Five
It’s nearly one in the morning, and the Wolves have been gone for an hour.
My hands tremble as I grip the neck of another empty bottle, the glass cool against my feverish skin.
I could have stayed open—it’s Friday night, and the village still had a pulse when I flipped the sign—but I couldn’t do it.
Not tonight. Not with the ghost of him still haunting every corner of the room.
Shadows stretch across the scarred hardwood, and I welcome the dark. Anything to escape the searing memory of Gabriel’s face—that blank, searching look that said everything without saying a word. He had no idea who I was.
Chairs sit perched upside down on tables like strange creatures, the lingering scent of Birgitta’s meatballs mingling with spilled beer and shattered pride.
“That is the last of it,” Ulf Dahlen announces, emerging from the kitchen with his wife.
“Kitchen is clean. Meatballs were a big hit, ya?” Birgitta beams, tucking a strand of silver hair behind her ear. “The tall one—Brock Thompson?—he ate three plates.”
“Four,” I correct, remembering how he’d grinned sheepishly each time he returned to the bar. “The man’s a bottomless pit.”
“Good appetite means good hockey player.” Ulf nods, helping Birgitta into her coat. “We will go now. You girls okay to finish?”
“We’re fine.” I manage a smile that doesn’t quite reach my eyes. “Thanks for everything tonight.”
After they leave, the bar empties out, but my pulse is still hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I reorganize the top shelf whiskey bottles—the ones I deliberately didn’t serve Gabriel.
“So,” Delilah says, tossing her rag onto the bar. “You gonna tell me what that was about?”
“What what was about?”
“Don’t be cute,” she nudges, waving a hand toward the dark TV screens. “Did the TSN ambush actually land, or did I queue up his worst moments for nothing?”
I don’t answer right away. The jukebox fills the quiet—The Black Keys’ “Fever” low and insistent through the floorboards.
“Because from where I was standing,” she continues, perching on a stool, “he clocked that reel about four seconds in and then spent the next twenty minutes pretending he hadn’t.”
“It landed.”
“Good.” Grinning, she rests her chin on her hand, satisfied as the Cheshire cat. “I’ve pulled TSN highlight packages before. Never as a targeted strike. I feel like I’ve unlocked a new skill set.”
Despite everything, the corner of my mouth twitches.
“He didn’t recognize me,” I say, the words coming out flat. “Stood three feet away and looked right through me.”
Delilah’s smile fades.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised.” I set the last bottle down hard, catching Delilah’s flinch in my periphery. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? He never saw me then either.”
She’s quiet for a moment. When she speaks, her voice has shifted—less partner-in-crime, more careful. “Ivy. I knew it was bad, or you wouldn’t have asked me to build the thing. But…how bad are we talking?”
My hands still on the bottles. The memory of Gabriel’s confusion—the way his eyes narrowed, searching my face for clues—sends a fresh wave of anger through me.
“We have history,” I admit, the words bitter on my tongue.
Delilah’s eyebrows shoot up. “Like, sexy history? Because that would explain the—”
“Not sexy.” I cut her off. “Bad history. The kind you don’t get over.”
She studies me for a long moment. I’ve never told Delilah the full story—never told anyone. The humiliation still burns.
“It’s complicated.” I reach for my water bottle, needing something to do with my hands.
“Uncomplicate it.” She leans forward. “Because whatever it is, it’s eating you alive. And you just signed a contract that means we’ll be seeing a lot more of him.”
Her words are a reminder of the noose I willingly slipped around my own neck. The contract. The lifeline the Box desperately needs.
“We got three more bookings today,” Delilah continues, gentler now.
“All game nights. And I actually read through the fine print of Tiffany Ling’s contract.
Clause four under ‘co-branded event programming.’ We are required to provide an ‘interactive fan engagement experience’ by the end of the month. ”
I let out a harsh breath, rubbing my temples. “What does that even mean? Touchscreens? A photo booth?”
“That’s what PR probably expects,” Delilah says, a wicked gleam entering her eye. “But the contract just says ‘interactive.’ So I called that fabricator in Vancouver today. The one who builds the mechanical bulls.”
I stare at her, the heavy fog in my brain lifting just a fraction. “Delilah. No.”
“The mechanical wolf, Ivy. We’ve been joking about it for two years. We use their pretentious corporate mandate, take the first sponsorship advance, and invest in the one thing we’ve always wanted. It legally satisfies the contract, but it stays gritty. It stays us.”
I close my eyes, the conflict tearing at me. My personal vendetta against Gabriel versus the survival of my dad’s legacy. If I walk away from this partnership now, I lose the bar. If I stay, I play the Wolves’ corporate game—but maybe Delilah is right. Maybe we can play it our way.
“Whatever Gabriel did,” Delilah says, her voice quiet but firm, “can you handle working with him? Because we need this, Ivy. The Penalty Box needs this. You deserve this.”
I trace the worn edge of the bar, feeling the countless nicks and scratches—each holds a story, a memory of my father. What would he tell me?
“I’ve survived worse than Gabriel Castellano.”
“Good.” Delilah slides off her stool, grabbing her coat. “Because the fabricator’s invoice is sitting in your inbox. It’s a custom build, so it takes exactly three weeks. If you authorize the deposit tonight, they can install it just in time for the Howloween party.”
Despite everything, a tired laugh escapes me. “You are relentless.”
“I’m a visionary,” she corrects with a wink, heading for the door.
I wait until the front door clicks shut behind Delilah. The quiet settles in like a held breath.
My father’s bar stands empty around me. Stools upturned, lights low, the hum of the coolers the only sound. Still mine. Gabriel Castellano doesn’t get to waltz in here and—
I turn my back on the tap rail and march down the short hallway to my office.
It’s barely more than a closet, crammed with liquor rep swag and battered filing cabinets, but it’s the nerve center of the bar.
I grab my jacket off the hook, my bag off the floor, my keys off the desk where I always leave them.
“I can handle it,” I tell the empty office. My voice comes back at me off the filing cabinets, thinner than I meant it to be.
Gabriel doesn’t remember what he did to me. Doesn’t remember how he destroyed my future with a few careless words.
But he will.
The condo is quiet as I kick off my shoes, the click of the lock echoing in the empty space. Home sweet home, where the only expectations are my own. I trade my jeans and t-shirt for pajamas, then trudge to the kitchen.
I pour a generous glass of red wine from the box, savoring the tannins sliding down my throat. The dark red liquid catches the light, and an image of Gabriel’s eyes flashes in my mind’s eye. That flicker of confusion. The searching look. And then, absolutely nothing.
“Asshole,” I mutter, taking another sip. The fact that he looked right at me and didn’t remember a damn thing is somehow worse than if he had gloated.
My phone buzzes on the counter, a notification flashing across the screen.
Gabriel Castellano has requested to message you on Instagram.
I stare at it for a long moment, my thumb hovering over the screen.
Then I hit block with a vicious stab, a spike of vindictive satisfaction hitting my chest. “Too little, too late, Castel-lino,” I say to the empty kitchen, a bitter smile tugging at my mouth as I remember how much getting his name wrong pissed him off.
But the satisfaction doesn’t last, leaving nothing but the suffocating quiet of my apartment. Blocking an app doesn’t erase him from my bar. It doesn’t undo his trade to Whistler. It doesn’t give me back the life I was supposed to have.
The petty victory dissolves. Hot tears sting my eyes, the weight of the last seven years pressing down on my chest all at once. I take a shuddering breath, my fingers curling around the glass.
I thought I’d buried this hurt, locked it away with my skates and stick. But seeing Gabriel again, watching him struggle to even place me, feels like ripping off a scab and finding the wound underneath still bleeding. The shame, the anger, the profound loss—it’s all still there.
Seven years ago, it was a phone screen doing the ripping.
Eight a.m., forty-one notifications. Teammates I’d bled with asking what happened with Castellano last night?
??, the question marks multiplying with every hour I didn’t answer.
A link. A username I recognized. My name in a thread full of strangers, four hundred upvotes deep.
I read the whole thing twice, sitting on my hotel room’s bathroom floor with the fan running so nobody would hear. Then I put on my game face and went down to the team breakfast before video review.
Nobody sat with me.
I drain the last of the wine; the empty glass mocks me. Is this what I’ve become? A ghost haunting my own life?
I pad to my bedroom closet, pushing aside hanging clothes to reach the box shoved into the back corner. The cardboard is stiff at the edges from the few times I’ve opened it over the years, usually after too many drinks and too many memories.
My old gear. The smell hits me first—that distinctive blend of leather, lingering sweat, and ice that once meant everything to me.
The Calgary Blades logo on my jersey is faded now.
I trace the stitching, remembering how proud I was to wear it.
How certain I was that it was just the first step to something bigger.
Instead, it was the only thing I had left after that post went viral and the calls slowed down. Nobody put anything in writing.
I lift my skates out. Somehow, I find myself slipping my feet into them, not bothering with socks. The leather is stiff, unyielding against my skin. Keeping the hard plastic skate guards strapped over the blades so I don’t gouge the floor, I stand up, wobbling on the hardwood.
For a moment, I’m seventeen again, stepping toward the ice, the world full of possibility.
Then I catch my reflection in the bedroom mirror—a grown woman in pajama pants and old hockey skates, eyes hollow with grief for something long dead.