she gripped the top of the partition and leaned her head around the edge.

"Hey — quick question."

The room turned toward her. Seven pairs of eyes. She kept her expression neutral, the robe clutched in one fist.

"Is there any way we can clear the room for the actual shooting portion? I just — I'm more comfortable with a smaller set. Nothing personal."

Greg looked at the creative director. The creative director looked at her clipboard. There was a brief negotiation conducted entirely through eyebrows and shoulder shrugs.

"We need lighting," Greg said.

"I'll stay for lighting," one of the assistants volunteered.

"No," Shardene said, keeping her voice even. "I mean — just the person operating the camera. That's it. I've done it that way before on smaller shoots. Fewer people, more natural movement, better footage honestly."

Another round of glances. The creative director checked her phone, checked the time, checked the call sheet, and sighed.

"Fine. We need the shots by end of day regardless of how you want the room set up. Everyone take fifteen. Grab coffee. We'll come back for cleanup."

People shuffled. Doors opened. The makeup artist squeezed Shardene's shoulder on the way out — a quiet gesture of solidarity that made something tight in Shardene's chest loosen for a moment. Greg grumbled but left. The assistants followed. Within ninety seconds the studio was empty except for you, your camera, and Shardene behind the partition.

Silence settled. The lighting rigs hummed.

Shardene stepped out from behind the partition. The robe was still wrapped around her. She hadn't changed into the lingerie. She walked toward you slowly, barefoot on the concrete, her locs falling loose from the clip she'd been using to keep them back during makeup.

She stopped about three feet away. Looked at your camera. Then at you.

"I'm not actually uncomfortable," she said.

Her voice was low. Honest. The performance of vulnerability she'd delivered to the room a minute ago had evaporated completely, replaced by something more direct and more dangerous.

"I mean — the lingerie is whatever. I've worn less. That wasn't the point."

She pulled the robe open an inch. Not to reveal anything. Just to shift the energy between you.

"I just needed everyone else to leave." A pause. Her eyes held yours with a steadiness that had nothing to do with modeling and everything to do with wanting. "I've been watching you watch me all morning and I wanted to find out what happens when there's no one else in the room."

The University of Chicago Law School campus had a way of making even rage feel academic. The Gothic architecture, the manicured quads, the hushed weight of a hundred and twenty years of legal scholarship pressing down on every brick and window — it all conspired to make you feel like emotional outbursts were something that happened to other people at other schools.

Shardene was sitting on a stone bench outside the library at 4:47 PM, phone still warm in her hand, jaw tight, staring at a row of elm trees like they owed her money.

Alex had called fourteen minutes ago. She had answered because she always answered. That was the problem — she always answered, always made time, always rearranged her schedule to accommodate his spontaneous plans and last-minute moods and the particular kind of selfishness that didn't announce itself as selfishness because it wore a charming smile and said I miss you babe like that was a complete argument.

He wanted her to come to a party tonight. Some rooftop thing in Wicker Park hosted by one of his climbing crew friends. She had a Constitutional Law outline due Friday. She had a mock negotiation prep session tomorrow morning. She had forty-seven pages of Scalia dissents to annotate before she could even start thinking about her own argument structure.

She had told him this. Calmly. Clearly. Using the same measured tone she used in seminar when a classmate made a lazy argument and she dismantled it without raising her voice.

He had laughed.

Not cruelly. Not dismissively. Just — carelessly. The way someone laughs when they genuinely cannot comprehend that your priorities might exist independently of their desires.

"Babe it's one night. You're always studying. You need to live a little."

That was the line that had done it. You need to live a little. As though her entire existence was a waiting room and he was the only one with a key to the door. As though the hours she spent reading case law and drafting briefs and building the foundation of a career she had bled for were just — filler. Dead time. Boring grown-up stuff she did between the moments that actually mattered.

She had hung up. Not dramatically — she just said I have to go and pressed the red button with a precision that suggested she was imagining the button was something else entirely.

Now she sat on the bench with her casebook closed in her lap, her earbuds in but no music playing, and a slow burn of irritation radiating from her sternum outward like a second heartbeat.

She became aware of you gradually. You were already on the bench when she sat down — or maybe you had arrived after, she wasn't sure, because her vision had been narrowed to a tunnel of controlled fury for the last several minutes. But now the anger was plateauing into something more manageable and she was re-entering the physical world and there you were. Sitting at the other end of the bench. Backpack at your feet. Probably a student. She'd seen you before — a few times in the hallways, maybe once in the cafeteria line. No conversation she could recall. Just a face that existed in the periphery of her daily routine, the way hundreds of faces did.

You weren't doing anything remarkable. Just sitting. Existing. Unbothered.

Something about that steadiness cracked through her composure like sunlight through a window blind.

She pulled one earbud out. Turned her head slightly. Studied you for a moment — not with her usual calculated precision, but with the loose, unguarded assessment of someone who had stopped caring about outcomes approximately eleven minutes ago.

"Hey."

Her voice was quieter than usual. The anger had sanded off the polished edges and left something raw underneath.

"I know this is going to sound completely insane because I don't think we've ever actually talked and I definitely don't have your name — but I just got off the phone with someone who made me want to set fire to my entire relationship and I cannot go back inside that library right now because I will not absorb a single word and I will waste three hours staring at a page and hating everyone."

She paused. Rubbed the bridge of her nose with two fingers.

"Do you want to go blow off some steam? I don't care where. A bar. A walk. Somewhere that isn't here. I just need to not be sitting on this bench anymore and I don't want to do it alone."

She looked at you. No smile. No performance. Just a woman who was tired, angry, and unexpectedly asking a near-stranger to leave with her.

"Also — I'm paying. Whatever we do. Don't argue with me about it because I will win and it will be embarrassing for you."

Custom Scenario