Chapter 1
Ella Shaw
I don’t want to be here. But it’s New Year’s Eve, and the last night that most of my family will be here in Pinecrest before heading back home to Toronto.
We step inside the Rusty Nail, and the noise slithers up the back of my neck before I even cross the threshold.
The music is too loud for conversation, and bodies are pressed together in a humid, swirling mass of plaid, perfume, and sweat.
Every wall has garland with battered tinsel and hand-painted banners counting down the minutes to midnight; even the moose head above the liquor shelves sports a sparkly party hat.
I keep my arm looped tight through my sister Kat’s and let the crowd jostle us down a corridor of elbows and crushed beer cans toward the long, sticky bar.
“God, this is hell,” Wren yells, sliding up behind us. “I love it.”
“I think they’re over the crowd limit,” I try to shout above the din.
Kat cackles and steers us toward a small empty spot at the bar, already signaling the bartender with two fingers and a grin.
Bodies pack in around us, the sound sticky-thick and unrelenting.
In the corner, someone starts the first ugly chords of Auld Lang Syne on an old, battered piano, and a semi-drunken cheer rises like a threat.
My gaze does what it always does—it scans the room, looking for familiar faces.
I find our family first: Rory at the pool table, Declan with a beer and a protective eye on the back wall, Kane already wedged into a booth with Kori, Connor, and Mia, arguing about something.
Wren, Lana, and Kat are with me, and I’m just starting to relax when I spot a familiar shape.
Tall, still, shoulders squared, alone as always at the end of the bar.
Jake Brennen.
A quick electric pulse zaps through me, and I look away.
He’s wearing a battered olive T-shirt under an unbuttoned flannel, dark hair tucked under a faded cowboy hat.
He lifts his glass, lets the whiskey burn, and keeps staring forward, as if the wood-paneled wall requires deep personal study.
I’m not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed that he doesn’t acknowledge me.
But at least he’s not home alone on the anniversary.
It’s been a week since Christmas—since I left that unwanted dinner on his doorstep, nearly broke his face with my words, then slammed the door behind me. We haven’t spoken since; he’s kept to his fences, I to my bread ovens, both of us orbiting the edge of something neither dares to name.
Kat’s hand finds mine, squeezing until the bones creak. “Shots?” she asks over the roar.
“God, yes.” My voice sounds strange in my ears, like a bead of cheap plastic in a bowl of glass.
“Whiskey!” Kat shouts to the bartender with expert confidence, and the shots appear so quickly it’s like magic.
I throw mine back and feel the heat mushroom in my stomach.
I try to keep my gaze pinned to Kat, Lana, and Wren, to the swirling mass of rural Alberta’s finest, but Jake is gravitational; my eyes return to him every few minutes, to check.
He looks carved from ice, jaw set, dark stubble outlined in neon by a sign above his head.
Someone steps up on the plywood stage beside the piano, taps the mic until it howls, and announces karaoke.
The crowd explodes with laughter and groans.
For a blessed few minutes, strangers take the stage and murder holiday classics, each rendition worse than the last. Kat leans close and hovers her lips near my ear.
“Jake’s been watching you for the last twenty minutes,” she says, not even bothering to whisper.
“I know.” The warmth from the whiskey isn’t enough. Something in my chest collapses into winter.
“Do you want me to run interference?”
“No. I just want to have fun.” I say it so firmly I almost believe it.
“Then let’s get you another shot.” Kat grins and disappears into the crowd.
The next voice is right at my shoulder, buttery-smooth with a hint of beer. “You new around here?” I turn, and the man is a stranger—mid-thirties, clean-shaven, tight at the edges in a flannel shirt and clean boots. Too clean for Pinecrest.
“Not really,” I say.
He cocks his head, appraising. “You look new. Or maybe just lost.” His smile is too wide. “I’m Vince. Vince Mullen. Used to work in this town before moving to Edmonton for a better gig. You from around here?”
Not willing to give too much away, I nod my head. “I am. I work at the bakery here in town.”
He tips his bottle toward me. “Let me buy the next round.”
I hesitate, but Kat’s voice—now mid-boisterous song from the stage, howling with Wren—reminds me that I’m supposed to be having fun. I shrug. “Why not?”
Vince calls for two beers, then two again because we drank them so fast. He’s harmless in that way men get when they want to seem both cocky and safe, cracking jokes about living in the city, egging me to critique small-town karaoke, pretending he’s not tracking every inch of me.
When the clock tips toward eleven, he’s already begun to touch my elbow and guide me through the crowd with a palm at the small of my back.
I don’t consciously think about Jake; I don’t have to because he’s always on my mind.
He’s still at the bar, shoulders hunched, drinking a bourbon neat.
The only time he looks up is when Vince’s hand settles a little too low on my hip, and I laugh—because what else am I to do?
I catch Jake’s scowl in the mirror’s reflection behind the bar, which was as quick as a switchblade.
The bartender drags in a new keg. Vince slides his card and leans in. “Dance with me?” he says, already pulling me toward the scattering of bodies on the dance floor. I go, because why not, and because the air there is marginally less suffocating than by the bar.
The band arrives—some local boys who double as ranch hands and trip over their own cords.
Their rendition of “Brown Eyed Girl” is loud and off-key, but the crowd moves as one entity, swaying, hands high, faces shining with midnight anticipation.
Vince puts both hands on my hips and draws me closer.
I tolerate it. I let myself be spun in clumsy half-circles, letting momentum and the beer do their work.
Then his hand wanders, his fingertips grazing the waistband of my jeans. I laugh it off, swat him gently, but his grip tightens. I catch a whiff of expensive aftershave, a stench of desperation, and suddenly he’s too close, palm spanning my lower back, one thigh slotted between mine, insistent.
“That’s enough,” I say, clear and cold. But the band is louder, the bodies around us thicker, and he grins and says, “It’s just a dance. Relax.”
I push at his chest, but he leans closer, his breath fogging up my ear. “Thought you were the fun one. Come on—”
A hand more forceful than mine clamps down on Vince’s shoulder and yanks him back. The violence is so sudden that the music halts for a second. Jake’s arm is a brace of iron between us. His face is carved in fury.
“She said no,” he spits, voice coated in gravel. He pulls me clear, plants himself between me and Vince, who straightens with red-faced indignation.
“She’s fine, man, we’re just—”
“She’s leaving,” Jake says, not bothering to look at me. “Go hit on someone who actually wants it.”
The shoving starts before I can process it.
Jake’s fist at Vince’s shirt collar, Vince twisting to break free, a tangle of arms and shoulders slamming into the edge of a table.
Beer bottles crash to the floor. A woman screams—I think it’s Kat—and then a bouncer the size of a Clydesdale wades in to break it apart.
Jake pulls Vince upright and shoves him through the glass double doors and out into the night. The cold rushes in behind them, scattering the smell of sweat and whiskey. The crowd is like a bunch of high schoolers, surging forward for a better look. I stand rooted, blood hammering in my fingertips.
Kat appears at my side, breathless. “What the hell was that?” She looks at the doors, then at me, and her gaze sharpens. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I manage. “I—yeah.” My voice trembles in a way I hate.
Wren and Kori cluster around, each wrapping an arm around me in a flurry of concern. “Let’s get you water,” Wren says, all business, and drags me to the bar, where someone shoves a glass into my hands.
Declan appears a moment later, out of breath and out of sorts, looking between me and the doors as if calculating disaster. “Is he gone?”
“I think so,” I say. I sip the water. My teeth chatter.
Outside, the scuffle continues: someone shouting, a laugh that goes sharp at the end, and boots crunching on icy gravel. Kat glances at the door, then at me again, eyes bright with worry. “You sure he didn’t—?”
“I’m sure,” I cut in, voice stronger this time. “It was just… a dance that got out of hand. Not the first time, definitely not the last.”
“Jake nearly knocked his teeth out,” Kat says, awe and delight rising in equal measure. “You have some sort of power over that man, you know.”
“Don’t,” I say, feeling the flush creep up my neck. “There’s nothing there. He just—he hates assholes.”
Kat grins. “Oh, I don’t know. For someone who doesn’t have the hots for you, he sure isn’t giving up easily.”
The band swings into a new song, this one less bloody, and only then do I dare look at the exit.
Jake is still outside, framed in the halo of the neon sign, steam billowing from his mouth as he yells at Vince, who jabs a finger back.
The bouncer keeps a hand on both men, holding them a few feet apart.
Eventually, Vince storms off, glancing over his shoulder with a parting shot I can’t hear. Jake wipes at his mouth, eyes on the ground, then turns and walks back inside, head down.
When he enters, the crowd parts for him, some with admiration, some with caution. He doesn’t look at me or anyone. He goes straight to the bar, orders a drink, and sits, hands cradling the glass like it’s the only warm thing in the room.
Kat leans in. “Now’s your chance, if you want to—”
I shake my head. “Not tonight.”
I spend the rest of the countdown with Kat, Wren, and Kori surrounding me with warmth and noise.
At midnight, someone passes around cheap champagne in plastic flutes.
There’s a crush of bodies and a raucous countdown, and then hundreds of voices slam into Auld Lang Syne at slightly different tempos.
I let myself be hugged, let Kat press sticky kisses to my face, and stare out over the heads of the crowd toward Jake.
He doesn’t look up. Doesn’t search for me.
But when the throng of the crowd has me moving along, I’m less than a pool table length away—those blue eyes of his lock onto mine amidst the chaos. The glassy barrier in his eyes shatters, and he looks like he’s drowning.
I raise my glass—just a little. Not a toast, not a bridge—but maybe the beginning of a tiny raft.
I close my eyes and gulp the champagne; it burns as it tickles my nose, and I make a wish to take his pain away.