Twelve #2
I blink. I’m geared up for a fight, braced for his usual arrogance, but this quiet, cooperative version of him throws me completely off balance. I don’t know what to do with it, so I fall back on logistics.
“For one, I need you to not freeze in my bar,” I say, turning away so he can’t see how much his mere presence rattles me. “Bad for business. I’m going to grab Ulf’s elk stew from the walk-in.”
I push through the swinging door before he can offer to help. The emergency lights are dimmer back here—a blood-red smear over stainless steel and tile that makes everything look like a crime scene.
After hauling the portable propane stove onto the prep table, I crack the window above the sink a hair for ventilation. Just a slit, but it instantly breathes knives into the room, wind shrieking through the gap like it’s angry I dared.
A heavy thunk reverberates outside—closer than the others.
Power lines or a branch giving up. I ignore the jump in my pulse, the way my hands want to shake, and flick the lighter.
Flame catches on the second try, blue and steady.
The whirr of the storm is so loud now it sounds like an engine eating itself, metal on metal, relentless.
Gabriel fills the doorway and stays there, one hand braced on the frame, the other hanging loose at his side. He doesn’t step in. Doesn’t crowd. Like he knows better.
“You sure you don’t need—” he starts.
“I’ve got it,” I say, not looking at him as I grab Ulf’s labeled container from the walk-in and dump the thick, fragrant stew into a pot. The cold air from the fridge bites at my face, my fingers. “I can heat soup.”
He takes the jab without the comeback I half-expected. The silence stretches as we wait. But it’s different now—heavier, weighted with things neither of us will say.
The stew warms slowly, rosemary and garlic unfurling into the frigid air. I stir it, watching the surface shimmer in the red glow. Outside the little window, the snowline has already buried the windowsill and is still climbing, inch by relentless inch.
“Jesus,” Gabriel says quietly, stepping closer—just close enough to see past my shoulder through the glass. His voice is barely audible over the wind. “It’s piling like—”
“Like it’s trying to bury us,” I finish. The words hang there, a little too bleak, a little too real.
“I’m calling for a cab,” he says as he pulls out his phone. The screen casts a harsh blue light across his bruised cheekbone.
“Be my guest. Tell them to bring a shovel and a miracle while you’re at it.”
A breath of what might’ve been a smile jerks his mouth. Barely there. It dies quickly, swallowed by the weight of the storm and everything else. Still nothing behind his eyes. Six weeks of waiting for the math to land, and nothing.
He taps the screen, holding the phone to his ear. A second later, he sighs, sliding his phone into his pocket. “Shoddy service. Won’t even ring through.”
Something booms in the distance—a deep, rolling crack that shakes the foundation beneath us. The emergency lights stutter and dim, then claw their way back.
I click off the portable stove.
“Take those.” I nod towards the steaming bowls of elk stew, unscrewing the propane. “We’ll eat out front.”
I walk out of the kitchen and hold the swinging door open a beat. Gabriel follows with a full bowl in each hand. He sets them on the bar top, reclaiming his middle stool.
Stepping behind the bar, I reach for the wine rack, fingers finding the bottle I’ve been saving.
Dad’s, technically—he brought back two of the same vintage on his last supply run, one to sell by the glass, one he set aside behind the register.
Emergency use only, he’d said. I never asked what qualified. I’m guessing tonight does.
“Drink?” I offer, not looking at him.
“Whiskey,” he says.
I pull down the good stuff—the bottle I wouldn’t serve him when Thompson asked—and pour him a double. Myself, a generous glass of red. The ritual helps. The familiar motions, the clink of glass on wood—it’s something to hold on to when the world outside is trying its damnedest to bury us alive.
We take seats a few stools apart, the stew steaming between us. Like corners in a fight. Like we’re bracing for the next round.
Outside, the wind sounds like a living thing with teeth and fury. The building answers with a groan from deep in its bones, wood and nails protesting the weight of winter’s wrath.
“This is fucked.”
“Yep.” I sip the wine, dark fruit biting harder than expected, tannins scraping the back of my mouth. “Textbook fucked.”
We eat. The stew is thick and savory; the dark broth clings to tender chunks of elk, potatoes, and carrots. It hits my empty stomach with a heavy, grounding warmth, tasting of rosemary, garlic, and cracked black pepper. Usually, it’s comfort food. Tonight, it tastes bland going down.
Metal spoons against ceramic, the wind, the occasional crack—those become the soundtrack. The snow licks past the bottom of the windows now, a slow-moving tide.
“So, how’s the new team treating you?” Silence makes my skin itch, and small talk is safe. Can’t let the space between us fill with the only thing we should actually be talking about. “You look like a guy who hasn’t slept.”
He huffs out a breath, eyes staying on his bowl. “Holt’s solid.” A beat. “Good room.”
“Better than your last one?” I keep my voice light, conversational. Normal. Like we’re just two people making small talk during a blizzard and not two people with a crater between them.
“Different.” He takes another spoonful, chews slowly. Buys time. “Less drama.”
“Low bar,” I mutter, and it comes out harsher than I meant. I chase it with wine, let the burn cover the slip.
“Sometimes low bars are good.” He says it like he means it. Like he’s discovered the appeal of being boring, and it scares him a little. His thumb traces the rim of his glass once, twice. A tell I clock and file away.
I search for something else—anything else—to fill the space. The road trip. The one everyone knows went sideways. The one I definitely shouldn’t bring up. “Your, uh...your away games—”
I stop. Regroup. Try again. “I heard you guys have been putting in extra practice. Building chemistry.”
It’s a lie. I’ve heard no such thing. But it’s better than the truth: I heard you’ve been a disaster on the road, and I’m holding my breath waiting to see if it’s because you finally put the pieces together.
We go quiet again. Another tree goes somewhere outside, close enough that the floor trembles under my combat boots. The emergency lights flicker; my heart does more than that.
“How long do these batteries last?” he asks, his eyes fixed on the red glow.
“Eight hours. Maybe ten.” I pour myself another half glass so I don’t chew my lip off. “We should be fine.”
“Should.”
“Will,” I say, and make my voice hold.
The snow swallows the windows. The bar cocoons into a red, humming womb, an island in a blank ocean.
“You know what’s messed up?” I say finally, heat and alcohol softening my tongue but sharpening the point. “We’re sitting here sharing stew like we’re not who we are.”
He lifts his eyes. There’s no defense in them. Just a quiet readiness to get hit again. “Who’s that?”
“You’re the guy who torched my future,” I state matter-of-factly. It’s a small miracle that my voice doesn’t wobble. “I’m the girl who won’t forgive you. And here we are.”
There. I said it. Out in the open. The words that branded themselves into my psyche the night I watched my credibility die in public, then disappear in private—paperwork and a payout, a signature that made sure nobody asked questions. He got a draft letter. I got a gag order.
He goes rigid. He puts his spoon down like it’s suddenly weighing him down.
“Calgary.”
The word lands between us like a dropped puck, ringing against the floorboards. It’s the first time either of us says it out loud. The first time we acknowledge the city that holds our history like evidence in a locked file.
My chest tightens.
“So you do remember.” I keep my face neutral, but inside, everything tilts sideways. The distance I’ve maintained—the walls I’ve built brick by careful brick—all of it threatens to crumble because he finally said the word I’ve been waiting for him to say.
His knuckles go white around the glass, tendons standing out. “I remember enough.”
A bluff or half-truth, I can’t tell; it doesn’t matter which because my lungs burn anyway. The room shrinks.
“Took you long enough,” I manage, and the words come out scraped raw, tasting of tannins and old grief. The voice of the seventeen-year-old girl who waited for an apology that never came.
“Walk me through it, Gabriel,” I demand, my voice suddenly steady, each syllable clipped.
“Refresh my memory. Tell me about the moment you decided I wasn’t worth protecting.
Or skip to the part where you invented a story we both know never happened.
” I twist to face him on my stool. “No, maybe it was just simpler than that. When you were done with me, I just became disposable.”
His throat works, Adam’s apple bobbing. “I made a mistake.” A beat. His eyes close, then open. “A terrible one.”
“A mistake,” I deadpan, and the laugh that escapes me sounds like someone else’s—bitter and broken and so far from the girl in that tournament photo it physically hurts. “No. You made a choice. Choices have consequences. Don’t you dare minimize it into something accidental.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” I snort. “You didn’t give me a second thought until you walked into my bar. I’ve spent seven years rebuilding what you destroyed in one night, and you, what—forgot I existed?”
“That’s not—” He stops. His hands flex at his sides, fingers curling into fists and releasing. Tries again. “I didn’t know it was you.”