7. Everly
Seven
Everly
We try every door in the building. Every single one. Main entrance: chained. Side entrance near the Penalty Box: chained. Loading dock roll-ups: actually padlocked from the outside. Food court emergency exit: frozen shut—the ice has bonded the door to the frame on a molecular level.
Beckett the Defenseman tries a few times to break through the ice, to no avail.
Which leaves the fire exits. Two heavy steel doors with push bars—the kind that are supposed to open no matter what because fire codes exist and people have a general interest in not burning to death.
“Tried these,” I say, leaning up against the wall. “But if you want to try, go ahead and knock yourself out.”
He pushes the bar. The latch clicks, bolt retracting, but the door stays sealed. Frozen.
“See, I told—”
Beckett slams his shoulder against the door, a loud boom echoing off the walls. He tries again, putting all of his trillion tons of beautiful muscle—so what, I noticed. I mean, I wasn’t going to pick a wimp for my hockey-hero model. Please—and weight against the door.
Again, nothing.
We really are stuck in here.
He steps back, breathing hard.
“Hoo-kay.” I push away from the wall. “Well, all that was really exciting, but I think it’s time to give the door a rest. I don’t think we’re getting out of here anytime soon.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“I’m a thriller writer, not a motivational speaker.”
Beckett turns to face me, frustration plainly splayed across his face. “Where do you suggest we go?”
“I don’t know.” The cold from the exit is seeping into the air, and I wrap my arms around myself.
Beckett’s gaze dips, something in his expression shifting. “We gotta find a way to stay warm.”
I give him a look. And then—watching my face—the implication hits him. His ears go red. Well, well. The Blue Line blushes. That’s new.
“I was thinking we raid the Penalty Box for sleeping bags,” he says quickly.
“There’s no camping section. It’s a hockey memorabilia store.
” I aim my flashlight down the corridor.
“We should go to Hearthstone Home & Living. They’ve got display beds, pillows, and most importantly, sightlines to both exits.
We could each claim a separate fake apartment and pretend we live alone. ”
“You want to split up?”
As in, what? We’re together?
The question is quiet. Genuine. As if testing the ice between us.
I still, my heart staggering over the question. “Not really…”
“So…we hunker down together?”
“I’d prefer to think of it as tactically adjacent.”
I swear I see a smile flicker across his lips. “Tactically adjacent it is.” He makes a show of stepping back for me to pass. “Lead the way.”
I turn in the direction of Hearthstone Home & Living, but my stomach objects—loudly. The rumble bounces off the walls. My mind goes back to the dark car ride home from the gala—to Beckett’s peace-offering cookie. My gaze wanders a different direction, toward Blake’s Café.
“Before we hunker down for the night, we gotta make a pit stop.”
BECKETT
Blake’s Café is a different world in the dark.
Without the music, the space feels tiny, intimate.
The mismatched mugs on the shelves catch our flashlight beams and throw small glints across the walls.
Chairs sit flipped up onto the tables. The bakery case—stripped down to nonperishables—holds the remains of the day’s inventory: muffins, scones, a tray of doughnuts, a few cookies arranged on a ceramic plate.
“This is your idea of dinner?” My flashlight pours over the contents of the display case as Everly rounds the counter.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t have any protein shakes,” she says, sliding open the case. “Besides, we’re just going to take the day-old pastries. By morning, they’ll be two-day-old. We’re doing Helen a favor.”
“You’re a real hero.”
She flashes me a look, sets a maple-glazed doughnut on the counter. “Come to the dark side, Beckett. We have doughnuts.”
I let out a sigh. “Doughnuts for dinner. You’re a bad influence, Hart.”
She fights a smile, but I can see it—lips pressed tight, one side tugging slightly. It does something to me. A challenge posed. Oh, now I have to make her smile.
I take the doughnut as she pulls out the rest of the tray—chocolate glazed, cake doughnuts, bear claws, a handful of muffins and cookies—and packs them up into a paper bag.
Placing the bag on the counter, she rummages around near the register, finds a pen, and scribbles a quick note.
She folds the note around a few bills and leaves it resting on the register.
“All right, let’s eat.”
We sit on stools at the window, facing the corridor to Sutton Arena. I’ve seen Everly sit in this exact place a million times, every practice—until her parents split and she stopped coming as often. I never thought I’d find myself on this side of the glass…with her.
I take a bite of the maple doughnut, and the sugar hits my bloodstream like a rescue flare, waking up every part of my brain. “Oh man, that’s a good doughnut.”
“Helen makes the best doughnuts,” she says, picking through the bag for her selection. She settles on a long john, elbows perched on the counter, relaxed and in her happy place. She does this funny dance as she eats, as though the flavor is music to her lips.
My gaze dips to her lips—
No. No, it doesn’t.
I force my attention forward again, zero in on my doughnut.
We eat in silence for a minute. But there’s nothing quiet about it—my head’s running a million miles an hour trying to wrap around my situation.
This is not the woman I knew when the lights were on.
And yet, I feel like I’m just starting to see her for the first time. Unguarded. Just a girl with a doughnut.
“Can I ask you something?”
She turns the long john, attacking it from a different angle. “That depends on what it is.”
“The hair.”
She goes still.
“At the gala you looked…different. The dark hair. The black dress. It was all very…” I search for the word.
“Very E.J. Hartley,” she says.
“Right. And now—” I gesture at the red curls, piled high on the top of her head. They look like copper coils, intricate, each strand a unique facet of her. My gaze snaps back to hers. They’re watching me with interest. “—back to the curls.”
“Your point, Benson?”
“What’s with the wig?”
She takes a breath. Sets down the doughnut. Adjusts her glasses. I’ve seen that gesture before. I used to find it exacting, as though she was gearing up to use that big brain of hers to cut me down…but now, I wonder if that’s just the way she processes.
“When I sold my first thriller to Stratton,” she says, “I was twenty-three. I’d just finished grad school.
I weighed about fifty pounds more than I do now, and I had this”—she gestures at her hair—“situation. Red. Wild. Not exactly the image you’d associate with a dark-thriller author who writes about serial killers.
” I sip my coffee, watching him try to keep up.
“I’d already published a few books under my real name—Everly Hart.
Too Cold for Love. When the Stars Align.
The Last Summer. Sweet little romances that nobody read except my mom and three women in Iowa.
Then I wrote Cold Chill, my debut thriller, and Stratton wanted to launch me as something new.
Different name, different photo, different vibe.
So Everly Hart got shelved, and E.J. Hartley got the marketing budget. ”
“I don’t know what image I associate with that.”
“Think dark, sleek, dangerous women who look like they could murder you with a fountain pen.” She picks at the doughnut’s glaze.
“My editorial assistant at Stratton—Bree—she didn’t exactly tell me to change how I look.
What she told me was to consider my brand.
Which is the publishing industry’s version of saying ‘Change how you look’ but with plausible deniability. ”
“So you got a wig.”
“A wig. And contacts.”
She doesn’t mention the lost fifty pounds.
“And a wardrobe full of dark, moody colors. You have no idea how many shades of wine or burgundy I’ve got in my closet right now.
Red lipstick. Dark eyeshadow. The whole look.
” She takes a sip of water from the paper cups she filled for us behind the counter.
“And the brand worked. E.J. Hartley is on bestseller lists. She has a following. She’s…
” Everly pauses. “She’s famous. But she’s not me. ”
“What about the books, the stories. Is that you?”
The question seems to take her off guard, her eyes finding mine in the dim reflection of the flashlights against the window.
“You know what’s strange?” she says, pulling her gaze away.
“Everything about tonight.”
“Fair point. But in a way, she is me. I mean, when I’m writing as E.J., I feel just as alive as I do when I write—”
She stops, her eyes widening.
I raise an eyebrow. “When you write…?”
“Um, my author’s notes. You know, just as me.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Probably not. But I’m not sure what that means.” She takes a bite of the doughnut. Chews. Swallows.
“I think it means that probably I should have picked up one of those hammers at the hardware store. I just read my first E.J. Hartley book, once I found out who she was. She’s a little scary.”
“And don’t you forget it.” But she grins at me.
And shoot. I like it.
We fall back into comfortable silence, both staring out the window toward the old rink.
“For what it’s worth,” I say, biting into a cake doughnut this time, “I like the red hair.”
Her lips quirk upward again. So close to a smile. “We should get going.”
Our flashlights paint a pale path toward our next stop on our blizzard-bunker tour.
Everly walks ahead of me, one hand resting on her camera bag as though she’s not quite convinced it’s safe yet and she’d better stay vigilant.
Her other arm is wrapped around the bakery bag, still surprisingly full after our “dinner.”
I carry one of the flashlights, the other stashed safely in the backpack along with the rest of our supplies. High above us, the wind scrapes over the wide glass ceiling. Without the standard mall music, the storm outside feels almost ominous.
“Listen…about earlier,” Everly says, the words rushing out as though she’s been working up the courage to say them.
“Earlier?” I’m not sure when she’s referring to. We’ve had a lot of earliers.
“When I told you to deal with it.”
“Oh. Right.”
She glances back, the flashlight washing over her face. “Yeah…”
I shrug. “Forget about it. I have.”
Something flickers in her face—a hesitation, or maybe suspicion. Either way, she turns back, continuing down the hall.
But that look’s nagging at me. And just like this morning, when I should have stayed away, let her be, I can’t help myself. I hear myself say, “So…what is this between us? Are we friends now?”
It comes out like an accusation. Oops. See, I say things, and it all turns out wrong. I need an editor. A voice coach. Superglue.
She stiffens, every line of her body going rigid. “No, Benson. We’re not friends.”
There it is again, that sharp no, striking like a whip. I should have expected it. As though a few shared doughnuts could overwrite all the wrong in our history. That’s not how people work.
People don’t forget.
No matter how much you’ve changed.
Everly stops walking, however, and a sigh escapes her lips.
She rounds on me, and I step back, but she’s not swinging anything.
Instead, she says, “I don’t know how to do this—whatever this is.
Being stuck in a building with someone I’ve been angry at since I was eleven.
” She gestures between us—a quick, efficient motion, like she’s drawing a line on a diagram.
“I don’t know how to reconcile this version of you with the one from my memory. ”
Oh. Maybe here is where I tell her that I’m not a huge fan of that guy either. He had issues. But any confession is quashed by her next words.
“I’m not sure I can.”
Right. It stings—no, more than that. It slices deep.
But it doesn’t surprise me.
People only ever see you for the worst version of who you’ve been. I guess she’s no exception.
Then she takes a breath. “But I think I’m willing to call a truce. A temporary, blizzard-specific, expires-when-the-doors-open ceasefire.”
Huh. But if that’s all I have to work with…I nod. “All right, then. A ceasefire.”
“Renewable upon mutual agreement. Terms negotiable. Not transferable to any future interaction.” She extends her hand across the dark.
I look at it. It’s small. Then she adds, “Find me a way out of this building by morning, and I’ll think about extending it.”
Something clicks. The drop of a puck. A challenge.
I’m no longer that kid who hurt her on the worst day of her life. And by the time I get her out of this building, she’s going to see it.
I take her hand. “Challenge accepted.”