Chapter 20
Chapter twenty
Gabe Thatcher
The Bench Social Media Group
Patti Jensen: Just saw Gabe Thatcher walk through the square like he was personally fighting off a blizzard. The Blue Line didn’t even ask for his order, they just handed him a cinnamon roll and backed away.
Ash Patel: Man’s been extra quiet since Monroe left for the Knights. Even Riley hasn’t teased him all week.
Stan Gordon: That’s because Riley made us promise. Said he’s giving him “emotional neutral-zone time.”
Riley Novak: Look, Thatcher gets real still when he’s hurting. Like a porch light left on after a storm.
Patti Jensen: And I may have moved a few bakery orders up. Sugar helps sadness. It’s science.
The light in the garage is soft and low, coming from the old metal lamp I clamped to the side of the workbench. I haven’t turned on the overheads. Don’t need to. Don’t want to.
I don’t love how I can get all melancholy and up in my head like this. But I’ve felt it coming for a while so it’s not surprising.
At least my hands are busy. Just the lamp, just the sign, just the sound of the blade catching grain.
I should’ve been done with it by now.
The wood I chose for the sign is oak—heavy, thick, with just enough age to feel like it belongs to something that’s been around a while.
I pulled it from a stack I’d been saving in the back of the shed, left over from the last teardown at the old bakery.
Solid, even after decades. Like it remembers where it came from.
I like the idea of taking a piece of what was and making it into what could be.
The carving is slow work. Not the kind you can rush. I traced the design days ago but can’t seem to make myself finish it. My chisel keeps catching on the curve of the scrollwork, the blade slipping just enough to make my jaw tighten every time.
There’s a blank space for whatever he names it. Not my bar. Not even my dream. But the sign feels like a promise anyway. It’s supposed to hang above the doorway, a kind of welcome. A kind of declaration.
My hand slips—just a little—and the corner of the chisel bites into my thumb.
I hiss through my teeth, more surprised than hurt. The cut is small, barely breaks the skin, but the drop of blood that wells up is dark and clean and unforgiving.
It falls before I can wipe it away.
Right onto the wood.
I watch it soak into the grain, just below the curve of the rounded border. It doesn’t pool, doesn’t run, just disappears into the fibers of the old wood like it was always supposed to be there.
I press a rag to it, even though I know it’s too late.
“Guess it’s part of the sign now,” I murmur.
There’s no one here to hear me. That’s probably for the best seeing that I’m talking to myself while making signs nobody asked for.
***
It’s the last game of the series with Boston and the house is quiet in a way it hasn’t been since Roe left. Not outside my stolen moments of not sleeping in favor of being in my workroom.
No background commentary from Jamie, no popcorn bowl half spilled on the couch. Just the steady drone of the TV and the hum of the heater kicking on.
He’s at Liz’s tonight.
It’s the first time he’s stayed over since she got back into town.
She picked him up after practice like it was normal, like she hadn’t disappeared for months and years at a time before this, or bailed on half of her promises while here.
Jamie was excited but cautious—his bag already packed, helmet swinging from his arm like a badge of honor.
I said it was fine. It is fine. Or close enough to it.
Jamie’s old enough to figure out his own way with his mother. He has to be the one to decide what he wants there. I’ll back his play — whatever it is.
Roe’s game has already started by the time I sit down.
Boston. Third game in the series. He’s played in all of them—solid, smart, calm under pressure. Everything they said he wouldn’t be again after the injury. Everything he was before.
He’s on the screen again now, skating backward, reading the play like he’s still got NAPH instincts in his bones. He blocks a shot without flinching. Dumps the puck clean. Gets a pat on the shoulder from his line mate as they head to the bench.
I’ve been wearing his jersey since game one.
Jamie made me, said it was bad luck not to.
So I wore it beside him on the couch, both of us yelling at the screen like we had any business coaching from here.
I played the part. Cheered when Roe did well.
Teased Jamie when he got too into it. Smiled through all of it.
I teased Roe after his first game, easily enough sending us in the way of physical connection—even through video.
Tonight, I run a thumb along the edge of the stitched letters of his Iceguard jersey, same number 18 he’s wearing for the Knights. My exploration is slow, careful.
The announcers are talking about Roe again. About how he’s surprised them . . .
“Hasn’t missed a step.”
“Good depth option if Chicago needs to extend their bench.”
“Could be a late-season call-up again if his team’s out of playoff contention.”
The other guy agrees.
“I think we can look for that as the season moves forward and have a good idea of the Knights’ intentions with Roe Monroe.”
My jaw tightens.
He’s coming back. I know that. He told me.
He also said we transcended where he was playing. Hell, he said that like a damned promise.
But watching him out there, sharp and fast and sure of himself, it’s hard not to wonder how long that promise will hold once someone else offers him something bigger.
The commentators move on to someone else, some rookie winger with “explosive potential,” but I’m not listening anymore. Roe’s off the ice. The camera cuts to the bench, and I catch a glimpse of him leaning forward, helmet pushed back, jaw clenched in that way he does when he’s trying not to fidget.
He looks like he belongs there.
I drop my head back against the couch, eyes drifting to the ceiling, the beams above.
I should be relieved. He’s played well. They’ll send him home, and it won’t be because he failed.
It’ll be because he was solid, dependable—everything a team needs when they’re short on bodies and light on experience.
He’ll come back here, to the Iceguard, to Fox River Falls, to—
To what?
To this couch? To my shop? To late nights and early mornings and a bar still half imagined?
To me? To be mine for at least a little while?
I close my eyes, and for a moment I can still hear his voice in the kitchen, that lazy, teasing drawl.
The way he talks to Jamie like the kid hung the moon.
The way he touches me without thinking—shoulder to shoulder, hand on the back of my neck, warm breath at my ear like we’re not two grown men who should have given up on romance a long time ago.
You let him in, I accuse myself. Goddamn it, Gabe. You let him in.
I didn’t mean to. Swear to God, I didn’t.
It was supposed to be tension, at most. Friction. A slow-burn mess that we’d walk away from once it cooled. That’s what I’d told myself.
But somewhere between those sharp-edged words and the quiet things he started doing—bringing coffee without asking, texting Jamie just to check in, showing up even when he wasn’t expected—I stopped keeping him at arm’s length.
And now he’s under my skin.
Now he’s in my house, even when he’s not.
Now I’m in love with him.
I exhale slowly, jaw tight, chest tight.
Christ.
It’s not a word. It’s a confession.
Because this wasn’t supposed to happen. Not with him. Not after all the walls I’d built. Not when I know how this ends.
There’s hockey and there’s love, and God knows you can’t serve two masters.
The game ends.
Chicago wins and Roe is on the ice until the end. I don’t watch the last two minutes, I just sit here, staring at the wall while the sounds of celebration bleed out of the speakers like static.
The house feels colder now. Or maybe that’s just me.
My phone buzzes again. I don’t need to check it to know who it is.
Still, I do.
Five words.
That’s all.
Nothing dramatic. No pressure. Just honest. Just him.
I read it twice. Three times. My thumb hovers over the keyboard.
I miss you too.
Come home.
I love you.
All of it sits in my throat, but nothing makes it to the screen.
What if I say too much?
What if I say nothing, and that’s worse than saying too much?
What if he comes back and realizes I’m just a town he passed through?
I lock the phone without typing a thing.
The screen goes dark in my hand, and for a second I almost turn it back on. But I don’t.
Instead, I stand, stretch the ache out of my back, and walk into the woodshop.
The sign is still there, wood darkened just slightly where the blood soaked in earlier.
I rest my hand on it. Solid. Real. Half finished.
Just like everything else.