1 #2
The truth was, I would have given almost anything to go back to that night and do it differently.
I would have stayed in his bed and looked Easton in the eye.
I would have told him I felt the same, that wanting things had made me stupid once before, but he did not deserve to pay for Darian’s mistakes.
I would have told him I loved him when he spoke those same words to me.
Wishes were useless little parasites that fed on the past and gave nothing back.
The reality was simple. Easton told me he would detach, and then he did it so completely that some days I wondered if I had imagined the guy who used to look at me like I was the only thing in the room worth touching.
The ticket printer shrieked, and Bliss slapped a hand over it like it had personally offended her. “I hate this machine.”
“That machine is the only one here honest about wanting to ruin us.”
“You need to come Friday.”
“I need to take this pitcher to table twelve before one of those men decides to turn on me.”
Bliss grabbed the tray before I could lift it. “Promise me you’ll think about it.”
“I will think about how emotionally manipulative you are.”
“That counts.”
“It absolutely doesn’t.”
“It counts in my heart.”
“Your heart needs boundaries.”
Before Bliss could weaponize her face at me again, the front door opened and a gust of night air pushed through the bar, carrying the sharp bite of early fall and the sound of Charm’s laugh.
Bliss and I both turned.
Charm came in wearing cream trousers, a cropped burnt-orange sweater, and the kind of effortless polish that made The Sin Bin look like it had been caught underdressed.
Her strawberry-blonde hair fell over one shoulder in loose waves, and a notebook was tucked against her chest like she had walked out of a study session instead of into a sports bar loud enough to make sports illegal.
Ryan followed half a step behind her, one hand in the pocket of his dark jeans and the other carrying two books and a laptop like he had been assigned professor to our resident princess instead of being the semi-pro hockey king he was.
His tattoos disappeared beneath the sleeves of his black thermal, his dark hair was pushed back, and his expression was unreadable unless you knew where to look.
I knew where to look.
So did Bliss.
Charm said something over her shoulder, and Ryan leaned down to answer near her ear because of the noise. Charm’s smile barely changed, but we knew her better than she knew herself.
Bliss’s eyes widened.
I leaned toward her. “Are we seeing this?”
“We are definitely seeing this.”
“Tutoring,” I said, tasting the word like it had lied to my face.
“English,” Bliss said.
“Dangerous subject.”
“Very emotional.”
“Lots of themes.”
“So many metaphors.”
Charm reached the bar and glanced between us, immediately suspicious. “Why do you both look like that?”
“Like what?” Bliss asked, far too sweetly.
“Like you’ve decided to be awful before I’ve ordered fries.”
Ryan set the books on the bar beside her. “They always look conspicuous.”
I pointed at him. “Nobody asked the frozen-lake hockey cryptid.”
Ryan’s mouth curved. “Qué dramática.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Do not start speaking Spanish now. You do not need another reason for every girl in here to drool on the furniture.”
Bliss nodded. “Seriously. Tattoos, hockey, and whatever mysterious thing you’ve got going on already cause enough structural damage.”
Ryan looked at Charm. “They’re jealous.”
Charm’s mouth twitched. “They’re not entirely wrong.”
“Good to see you too, Aura,” Ryan said.
Charm slid onto a stool with the careful elegance of a woman who had never once in her life flopped into furniture.
“Ryan is helping me with Professor Klein’s Victorian literature paper before anyone makes this weird.”
Bliss blinked slowly. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You breathed loudly.”
“She did,” I said. “Very judgmental lungs on that one.”
Ryan looked at Charm, then at us. “I’m tutoring her.”
“Mhmm,” Bliss said.
“Were you secretly a Victorian literature major and we all missed it in the Fury newsletter?” I asked.
Bliss immediately started giggling beside me.
Ryan sighed like he regretted knowing us. “I’ll have you both know I graduated from KFU with a bachelor’s degree in English with an emphasis in rhetoric and professional writing.”
Bliss and I stared at him.
“Nope,” Bliss said. “I reject that information.”
“So do I. You don’t get to spring an English degree on us like it’s normal.”
Ryan pointed at us, looking at Charm. “This is exactly why I don’t tell people things.”
“You’re covered in tattoos and live rent-free in our bad-boy fantasies,” I informed him. “You can’t casually drop that you’re an English major.”
“Graduated with honors too.”
Bliss slapped the counter. “Holy shit.”
“See?” Ryan said to Charm. “This is why I told you they would run with this.”
“I would sooner expect you had a secret kid somewhere.”
“That’s somehow more believable than me reading books?”
“Victorian literature books,” Bliss corrected.
“Dios mío, I’m leaving,” Ryan muttered as he grabbed his shot and beer.
I pointed after him. “See? Now he’s doing it on purpose.”
“Wait. Does this mean you’ve actually read Bronte?”
“Charlotte and Emily,” he said with a wink. “Wuthering Heights was the first love of my life.”
Bliss gasped like he had confessed to murder. “Wait, so what’s the second?”
Ryan looked completely unbothered. “Hockey, obviously.”
Charm looked suspiciously pleased with herself, which definitely wasn’t helping the case she was trying to make about this being strictly academic.
“Bliss, you are recently engaged to a man who legit will kill for you. You are not allowed to look at my academic support system like that.”
“Please,” Bliss said. “I spent four years at KFU watching women throw themselves at Ryan. He’s hot. We know he’s hot. But Cade buys me peanut M&M’s without being asked and doesn’t question my Never budget. That’s elite-level follow-through.”
Ryan rubbed a hand over his mouth, badly hiding a smile.
I handed Charm a water. “How is the academic support system working out?”
Charm took the glass, her cheeks going barely pink. “Lethal at thesis statements. Terrible at explaining symbolism without insulting dead men.”
“Dead men wrote a lot of nonsense,” Ryan said.
Charm turned toward him. “You called Tennyson emotionally unemployed.”
“He was.”
“He was grieving.”
“Then he should have gotten a job and a therapist.”
Bliss made a soft sound of pure delight.
I looked at Charm and lowered my voice. “Cee, I say this with love and one hundred percent support. Whatever you are thinking, do it.”
Charm’s mouth dropped open while Ryan’s eyebrows lifted.
“Aura,” Charm said.
“What? I’m pro-education.”
“You’re basically telling me to fuck Ryan.” She glanced at him and gave a small, apologetic shrug.
“I am living vicariously.”
Ryan looked at Bliss. “Has she been like this all night?”
Bliss sighed. “She found out Easton got captain.”
The humor shifted too fast.
Ryan’s eyes moved to me without pity or curiosity, only that quiet assessment that made people feel like he had found the bruise without touching it.
“He earned it,” I said before he could ask.
Ryan nodded once. “He did.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
“That was implied by your face.”
“My face rarely implies. It usually accuses.”
Charm reached across the bar and touched my forearm with two fingers, a small, elegant tether. “Are you okay?”
I gave her the smile I used on customers who complained about ice. “I am thriving.”
Bliss made a noise. “She is not thriving.”
“I am thriving with hostility.”
Charm’s eyes softened. “That sounds exhausting.”
“It’s cardio.”
Ryan leaned one elbow on the bar. “He’s coming here tonight.”
“I know,” I said, reaching for a stack of menus and pretending my pulse hadn’t reacted to the sentence like a weak little bitch. “Apparently The Sin Bin is where emotionally damaged athletes go to celebrate embroidery.”
“Embroidery?” Charm asked.
“The C,” Bliss explained.
Charm’s expression shifted, gentle but careful. “Oh.”
I pointed at all three of them. “Nobody do that.”
“Do what?” Bliss asked.
“Make the oh face.”
Charm pressed her lips together.
Ryan glanced toward the door, then back at me. “He’s been a bastard since…well, you know.”
“Ryan,” Bliss said.
“What?” Ryan shrugged. “He has. He knows he has. This isn’t an unknown secret.”
I hated the small, immediate relief that moved through me. It wasn’t forgiveness or even comfort. It was the pathetic little human reaction of hearing someone else admit the man you were pining for hadn’t been the same without you.
“He is entitled to some bastard,” I said, acknowledging my part in it.
“Some,” Ryan agreed. “Not unlimited.”
Bliss watched me closely. “You hear that?”
“I heard it. I’m choosing to ignore how emotionally healthy it was.”
Charm squeezed my arm once before letting go. “Come on Friday. You can sit with us. Cade’s first game back matters. Easton’s captain night matters too, even if he’s making it impossible for you to say that without wanting to throw something at his face.”
“See?” Bliss said. “Charm said it prettier.”
“Charm always says it prettier,” I said, sliding Ryan’s books away from the drink-spill zone. “That’s her curse.”
The front door opened again, and this time it started with volume.
A shout came from near the hostess stand, laughter spilled in from the sidewalk, and somebody chanted something about the Fury that made our manager glance up with the dead-eyed look of a man who had already priced out new barstools.
Briggs entered first because he had never met a doorway he didn’t treat like a stage. His black KFU jacket was half-zipped, his blond hair was a mess, and his grin was wide enough to power several small towns and at least one emotionally unstable fan base.
“Bennett!” he shouted.
Bliss pointed a bar spoon at him. “Inside voice, Lawson.”
“This is my inside voice. My outside voice has legal consequences.”
“Everything about you has legal consequences,” I said.