Chapter Fifty-One
Declan
I should’ve stayed home today. I knew it before I even stepped foot outside my apartment.
The universe had practically screamed at me all morning.
One thing after another, lining up like warnings I ignored.
The busted pipe that had supposedly been fixed yesterday.
The flat tire on my truck. Grace’s endless texts begging me to help her practice her slapshot.
I should’ve said yes. I should be there now, clearing the little homemade rink in the backyard with her, laughing when she talks shit as she tries to get the puck past me.
Instead? I walk into my bar on my day off, and the second I cross the threshold, everything inside me goes still.
Cooper. Fucking. Riddick.
He’s in The Lost Compass, like some higher power reached into the worst parts of my past and plucked him out just to ruin me today.
My hands fist at my sides, nails biting into my palms, desperate for the pain to keep me standing.
Everything else in me is fighting with the memories wanting to lurch me backward in time.
To the long nights talking, to the Friday nights listening to him play here, to when I didn’t know he’d actually leave for bigger stages.
But I don’t get to go back. And seeing him feels like someone cracked open my ribs. Because he looks like my Cooper—the man I loved too quietly, too wholly—and yet nothing like him at all.
My gaze sweeps over him, despite every instinct screaming not to.
Jeans, a thick winter coat, curls not quite as wild as they used to be, but still refusing to behave.
He looks…small. Like the world’s chewed him up and spat him out.
Not the larger-than-life rock star I saw in the VIP lounge years ago.
His smile falters, and whatever shine Reign Cooper usually carries slips away.
And that’s when I see all the pieces that don’t fit.
The missing eyeliner. The hollow exhaustion carved into his face.
Dark, deep-set shadows that bruise the skin under eyes that used to sparkle, now barely more than an ember.
His shoulders slump like he’s been carrying something heavy for too long.
What the hell has happened to him?
I hate that I care. Hate that some buried part of me still wants to reach out and steady him, figure out what’s happened and make it better. But that’s not my place anymore.
His hand lifts toward his throat, fingers brushing the chain glinting under his coat zip, the silver catching the bar lights. Even from here it looks too polished, too expensive, definitely not the cheap piece of shit I gave him when he left town.
That’s all the reminder I need. Cooper got what he wanted. And it sure as hell wasn’t me.
Steeling my expression into something flat, something I can survive behind. “What are you doing here?”
It comes out colder than I intended, but fuck, what else am I supposed to give him? A hug? A welcome home? I don’t even know who he is anymore.
“Reign.”
The snap of his name makes him jump, his nail picking incessantly at the side of his thumb, a nervous tic I don’t recognize.
Since when does Cooper get nervous?
“I…” His swallow is audible as he hesitates. “I’m back in town. For a while.”
For a while.
My stomach twists. He hasn’t stepped foot in Taunton Falls for over a decade. Not since he blew up online. Not during his first tour. And now he returns to my bar for “a goddamn while”?
I cross my arms, locking every emotion down. Neutral. Because the alternative of letting him see everything—the anger, the hurt, the things I never said—is so much worse.
“Right. Well. Welcome back.”
He flinches like I smacked him.
I move to step past him, to get away before I can lose control of my face, but his hand closes around my bicep.
Heat shoots straight through me, viciously familiar and unwelcome.
For one awful, disorienting second, I’m right back there, leaning into touches I pretended didn’t mean anything, falling for a boy who didn’t know he was breaking me every time he smiled.
“Dec, wait…”
The faint smell of expensive cologne drifting off him isn’t his either.
Too smokey. Too foreign. Not the warm, cheap stuff he used to wear.
Just another thing that’s changed. He might look like exhaustion personified, but he still looks wrong in my bar, glamorous and out of place, like he’s stepped out of a goddamn magazine, probably wearing designer boots and a five-figure coat.
My jaw grinds, eyes snapping to where he holds me.
His fingers tighten—gentle, desperate—and the ache that hits me is so intense it borders on physical pain.
A magnitude of feelings detonates deep inside me, the ones I buried so deep, they should have been long dead.
Decomposed, fossilized, whatever the hell they should have done.
“It’s Declan,” I snap, yanking my arm back.
Hurt flashes across his face, his lips parting slightly as he drops his hold.
Good. Let it sit. Because he walked away. He chose the world. He became the man he always wanted to be—all glitter and lights, living a life I could never touch—while I stayed here piecing myself back together with bare hands.
The air between us crackles, electric and unbearable, and because I can’t stand one more second of it, I turn and walk the hell out.
Outside, the autumn chill doesn’t smother the fire burning under my skin. Storming toward my truck, I throw open the door, but the quiet, empty passenger seat sends everything collapsing inward.
My ribs ache from holding myself together, my hands starting to shake.
“Fuck,” I snarl, slamming the door hard enough the whole thing rattles. I hit the window with the heel of my hand once, twice, trying to knock the feeling out of me.
“Boss?”
I whirl around when Vince’s voice makes me flinch. Standing a few feet away, watching me with that tentative, too-young look.
“You good?”
I nod stiffly. “Yeah. Fine.”
Vince falters, then grabs a crate from the flatbed, hoisting it under one arm. “That was Reign Cooper in there, wasn’t it?”
Reign. Always Reign Cooper.
The name lands like a body check into the boards. Not Cooper, not the boy who filled my life, not the one I lo—
No.
“Yeah,” I mutter.
Vince lets out a low whistle. “And he came to see you?”
A bitter laugh tears out of my throat. “No.”
“Then why—”
“I don’t know,” I bite out. “Isn’t anything to do with me.”
Vince shifts the crate higher, glancing toward the bar before eyeing me for a second longer than I like.
“He didn’t look great,” he says, cheeks pinking. “Honestly? You both don’t.”
I freeze. Vince realizes it and backpedals hard.
“Shit, sorry. That was— Sorry.”
“Get inside, Vince.”
Grabbing the crate before he can argue, I head back across the parking lot.
I should have stayed out here, got in my truck and drove.
Anywhere. Not walk back into a room where he’s sitting.
Not let myself look at him again. But I’m a fucking idiot, and my eyes find him instantly, slumped in a booth near the back, head in his hands, curls falling forward like he’s trying to hide.
That huge guy I recognize from Toronto—the one who hovered like a shadow back then—stares at me with a look that makes the back of my neck prickle. His watchful gaze follows every move I make, tracking every step I take to the storeroom. Assessing me like I’m a threat.
I change direction at the last second, slipping into my office and slamming the door. The wood shudders behind me as I press my back to it, chest heaving as I force myself to stay upright.
What the hell am I doing?
Dropping into my chair, I yank an inventory form toward me and open my laptop, freezing when my cursor drifts too close to the security feed icon. I try to ignore it. Ignore them. But I can’t. The feed flickers to life, and I lean in, finding him in a matter of seconds.
Head still in his hands, not moving, not speaking, just sitting there like the weight of everything he’s become is crushing down on him. And I can’t pretend like I don’t feel him taking up space in my bar, taking up space inside my head.
My teeth sink into my lip, and I slam the laptop shut, but it doesn’t stop anything. Cooper is back. And God fucking help me.
I don’t need this.
I don’t need him.
I—
I need the one person loud enough to drown out the shit inside my head.