Twenty-One #2
“I’ll cover it,” I say. Instinct. Bred into me since my first junior contract.
She blinks once. Slow. “What?”
“The seventy-five. Tonight. Transfer, cheque, whatever you need.”
Her laugh slices across my voice before I’m done talking. Short. Sharp. “No.”
“Let me be useful for once. That’s the least I owe you.”
“I said no.” Her glass comes down on the bar with a dull crack.
She tilts her head, eyes narrow. “Your use-case isn’t the number on that page, Gabriel.
It’s the men who decided I was expendable to protect their investment.
The ones who watched you rise while I fell and figured that’s just how hockey works.
Until you help tear that down, your money is just a Band-Aid on the problem while I keep bleeding. ”
I sit back. Heat fights with cold in my chest.
She’s right. Fuck.
“What can I even do then?” I ask, the words scraping my throat.
She studies me. “I want you to go back.”
“Back where?”
“To Westfield,” she says. “Give him the version he’ll believe.
Getting yanked after eight minutes sent you off the rails.
You went dark, blew off steam. Weren’t due back on the ice until after Christmas, so you didn’t think the courier was urgent.
Didn’t open it. By the time you turned your phone back on, things had already escalated. ”
I exhale through my nose. “That’s it?”
“That’s your existing personality with better packaging.” Her mouth flattens. “Tell me where I’m wrong.”
I don’t.
“Fine.” I look at the notice again. “But why?”
“Because I need you close enough to keep your seat reserved.” Her eyes cut to mine. “When he soft-launches that place on New Year’s Eve, I plan on being in the room.”
And that’s when it hits me—not the plan itself. The gap in it.
Westfield has home ice advantage on every surface: guest list, media, councilors he has in his control. She wouldn’t be able to enter the building without someone clocking her. The second she shows her hand, he’d bury it.
She needs cover. Someone Westfield trusts enough to stop watching. Someone who can stand close to her without raising a single flag because he’s supposed to be there.
Someone who owes her this much and more.
That’s the job.
I look at Ivy.
She watches me work it out, letting the quiet stretch.
A shield. That’s what she needs. The only way I can be one is if Westfield still believes I’m his.
“You’re asking me to lie,” I say.
“Please, you’ve been lying for seven years. Lying for him. Lying to yourself.” She lifts one shoulder. “Not asking you to say anything, just help me get into the room. You owe me this much, Gabriel.”
My first instinct is to refuse. To tell her I’m done letting Westfield pull my strings, that I won’t just slide into another role because somebody writes it for me.
Then I look at the compliance notice on the bar between us. Then at her. At the shadows under her eyes and the raw knuckles. She’s standing in her own bar at midnight on Christmas Eve like she’s holding the building up with her spine. She’s forgotten how to put it down.
She wants me to take Martin Westfield’s playbook and use it against him.
I wrap my fingers around the glass again to keep them from shaking. “If I go back in and play the good soldier, I’m not staying on his leash after.”
“I don’t care what you do after.” Her eyes don’t leave mine. “Torch your contract. Fake an injury. Go hide on a beach in Italy. Whatever. Just get me to the launch.”
I know better than to ask, but it comes out anyway. “What are you planning?”
She picks up my empty glass. Turns it once in her fingers, watching the last smear of whiskey run down the side.
“You focus on your side,” she says. “I’ll handle mine.”
Right. She’s not laying all her cards on the bar. Not with the guy who torched her life.
“Deal,” I say.
The word sits between us, quiet and irrevocable.
We don’t shake on it. It’s just the two of us on opposite sides of her father’s bar, navigating seven years of damage and two pieces of paper. And whatever this is, holding.
The silence presses in.
I study her face in the low light. The way she still hasn’t let her shoulders down. The small, involuntary way her gaze drops to my mouth.
The speakers continue their throb—the pub’s pulse. Cold air drafts through the windowpane.
The plan is set. I should go. I have a story to sell Westfield in the morning, and it needs to be clean; sitting here any longer isn’t helping either of us. I stay seated anyway.
“Ivy,” I start.
She shakes her head once, almost imperceptibly.
Don’t. I hear it without sound.
My hand is flat on the bar. Hers is six inches away, fingers loosely wrapped around her glass. Six inches of old wood separating the version of this story where I reach across from the version where I don’t.
I pick up my glass instead, swallow the last of the whiskey, and set it down in the wet ring it came from. Pushing off the stool, I make a move to leave, but hesitate.
“For what it’s worth…” The words trail off.
What am I even trying to say? That I’m sorry? That I’m going to fix it? None of it covers the damage I inflicted seven years ago.
Her hand stills. She finally lifts her eyes to mine. Anger. Bone?deep fatigue. Another emotion I can’t yet name. The corner of her mouth tilts up.
“It’s not worth much, Castellano,” she says. “But I’ll take it anyway.”
I nod once. “Merry Christmas, Ivy.”
The glass in her hand squeaks under the towel. “Merry Christmas.”
I turn and push the door open.
Cold slams into my face. My right hand aches where I’ve kept it balled into a fist for the last twenty minutes. Keeping it off her.
Behind me, metal scrapes. The deadbolt slides home with a clean, final click.
I don’t look back.