Seven
The mechanical wolf gleams under colored spotlights, burgundy and gold catching every phone camera in the room. It bucks a guy in a rubber werewolf mask and sends him cartwheeling into the padded corral. The Penalty Box howls. Literally—Delilah triggers the sound effect, and the crowd eats it up.
Howloween. Debut night for the wolf. Full house. Line out the door. Exactly the kind of win we needed. Bodies are packed, most angled towards the corner of the room, where a table for six has been replaced by our prized wolf.
“Next victim!” Delilah crows into the mic, black angel wings flaring dramatically. “Who thinks Nurse Naughty can beat five seconds?”
“You look almost happy,” Marco says, shedding his Star-Lord helmet and parking it beside his pint.
“Don’t get used to it. Murphy’s Law lives here rent-free.”
As if summoned, the overheads flicker once before settling. A ripple of nervous laughter. I release an exhale.
“Keep an eye on the breaker,” I tell Delilah, switching off my mic. “If it blinks again, we pause the wolf.”
“Buzzkill,” she says, grinning. “But noted.”
The ambient noise in the room changes pitch.
A group of college girls dressed in designer boots paired with skimpy devil costumes start to squeal.
One of them gasps, grabbing her friend’s arm and blatantly pointing.
In unison, they start to adjust their horns and shift their weight, their bodies forming a blockade across the main walkway.
The front door opens, the bouncer parting the massive line to let in a few of the actual Wolves in low-effort costumes—Ryan O’Neill in a foam shark fin, Elias Andersson in a black turtleneck and a name tag that says “Steve,” and Brock Thompson in a surfer wig.
No Gabriel. My shoulders drop a notch. I brace myself for the relief, but all I get is the annoyance of a forfeited rematch. Thought he had more nerve than that.
“Wolves in the house!” Delilah announces, and the room swells with hometown pride.
I throw myself into the rhythm—pour, ring through, banter, pivot. The air smells like smoke machine effects, cinnamon whiskey, and fake blood.
A man at the far end of the bar catches my eye. He isn’t wearing a costume, which is probably why it takes me a beat to place him. It’s the guy who was interested in Ulf’s elk stew last month. Paisley Tie guy.
Tonight he’s in a plain blazer, phone up, filming the costumed-wolf and the actual Wolves. He notices me looking, tips his chin. I toss a nod back.
“Order up!” Birgitta bellows from the pass.
I receive the tray of nachos and pass it to a group dressed as the 1980 Miracle team.
My body registers him before my brain does—the scrape of awareness, the temperature drop, the prickle on the back of my neck.
Gabriel Castellano.
He’s in a simple black domino mask and a fitted black henley, like he’s come as Himself, But Make It Halloween.
Thompson claps his shoulder. O’Neill says something that makes the guys laugh. Gabriel looks past them, scanning. I keep my eyes on the shaker in my hand and start counting to five. I barely reach two. He doesn’t make me wait.
“Whiskey. Neat. The good stuff.”
He’s already leaning on the bar when I look up, mask and mouth and that easy sin of a posture. His gaze lands on me like a check.
“Castellano.” I keep my voice even. “We’re doing themed drinks tonight. You sure you don’t want a Candy Corn Cosmo?”
“Hard pass.” His mouth quirks. “I’m trying not to throw up.”
“Pity.” I reach for a mid-shelf bottle. “Would match your vibe.”
“My vibe’s just fine.” His eyes drag over my face like he’s trying to place a word that’s on the tip of his tongue. “Try not to baptize me this time.”
I set the glass down, straighten it. “I’ll try not to trip over your ego.”
I slide the glass toward him. His fingers don’t touch mine; I curl mine away from his. Neutral zone.
Behind him, Paisley Tie turns his lens our way. Recording. I punch Gabriel’s drink into the POS system with a sharp jab of my finger, filing the journalist’s presence away for later.
“Crowd’s decent,” Gabriel says, taking a measured sip. “Your toy’s a hit.”
“It’s a draw,” I correct, letting him mull over the double entendre.
Delilah’s already slotted a waiver clipboard under his nose like a shark scenting blood. “Celebrity rider! Ten seconds to beat. Think you’ve got the thighs for it, golden boy?”
“Always,” he says, eyes still on me.
“Waiver first,” I say, deadpan. “We don’t cover broken pride.”
He signs. The crowd sees him sign and starts to gather in a half-circle.
I step to the control panel, thumb hovering over settings. It has to be fair. That’s the rule. Fair.
Gabriel swings onto the wolf. The room hits a pitch I can feel in my teeth. I press start.
“Put it on Lone Wolf,” someone yells.
I look at Delilah. She arches a brow. I set the speed to aggressive, but not reckless. I’m not a monster. Unlike him.
It bucks. He compensates. It feints. He adjusts.
His thighs lock, forearms flex, a grin—damn him—flickers when he realizes it’s going to take work to throw him.
Six seconds pass. Ten. Fifteen. The howl sounder goes off, and he lasts a hair longer before the wolf jukes left and he finally bails, rolling to his feet like he meant it.
The place erupts. He gives a theatrical bow. A kid in face paint pumps his fist. Thompson hoots. Delilah fans herself with the waiver clipboard like she’s on daytime TV.
“Show-off,” I mutter, more to the control box than anyone else.
When I look up, he’s watching me through the eyeholes of that stupid mask, his triumph unmistakable. Something like curiosity underneath it. It hits low in my gut, and I hate the feeling of warmth that flashes there.
“Enjoy the entertainment?” he asks when he’s back at the bar, breath not even winded because of course it isn’t.
“I prefer substance.”
“Good thing you serve it.” He taps his empty glass with one finger. “Another.”
I pour. Mid-shelf again. Deliberate.
“You keep stiff-arming my order,” he says mildly. “It’s almost like you don’t like me.”
“It’s almost like you’re observant,” I reply dryly.
His smile turns predator-slow. “You always this friendly to partners?”
“We’re not partners.” My tone is clipped. “The bar has a partnership with your boss. You’re just a marketing expense.”
“Cute.” He leans in, and I catch the warm spice of his cologne. “You going to tell me why you treat my existence like a personal insult?”
“An insult requires intent,” I say evenly. “You’re just an inconvenience.”
He huffs out a laugh that isn’t amused. “You’ve got a hell of a mouth on you.”
“This is my bar—time and place,” I say, flipping a towel over my shoulder and pivoting away.
As I move down the rail, Paisley Tie materializes at the corner with a practiced smile and a question mark in his eyes.
“Ivy, right?” he says, casual. “Mind if I get a quick quote on the Wolves partnership? Crowd’s buzzing.”
“I said no,” I say, not breaking stride.
“Just a line,” he persists, angling his phone to catch the bar logo, the wolf, the sea of costumed bodies—and me in the frame whether I like it or not. “Feels like a turning point.”
“Then turn somewhere else.” I stack pint glasses with a little more force than necessary.
His smile tightens. “Of course.”
He drifts away, but not far. Not far at all.
The next hour is a blur—shots in syringes, a group in flannel arguing about the definition of “eight seconds,” a girl crying in the washroom because her vampire boyfriend won’t commit to fangs. The overheads hold steady. The wolf performs. The till sings.
Every time I tell myself I won’t look over, I do.
And he’s there. Laughing with Thompson and O’Neill, all charm and ease.
On his phone. Off his phone. Leaning back against the booth with his legs sprawled like he owns the space.
Glancing at me like he’s waiting for his memory to cough something up, like I’m a crossword clue he can’t quite solve.
Stop looking.
Stop.
But I don’t.
He comes back for another whiskey. I’m already reaching for the bottle when he speaks, his voice low enough that I have to lean in to hear it over the din.
“You always this good at pretending?”
The words scrape something raw inside me, a splinter I thought I’d buried deep enough to forget. My hand stills on the bottle. “At pretending about what?”
“At not knowing me.”
The air between us thickens. I set the glass down harder than I mean to, the sound sharp enough to turn a few heads. “I know you,” I say, and my voice comes out quieter than I want, steadier than I feel. “That’s the problem.”
We hold the stare. The noise of the bar—laughter, music, the mechanical growl of the wolf—blurs into static, then narrows to nothing, then surges back like a wave crashing over us.
For a second it’s just us, a live wire humming in the space between our bodies, a static charge you could light a match from and watch the whole room go up in flames.
I should walk away. I should turn around and serve someone else, anyone else.
But I don’t move. And neither does he.
A shriek of laughter snaps the moment. Delilah’s at the mic again, calling for last riders. Thompson gets goaded into a rematch and gets yeeted at nine seconds, which he sells like it’s theater. Delilah looks like she might combust from flirting. Good for her.
Last call finally arrives. People peel off into the cold, trailing glitter and fake blood. The wolf powers down with a contented whir. The room exhales.
The Wolves settle their tab as a unit. Holt catches my eye on his way out and tips his chin. “See you Wednesday for Future Stars. Be here at eleven.”
“Can’t wait,” I say, because this is my job…and because the bar needs it.
Gabriel lingers half a beat behind the rest, mask pushed up into his hair now. He doesn’t speak. Then he taps the bar twice with his knuckles and follows his team into the night.
Delilah floats back, cheeks flushed, wings askew.
“Brock is… nice.” She tries for casual and fails adorably. “Nice-nice.”
“I noticed.” I can’t help the small smile. “You could do worse than a surfer wig.”
She bumps my shoulder. “You good?”
“Peachy.”
We close in companionable silence, the kind we’ve earned the hard way. When Delilah clocks out and leaves, I take a seat at the bar and pull out my phone to check the bar’s socials—the standard post-mortem.
For the first time, our tagged stories are a flood—wolf fails, costume wins, Thompson’s wipeout set to bad country music. One boomerang catches me and Gabriel at the bar, the frame tight, my mouth carved into a line, his mask and eyes and the inch of space between us crackling.
The account tag is unfamiliar.
I click on the profile. Generic bio. Lots of sports clips. A new story goes up as I watch: Gabriel riding the wolf, slowed down, set to a bass-heavy track, captioned: Wolves’ new right wing leads the pack.
My stomach tightens.
Without investigating further, I lock my phone and set it face down. The bar is quiet now, the kind of quiet that spits my own thoughts back at me.
I flip the CLOSED sign, then catch sight of the rolled banner by the office door—Future Stars Youth Day, burgundy letters peeking from the plastic.
He’ll be back.
I kill the lights and listen to the room settle as if it’s holding its breath with me.
Opening shot landed. Next one’s already on the schedule.