1 #4
Briggs groaned loudly. “See? This is what captaincy does to people. It strips joy right out of the bloodstream.”
Rider lifted two fingers. “I’ll take whatever doesn’t come with shrapnel if it gets me away from this shitshow faster.”
Ryan looked at him. “You came with us. That option died in the parking lot.”
Bliss moved toward the glasses, but I beat her to it because I needed my hands busy and my pride upright. I filled Easton’s water, set it on the bar, and slid it toward him without letting our fingers touch.
The glass touched the bar with a quiet click, and his hand stayed wrapped around it. He didn’t look away from me, but the muscle in his cheek jumped once.
“You had a year to tell me what you meant.”
“And you had seven months to let me finish one sentence.”
His mouth tilted, but there was nothing amused in it. “You finished plenty that night.”
The hit came fast enough that my breath caught before I could hide it. Behind me, Bliss said my name under her breath, soft and warning, but I didn’t move. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of watching me step back from a wound he knew exactly how to reopen.
“That’s what we’re doing now?” I asked. “You’re going to keep dragging the worst thing I said into every conversation until it’s the only version of me you’ll see?”
Easton leaned in just enough for his voice to drop beneath the noise around us. “You treated me like shit for a fucking year, and that is the only version I got.”
I laughed once, and it came out meaner than I felt. “No, Easton. You made sure it was the only version you kept.”
His stare shifted, the cold cracking around the edges. For one second, he looked too much like the man who used to know when I was scared before I said a word, and I hated him for still being in there. I hated him more for only letting me see it when he was trying to hurt me.
“You want to do this here?” he asked.
“No.” I kept my voice low while my pulse beat hard against my throat. “I wanted to do this seven months ago. You chose to be hateful and silent where I am concerned.”
“You had a year to make sure you were heard, and you ignored me every time I tried. That is why you get my silence now.”
The words were quiet enough that no one beyond the bar probably caught them, but they hit harder than if he had shouted.
I swallowed. “And you had the chance to hear my explanation.”
“I heard enough.”
“You heard the worst thing I said while panicking and built yourself a church around it.”
His laugh held no humor. “Don’t rewrite that night for me.”
“I’m not rewriting it. I’m trying to tell you there was more than you in the room.”
“You knew the one thing I needed to hear.”
The breath left me slowly. He meant love, and we both knew it.
I could feel Bliss watching me, probably silently begging me to say it now. To say something brave and soft enough to tear this whole awful moment open and let the truth bleed out where everyone could see it.
Easton’s face was closed, and I had already learned what happened when he handed me something breakable and I shattered it.
So I smiled, even though it hurt. “Your water is on the bar, Wade.”
His hand tightened around the glass. “Thanks, Clarke.”
Gage cleared his throat beside us, either brave or stupid enough to try to ease the moment. “So, about those wings.”
Easton’s eyes slid toward him again, and the temperature changed.
I stepped between that look and Gage before I could decide whether it was smart. “Mouth Guard Meltdown, Sin Bin Sucker Punch, or Penalty Box Psychosis?”
Gage glanced at Easton, then back at me. “I’ll take the one that burns the hottest.”
“Confident choice.”
“I like pain.”
“Then you’ll love our kitchen.”
Briggs slapped the bar. “I want hot wings too, but make mine with the sauce so hot it hurts my feelings.”
Bliss grabbed a ticket pad. “That’s all of them.”
“Rude,” Briggs said. “Fair, but rude.”
The group loosened around us because Briggs was a human crowbar when the room locked up.
Laughter returned in uneven bursts. Rider ordered, Cade stayed close to Bliss while his attention kept cutting toward Easton, and Ryan watched me like he could tell I was holding myself together with eyeliner and spite.
Charm sat very still, her beautiful face tight with worry she was too polite to throw across the bar in public.
Easton moved down to stand near Cade, but he didn’t leave.
That was the problem. He stayed in my orbit, detached, furious, and too aware while I took orders, carried trays, flirted with customers who didn’t matter, and pretended every cell in my body wasn’t aimed at him like a compass with a death wish.
Gage caught me near the end of the bar ten minutes later while I entered orders into the screen.
“You okay?” he asked.
I gave him a look. “Do I look like a woman who appreciates that question?”
“You look like a woman who might stab me for asking.”
“Then your survival instincts are developing nicely.”
His smile was softer this time. “I didn’t know you and Wade had…”
“Don’t finish that sentence unless you’re insured.”
He lifted both hands. “Understood.”
I looked back at the screen and hit send harder than necessary.
Gage leaned one shoulder against the wall beside the service station, not crowding me, only lingering enough to be noticed by the man across the bar who had no right to notice anything. “For what it’s worth, he looks like he wants to commit a crime every time I talk to you.”
“For what it’s worth, most men look like that after two hours in a sports bar.”
“He also looks like he knows exactly how you take your drink.”
My fingers froze over the receipt printer.
Gage’s voice gentled. “That wasn’t a line.”
“Good, because it would be a terrible one.”
“It was an observation.”
“I hate observations.”
“Noted.”
I tore the receipt free and finally looked at him. “You flirting with me, Gage?”
“I’ve been flirting with you for ten months. I was starting to worry you were busy bleeding out and missed it.”
A laugh slipped out before I could stop it, sharp around the edges but real enough to catch Bliss’s attention. Charm noticed her looking, Ryan noticed Charm, and Cade caught the whole exchange because hockey boys were apparently pack animals with abs.
Easton didn’t need anyone’s help. His eyes were already on me.
The laugh died somewhere behind my teeth.
Gage noticed because apparently every man in The Sin Bin had decided to become observant as a group activity. “I’m not trying to step into anything.”
“There is nothing to step into.”
His expression said he had doubts but liked living too much to share them. “Then maybe let me buy you that lemonade sometime.”
I should have said no. The word was ready, simple, clean, and safe, but Easton was watching me like he still had any claim to what I refused or accepted, and something petty and wounded lifted its head inside me.
“Maybe,” I said.
Gage’s smile returned slowly. “That’s not no.”
“That is not yes either, so don’t sprain anything celebrating.”
“I’ll stretch first.”
I rolled my eyes and moved past him with two baskets of wings, my body hot with the horrible awareness of Easton across the bar. I made it three steps before his voice stopped me.
“Finally moving on, Clarke?”
The whole world narrowed around his voice even though he had not raised it. The words cut through the space between us because every person who mattered had already been listening anyway.
I turned with the baskets still balanced in my hands. “Say that again.”
Bliss murmured, “Aura, don’t.”
No one else spoke.
Easton stood near the bar with his water untouched in front of him and his face carved into something colder than anger. “You move on fast.”
The baskets burned against my palms, but I didn’t set them down. “You spent seven months acting like I’m beneath a conversation as you fucked your way through KFU’s endless supply of puck bunnies, and now you have thoughts on my timeline?”
His eyes flashed. “I have thoughts on your pattern.”
“My pattern?”
“You like men who follow your rules even when you’re the one breaking them.”
The words were a slap with witnesses.
For one second, I was seventeen and back in a hallway beneath buzzing fluorescent lights, hearing laughter curl around my name, feeling eyes on my body from boys who thought seeing me in a video I never consented to meant they knew how to touch me.
For one second, my throat closed around a version of myself I had buried beneath lipstick, grades, rage, and rules.
Then Bliss’s voice cut through the memory.
“Easton,” Bliss said, and there was no softness in it now. “Stop.”
Cade moved beside him. “She’s right.”
I didn’t need saving. I wanted him to bleed too.
I stepped closer, still holding the baskets, and kept my voice steady because if it shook, I would never forgive myself. “You don’t get to do that.”
His jaw tightened.