1 #3
Briggs spun toward me and pressed a hand to his chest. “Aura. Mean as ever. I missed being verbally accosted while ordering motzzi’s.”
“Motzzi’s?” I asked because with Briggs that could be anything.
“Mozzarella sticks.”
“I don’t think Hannah has forgiven you yet for marinara-gate last fall.”
“Then tell her they’re Deckers.”
“You could order mozzarella sticks anywhere.”
“But only here do I get waited on with cruel precision.”
Rider came in behind him, calmer, his long blond hair tucked beneath a beanie and his face easy in the way that made people underestimate how much he noticed. His gaze landed briefly on the stack of books beside Ryan, then moved to Charm before he looked away.
It lasted less than a second, but I caught it.
Charm had been clear with him that friendship was all she wanted. She hadn’t played with him or left the door cracked. Clarity simply didn’t make watching her soften for someone else hurt any less.
A few younger players followed, loud and loose, already slapping one another’s shoulders and calling for tables. The bar reacted to them the way Kimball Falls always reacted to the Fury, with too much excitement and no survival instincts.
Cade walked in near the middle of the pack, and Bliss’s whole face changed.
I loved her for that. I hated how much I loved her for that.
He looked good and healthy in a way that still felt like a miracle if you knew where to look.
His shoulders had filled back out, his color was better, and the slight edge of carefulness he had carried after the hospital months had been replaced by something steadier.
He moved like a man who had dragged himself back into his body one brutal inch at a time and had no intention of leaving it again.
He came straight to the bar, and Bliss tried to look stern. “You’re blocking the service well.”
Cade leaned over the counter, his voice low enough that the rest of us could pretend not to hear while still totally hearing. “Hi, Pip.”
Her stern face collapsed like wet cardboard. “Hi.”
Briggs groaned. “Mercer, some of us are single and trying to eat.”
“Then eat,” Cade said without looking away from Bliss.
Charm sighed softly. “They’re very pretty. It’s irritating.”
Ryan muttered, “He used to be less embarrassing.”
“No, he didn’t,” Rider said as he settled near the end of the bar. “He was just less obvious about it.”
Cade kissed Bliss quickly, nothing inappropriate or showy, and somehow still intimate enough that I had to look away because some people’s happiness was rude before appetizers.
“Congratulations on surviving captain announcements,” Bliss said when he pulled back.
Cade smiled. “Wade deserved it.”
“You’re okay?”
“I’m better than okay.” His eyes warmed. “I’m playing Friday. That’s all I cared about.”
Bliss’s lips pressed together, and for a second, all the noise, neon, and sticky bar counters disappeared around the way she looked at him. “I know.”
His hand found hers on the bar. “You love watching me play.”
“I would crawl through broken glass to be there, but I’d complain the entire way.”
“That sounds on brand.”
I made a gagging sound while reaching for clean glasses. “If either of you starts saying vows near my margarita mix, I’m transferring sections.”
Cade glanced at me. “Good to see you too, Aura.”
“You look annoyingly alive, Cade.”
His smile softened. “I worked hard for annoying.”
That landed in my chest harder than I wanted it to. “You did.”
Cade’s eyes held mine for a second, and I knew he heard the sincerity beneath the joke. He always had when it mattered.
Briggs leaned over the bar with both hands. “Can we discuss the real issue?”
Bliss sighed. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“Wade is captain now, which means he’s going to become even more responsible and emotionally constipated. We need a prevention plan.”
Rider nodded solemnly. “Too late.”
Ryan looked toward the door. “That ship sailed at birth.”
I reached for a pen. “What does the captain want to drink?”
The question left my mouth before I could stop it, and the little pocket of silence afterward told me everyone noticed.
Charm’s eyes flicked toward mine before Briggs, mercifully or disastrously, filled the gap. “Water, probably. Maybe black coffee. Maybe the blood of anyone who suggests feelings.”
“Charming,” Charm said.
“Wade is many things,” Briggs said. “Charming is situational.”
The door opened one more time.
I felt him before I saw him, which was stupid and unfair and proof the body could become a haunted house when the wrong person knew where all the doors were.
Easton stepped into The Sin Bin wearing a black Fury jacket over a gray shirt, his pale blond hair cropped shorter than last year, his jaw shadowed, and his shoulders broad enough to piss me off on principle.
There was no jersey tonight and no stitched letter visible.
Nothing announced what had changed except the way the younger players shifted when he entered.
They didn’t quiet so much as orient toward him, as if the room had gained a center of gravity and every man in black and neon knew where it was.
Captain looked good on him, which was deeply unfortunate.
His gaze swept the bar with the detached calm he wore so well now, passing over tables, teammates, exits, Cade, Briggs, and finally me.
Seven months should have been enough time to make his eyes less toxic, but apparently hatred had excellent staying power.
My pulse jumped, and Easton’s face gave me nothing in return. There was no softness or surprise, and even the anger stayed buried beneath the cold, clean detachment he had promised me, sharpened into something that looked better on him than mercy.
Bliss leaned close enough for only me to hear. “Take a breath, Ay.”
“I am breathing.”
“You’re doing it with your murder face.”
“That still counts.”
Before Easton reached the bar, someone slid into the space beside my service station with a smile that said he knew he was pretty and had been rewarded for it enough times to trust the evidence.
“Clarke,” Gage said.
Gage Maddox was a year younger, tall, Black, annoyingly good-looking, and confident in a way that would have been unbearable if he weren’t funny enough to soften it.
His KFU shirt stretched across his chest, and his eyes dipped once to my referee shirt before returning to my face with enough respect to keep his teeth.
“What can I get you, Gage?”
“A reason you keep avoiding me.”
“I work here. This is the opposite of hiding.”
“Then I need a better excuse for why you never let me buy you a drink.”
“You’re twenty.”
He winced. “That was cruel.”
“That was legal.”
“I could buy you a lemonade.”
“Nothing says seduction like citrus and compliance.”
His grin widened. “I’m willing to start slow.”
Behind him, Easton’s eyes moved from Gage to me.
The shift was tiny, almost nothing, just a tightening at the jaw and a stillness around his mouth, but I knew that face. I knew it better than I knew most laws, most prayers, and most lies I had told myself to get through the last seven months.
Easton had been my first interracial relationship-ish situation, and based on the emotional property damage, I could not in good conscience recommend crossing racial lines, team rosters, or men who used eye contact like a felony.
Gage was gorgeous and fun, with the kind of smile that probably worked on women who had not once been kissed against a porch railing by Easton and ruined for men who didn’t look at them like surrender was a language.
I gave Gage a smile anyway.
Easton did not get to hate me and keep every part of me frozen in place.
“I’ll start you with wings,” I said. “Lemonade if you behave.”
Gage leaned one elbow on the service counter. “What happens if I don’t behave?”
“Then I let Bliss make it.”
His eyes flicked toward Bliss, who was currently threatening Briggs with a bar spoon for trying to steal cherries from the garnish tray. “That feels dangerous.”
“You have no idea.”
A shadow fell across the counter before Gage could answer.
I knew it was Easton without looking. My skin knew, and my stupid heart knew too.
Gage straightened slightly, not intimidated exactly, but aware in the way men became aware when another man stepped into their space without asking and somehow made the room rearrange around him.
“Wade,” Gage said. “Congrats on the C.”
“Thanks.” Easton’s eyes moved from Gage back to me, and whatever had almost been nothing in his face cooled into something I recognized too well.
“Congratulations, Easton,” I said.
His hand tightened once around the glass Bliss had set in front of him. “Don’t.”
The word hit harder than it should have, mostly because he didn’t raise his voice.
I kept my smile in place because that was easier than letting everyone watch it fall. “Don’t congratulate you?”
“Don’t pretend you’re happy for me.”
Bliss stopped reaching for a lime. Charm’s gaze cut toward mine from the end of the bar, and Ryan leaned back in his chair like he already knew this was about to get ugly.
“I am happy for you,” I said.
Easton looked at me then, really looked at me, and the hatred in his face would have been easier if it didn’t still know me. “You don’t have the right to celebrate anything on my behalf.”
My fingers tightened around the edge of my tray. “Everything with you costs something now.”
His mouth barely moved. “You taught me that.”
Bliss whispered his name, but he didn’t look at her.
I shifted my grip on the tray, refusing to react like he had just found the softest part of me and pressed his thumb directly into the bruise. “That’s convenient.”
His eyes narrowed. “What is?”
“You deciding what I’m allowed to feel so you never have to hear what I actually meant.”
Cade stepped closer. “Wade.”
I looked at Easton. “Order something, Captain, or move. Some of us are working.”
I saw it before he buried it, a flash of heat beneath the ice, quick and violent and gone before anyone who hadn’t once had his mouth against their throat would recognize it.
Easton ignored Cade. “I’ll take water.”