12
Easton
For three days, I tried.
I kept my mouth shut when Aura’s name burned behind my teeth.
I didn’t corner her. I didn’t use anyone else as a weapon.
I didn’t let the anger make decisions my sisters would be ashamed to witness.
I carried the hurt quietly, like that made me noble instead of just fucking exhausted, and for three days, I almost believed I could keep being that man.
Three days changed nothing.
That was the lie I kept telling myself, anyway.
Three days should have given the anger somewhere to cool.
Three days should have put distance between my mouth and the things I had said at Hockey House.
Three days should have made it easier to pretend I had not watched Aura’s face go still when I held another girl in my arms and told her I had warned her what I would become.
Three days did not make me feel better. They only made me quieter.
By Thursday night, the edge had softened enough that I could sit in The Sin Bin with half of KFU athletics and not feel like I was going to put my fist through someone’s teeth for breathing wrong. That was growth, probably. Or exhaustion. It was hard to tell with me lately.
The place was packed wall to wall, all dark wood, neon beer signs, scratched tables, and the smell of fried food soaked into the bones of the building.
Rain had started again because northern Michigan apparently had a seasonal contract with misery, and damp jackets hung from chair backs while the Red Wings game played on every screen behind the bar.
The sound was up just enough for the commentary to blend with shouting, laughter, and the constant clink of glass.
Hockey guys had claimed the back tables like we owned them.
Football filled the high-tops near the dartboards.
Basketball had taken over the long table along the side wall, all long limbs and louder voices, acting like the bar had expanded specifically to accommodate their wingspan.
As more people arrived, chairs shifted, tables were dragged closer, and the separate groups blurred into one crowded section.
I sat with Briggs on one side and Rider on the other, nursing a beer I had no intention of finishing.
Briggs had been arguing with a sophomore linebacker for ten minutes about whether goalies were the smartest men on the ice or simply the most willing to get hit in the face for attention.
Rider had contributed nothing except the occasional look that somehow made Briggs more committed to being ridiculous.
Ryan was supposed to show up later after the Frost returned from another away game, which meant that, for now, I was trapped with current KFU guys, a few alumni orbiting the edges, and a cluster of basketball players I knew only by face and reputation.
And Aura was working.
I had known that before I walked in.
I still walked in.
That probably said something ugly about me, but I was tired of translating every self-destructive thing I did into emotional literacy.
Sometimes a guy wanted a beer, a Red Wings game, and the opportunity to pretend the woman moving through the crowd with a tray balanced on one hand had never been the axis his whole body turned around.
She looked good. Black Sin Bin tank. Dark jeans. Long braids pulled back from her face. Gold hoops. Lip gloss. That calm, sharp expression she wore when she wanted the world to believe she was too busy, too bored, or too superior to be touched by anything happening around her.
She moved from table to table with practiced ease, taking orders, dodging hands that reached for drinks too early, shutting down flirtation with one look and a smile just sweet enough to qualify as customer service.
She didn’t look at me when she passed our section the first time.
She didn’t do it with cruelty or fear. She simply moved by me like I was another table she wasn’t responsible for yet.
That was somehow worse than the fights.
Indifference looked different on Aura when it was real.
I didn’t know if anyone else could tell, but I could.
Her shoulders were looser than they had been at Hockey House.
Her mouth wasn’t weaponized. She seemed tired, maybe, but not brittle.
She looked like the distance between us had given her room to breathe.
I hated how easy she made it look when I felt like I was dying inside.
“Wade,” Briggs said, elbowing me. “Are you hearing the knowledge I’m generously offering this table?”
“I’m hearing sound.”
“I said if goalies weren’t elite thinkers, they wouldn’t make masks this intimidating.”
Rider glanced at the mask-shaped keychain hanging from Briggs’s keys on the table. “Your actual mask has a cartoon skeleton eating nachos on it.”
“It’s psychological warfare.”
“It’s a cry for help.”
A football player laughed from the next table. “Lawson, you gave up four goals last game.”
“It was one bad game.”
“It was two days ago in Boston.”
“Time is a social construct, and I reject your obsession with linear shame.”
I took a drink so I didn’t have to laugh.
That was when Aura approached.
The table felt her before anyone said anything.
Not because the guys were scared of her, exactly, though a few were smart enough to be.
Everyone knew there was a line running through the room, and every time Aura got near me, people started watching their feet like eye contact might get them subpoenaed.
She stopped at the end of our table with her order pad already in hand.
Professional. Composed. Beautiful enough to make my jaw hurt.
“What can I get you?” she asked, her eyes moving over Briggs first, then Rider, then the rest of the group without hesitation.
Not me.
I accepted it because the point of tonight was to try for peace and hope it opened a door for us to talk instead of destroy each other.
Briggs brightened immediately. “Aura Clarke, please tell me the kitchen has forgiven me for the mozzarella-stick incident.”
“The kitchen has not forgiven you, the fryer has filed a formal complaint, and Hannah said if you ask for extra marinara again, she’s charging you emotional damages.”
Briggs pressed a hand to his chest. “That woman understands my needs and rejects them anyway.”
“Growth opportunity,” Aura said.
Rider leaned back in his chair. “Burger. No onions. Fries.”
Aura wrote it down without looking at him. “Still terrified of flavor. Tragic, but noted.”
“I respect my breath.”
“You lack taste.”
A few guys laughed, and for one brief, dangerous second, everything almost felt normal. Aura slid into the banter like she had never left it, like she hadn’t disappeared from everyone for the last three days.
Then one of the basketball players leaned forward from the far end of the tables we had gradually pushed together.
I didn’t know him well. Tall, shaved head, sharp jaw, warm-up jacket half-zipped over a Kimball Falls Basketball shirt. Maddox Vincent. I had seen him around campus with the other basketball guys, always smiling too smoothly and talking like every room should feel grateful he had entered it.
He looked at Aura with recognition that did not belong on his face.
My grip tightened around my beer.
“Wait,” he said, squinting slightly. “Aura Clarke?”
Aura’s pen barely paused.
If I hadn’t known her hands, I would have missed it.
Her customer-service smile remained in place, but something underneath it went still. “That’s me.”
Maddox’s eyebrows lifted. His mouth curved slowly and ugly, like he had remembered a joke he should have had the decency to forget.
“Well, damn,” he said. “I thought that was you.”
Her fingers pressed into the order pad. “And yet, somehow, the world keeps spinning. What can I get you?”
A few basketball guys laughed under their breath.
Maddox looked around like he wanted witnesses before he enjoyed himself. “You went to Sutton Ridge, right?”
Aura’s smile did not move. “A long time ago.”
“Not that long.” His eyes dragged across her, and my entire body locked. “You look almost exactly the same.”
Briggs’s knee bumped mine beneath the table.
A warning.
Or a check.
I didn’t know. I didn’t care.
Aura tapped her pen against the pad once. “Drink order, Maddox.”
His grin widened at the sound of his name. “You remember me.”
“I remember a lot of people I would happily never speak to again. Don’t feel special.”
That earned a sharper laugh from the table, but Maddox didn’t flush. He liked it. That was the first thing that made the black thing beneath my ribs begin to move. He liked having her attention even when it came with teeth.
“Still mean as hell,” he said. “Darian always said you had a mouth on you. I guess true colors come through for everyone.”
The name hit her like a hand around the throat.
Aura didn’t flinch. She didn’t drop the pen or step back, but her body changed by degrees. Her shoulders squared. Her chin lifted. Her eyes went blank in that polished way I had once mistaken for indifference before I learned better.
Darian.
I knew the name, but barely. Her ex, the one whose betrayal I had been paying for.
Aura had told me he betrayed her. Bliss had told me only that much when she was trying to make me understand Aura without betraying her confidence.
An ex, an old wound, a reason Aura did not hand out trust like party favors.
I had filed it away under things I was not allowed to ask about and things Aura would cut me for touching, but I didn’t know his name could empty her face like that.
Aura’s smile tightened by a millimeter. “Funny. He always said a lot when no one worth respecting was listening.” She looked Maddox dead in the eye. “You all do. I never forget a voice.”
Maddox laughed. “Yeah, that tracks. You were messy as hell back then.”
Rider’s voice came calmly from beside me. “You ordering something?”
Maddox glanced at him like he had forgotten the rest of us existed, then raised both hands. “Relax. We know each other.”
“No,” Aura said lightly. “We don’t.”