Eight
Four days.
Four days since the Howloween party. Four days since Gabriel Castellano paraded through my bar, and the whole night went viral as a PR triumph for the Wolves.
The internet’s obsessed with his charm. My bank account proves the event was a success.
But according to the pit in my stomach, it was a near-miss, and I’m not sure I can survive a second time.
But four days without seeing his face in person? I’ll take the small wins where I can get them.
“This is going to be amazing for our brand.” Delilah bounces on her toes, adjusting the banner that reads WHISTLER WOLVES FUTURE STARS YOUTH DAY for the third time. “After the buzz from Howloween, parents are going to be posting non-stop. We’re about to be all over TikTok.”
“Great.” I wipe down the bar top that’s already spotless. “Social media immortality. Every girl’s dream.”
She shoots me a look. “You could at least pretend to be excited.”
I am pretending. Just not very well.
Hosting the team was part of a promotional agreement made months ago, back when I thought a Wolves youth hockey day would just be wholesome PR.
Back when I didn’t know Gabriel Castellano would be traded here, when I’d somewhat successfully blocked his existence out of my mind.
Back when I thought I could keep my two worlds neatly separated.
Now? The bar’s closed to the public, filled with forty kids in oversized jerseys and their parents wielding phones. And somewhere in this controlled chaos, he’ll be here.
“Just stay behind the bar,” I mutter to myself. “Serve juice boxes. Be invisible.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Delilah ties off a balloon cluster—burgundy and gold, naturally—and grins. “You know what? I think this might actually be fun.”
At least one of us thinks so.
The first players arrive at eleven sharp: Ryan O’Neill with his easy dad energy, Karl Forsberg looking grateful for any camera time, Elias Andersson with his methodical Scandinavian politeness.
They move through the room like naturals; it’s clear they’ve done this a thousand times: autographs, fist bumps, stick-handling demonstrations that make the kids’ eyes go wide.
I stay exactly where I promised myself I would: behind the bar, pouring apple juice into plastic cups and pretending the hockey talk doesn’t burrow under my skin.
Then Brock Thompson walks in with Ethan Holt, and thirty seconds later—
Gabriel Castellano.
He’s in a Wolves quarter-zip, jeans that probably cost more than my rent, and a blank expression. No smirk. No swagger. He’s scanning the room with the same intensity he probably uses to read a defensive lineup, and when his eyes land on me—
I look away.
Fast.
Invisible. You’re invisible.
I busy myself restocking napkins, but I feel it. That prickle at the back of my neck. The weight of his attention, quiet and unnerving in a way his arrogance never was.
Cocky Gabriel I can handle. I’ve got a playbook for it.
This? This silent observation?
I don’t know what to do with that.
“Excuse me, Miss?” A tiny voice yanks me back. A kid—maybe nine, with a gap-toothed grin and a jersey three sizes too big—leans against the bar. “Can I have another juice?”
“Course, bud.” I slide one across the bar, and he scampers off toward Forsberg, who’s demonstrating goalie stances.
The kid plants himself in front of Forsberg, all nervous energy. “Um—Mr. Forsberg? When you’re in the butterfly and the shooter goes five-hole, do you squeeze your pads or go stick down first?”
Forsberg blinks, impressed by the question. He opens his mouth. “Well, you want to—”
“Stick,” I mutter. The word slips out under my breath before I can swallow it down. Pads are too slow on a quick release. Always lead with the stick.
Forsberg falters, his brow furrowing as if he wasn’t quite sure if he heard right. He glances around.
But Gabriel Castellano’s head snaps in my direction. The smile he’d been wearing for the kids is gone, and his focus narrows on me with unnerving stillness.
Shit. Shut up, Ivy. Shut up, shut up, shut up. My own voice screams in my head.
I grab a rag, scrub at a nonexistent spill, anything to look busy. My pulse hammers in my ears. I shouldn’t have said anything. Not here, not with him watching.
I turn my back, heart rabbiting against my ribs, and pray he didn’t just hear the one thing I can’t afford to reveal to him.
The silence from his direction is heavy. It stretches, thick with questions. I grip the edge of the bar, knuckles white, my whole body a live wire.
Don’t look. Don’t engage. Just be the bartender.
“Mr. Castellano! Over here!”
The spell breaks. A young girl with two blonde braids sticking out from under a Wolves toque beckons him toward the west wall. The memorabilia wall.
My blood doesn’t just run cold. It freezes. Solidifies into a block of ice in my veins.
No. Not there. Anywhere but there.
Gabriel moves toward her, his earlier intensity melting back into an easy-going charm for the kid. He crouches down to her level, listening as she points. I can’t hear her words, but I don’t need to. I know exactly what she’s pointing at.
My dad framed it the week I returned from hockey academy.
A group photo from the U18 National Championship, featuring the winning teams. It had become one with the other regalia in my mind—I haven’t touched any of Dad’s handpicked memorabilia.
The Calgary Blades U18 AAA, proud and grinning Esso Cup champions.
And right there, three spots from the end in the front row, knee on the ice, is a younger version of me.
Blonde hair tucked into a messy ponytail and a smile so wide and full of stupid, boundless hope it makes me physically ache to look at it now.
The girl’s small, gloved finger traces the glass. It slides past my face. She taps on the glass, right over another face. A face with the same high cheekbones, the same cleft chin. Eighteen-year-old Gabriel Castellano, hoisting the Telus Cup as the out-of-town MVP.
I watch his eyes. I track them as they follow the girl’s finger from his younger self back to my team photo.
He scans the row of beaming, anonymous girls.
His gaze drifts over my face—the face of the girl he took upstairs, the girl whose name he let them drag through the mud, the girl whose future he torched.
His eyes wash right over the blonde girl in the picture, never connecting her to the redhead scrubbing the bar top right behind him.
No flicker of recognition. No pause. Nothing.
I am a ghost in my own history.
He straightens up, ruffling the kid’s toque with a practiced ease that grates on my every nerve.
“Big tournament,” he says, his voice carrying across the now-quieting room.
He claps his hands together once. “Funny, eh? You play in these things, feels like the whole world. Then you look back, and most of the players from back then?” He shrugs, a gesture of casual dismissal that rips the air from my lungs.
“They probably never made it past juniors.”
My vision tunnels. A hot, ugly flush of shame crawls up my neck. My hand spasms, nails digging into the meat of my palm like I need the pain to ground me. I feel the ghost of that ambitious, hopeful girl in the photo scream inside me.
Control. Get control.
I need noise. A task. Something to do with my hands before they start shaking.
I pivot to the bar, my movements jerky. With a clatter of glass that makes Delilah jump, I start yanking bottles out of the speed rail. Gin, vodka, rum—they land hard on the bar top. A chaotic chorus of clanking. I grab a rag and begin scrubbing the now-empty well with a furious, circular motion.
“What are you doing?” Delilah whispers, her eyes wide with alarm. “The evening rush isn’t for hours.”
“Spill,” I lie, my voice tight, not looking at her, not looking at anyone. I focus on the friction of the rag, the smell of sanitizer, the rhythmic thump, thump, thump of my heart against my ribs. “Syrup. It’s everywhere. Sticky.”
My frantic distraction works. The event wraps up. Parents corral their kids; a last few autographs are signed.
Captain Holt gives me a grateful nod as he steers his group toward the exit, O’Neill following close behind.
Gabriel pauses by the bar on his way out, not even looking at me.
He’s talking to Thompson, who lingered to wait for him.
Gabriel’s voice is low and casual as he zips his quarter-zip.
“Crazy seeing that old national tournament pic,” he says, his gaze fixed on the framed photo. “Feels like a lifetime ago.”
With that, he pushes the door open and is gone.
The bell above the door jingles, then falls silent. The room is empty. Quiet. My adrenaline crashes, leaving a hollow echo in its place. My hands stall.
Slowly, I turn. My feet are lead weights, dragging me across the floor until I stand where the little girl stood. My eyes land on the photograph. On her. On the girl with the stupid, hopeful smile.
A chilling clarity settles over me. The dread that has been my constant companion for the last week shifts, changing its shape.
It’s no longer the panicked, formless fear of if he remembers.
His blank-eyed dismissal settled that. The new dread is sharp.
It is pointed. It is the cold, hard certainty of a ticking clock.
It’s not if.
It’s when.