Twenty-Seven
Gabriel carries me to the end of the alley, his boots crunching through the fresh powder. But the second we hit the edge of the Village Stroll, the dark ends and the noise slams into us.
The Village is a wall of sound. Music bleeds out of open doors, four different songs colliding in the snow-speckled air. Glitter hats, tinsel boas, phones raised in the air.
A group of drunks turns our way. I catch the glare of a camera flash.
My stomach drops. I am not being carried on the internet.
“Put me down.”
His arms tighten instinctively against the jostle of the crowd.
“Castellano. Put. Me. Down.”
I twist. My heels thump against his thigh, sharp little kicks with zero grace.
He stops where the crowd briefly thins, the snow underfoot shifting from salted slush to packed ice, and lowers me down.
My pumps hit the ground, and I slide, grabbing his arm to steady myself. I kick the stilettos off and grip both heels in one hand. Ice jolts up the soles of my feet, but adrenaline drives me forward. I hike the dress up my thighs, bunching silk in my fist, and run.
Gabriel stays glued to my side. We don’t jog so much as fight our way forward.
The walkway is a slow-moving river of people too drunk to hurry and too happy to get out of the way.
We weave violently through the gaps. Someone blows a plastic horn right in my ear.
A woman in a sequined dress shoves backward, spilling her drink over my stockinged foot. I don’t even flinch.
A pack of guys block the gap ahead, mid–group selfie. Gabriel drops his shoulder and cuts through first, his hand finding the small of my back to haul me through behind him before the gap closes. The second we’re clear, he falls back in beside me.
A couple stumbles off the curb near us. The guy points his phone up the Stroll, tracking the wail of a siren slicing through the party music two blocks away.
His lens sweeps in our direction. My chest tightens.
“Keep your phone to yourself,” I snap.
He squints, trying to focus, trying to place me.
Gabriel steps half a step in front of me. “Move,” he growls.
The drunk’s eyes flick up Gabriel’s height and the hard set of his jaw. The phone dips. “Yeah, okay, buddy, relax—”
I nudge Gabriel with my elbow before he decides to do something heroic and stupid, and before the guy recognizes him.
We cut across the street between two lines of parked cars. Tires crunch over icy grit. A plow passes the far intersection, lights flashing amber, making the snowbanks glow like dirty diamonds.
Gabriel’s steps fall behind mine.
I glance back.
He scans the street, listening like he expects someone to follow, headlights to swing into the lot after us.
“Move,” I hiss.
His eyes flick to mine. One beat of recognition. Then he matches me—longer strides, silent as a shadow.
We hit a patch of black ice. My stockinged foot skids out from under me. The cold shears through the thin nylon, but before my knees can hit the grit, Gabriel’s hand clamps around my forearm.
“Got you.” He pulls my center-of-gravity back over my heels.
“Thanks.” I use his grip to right myself, blood pumping furiously, and we keep moving without dropping our pace.
Behind us, red and blue washes across a storefront window, gone before I can place it. Another siren, fainter now—swallowed by distance and snow.
The Penalty Box sits dark at the edge of the Village. The CLOSED sign sits in the glass. I take the steps two at a time, stockings slipping on the salted wood.
My keys feel like chunks of ice in my palm. I shove the key into the deadbolt. It won’t turn. Gabriel stands half a step behind me, his body angled toward the street, silently tracking the sirens still hanging over the rooftops.
“For fuck’s sake,” I snap at the door.
Gabriel’s hand comes in over mine, bracing my shaking wrist. He doesn’t take the keys. He just holds me steady until the lock catches. I shove the door open, and we slip inside.
The door clicks shut. I throw the deadbolt, then slide the chain into place. I slam my palm against the thermostat dial on the wall, cranking it as high as it goes. The ceiling vents shudder, spitting out a dry wheeze of dead, freezing air. It’ll take half an hour to actually thaw the room.
I move fast, leaving wet footprints on the hardwood as I sweep the back of the bar.
I check the kitchen latch. Followed, filmed, tracked, sued, shut down.
Dad’s bar, gone. The panic loop runs on loud repeat.
I take a hard left into the office, my eyes snagging on the unfolded pullout couch.
An image flashes behind my eyes—the blizzard, the dark, him in here and me out there.
I swallow it down and circle straight back to the front windows. Gabriel has his hand planted on the frame, looking out through a crack in the blinds.
“See anyone?” My voice comes out too sharp.
“No.” He watches the street. “Cruiser stopped two blocks up the Stroll. Lights going, but not moving toward us.”
I nod, but the word doesn’t settle me. I need a drink.
I move behind the bar. It’s where my hands are steady.
I pass over the wine rack and reach straight for the closest bottle of whiskey.
The glasses sit upside down on the bar mat. I flip each upright. My fingers feel thick, clumsy. I tip the bottle.
The neck of it chatters against the rim.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
A thin splash hits the wood instead of the glass. Amber streaks down the bar top, glistening in the faint light from the streetlamp leaking through the blinds.
My hand freezes mid-pour. “Fuck,” I mutter.
My wrist starts to tremble like it doesn’t belong to me.
The bottle wobbles. I slap it down harder than I mean to. The sound bounces in the empty room.
I grab a bar rag and wipe, fast, furious, like speed can erase the fact that my body just betrayed me.
The rag slips from my grip.
“Stop.” Gabriel’s voice cuts through the quiet.
I ignore him.
“Ivy.”
I wipe harder.
His steps come closer, measured like he’s careful not to spook a wild animal.
A hand closes around both my wrists, firm and warm, pinning my shaking hands against the bar.
“Ivy. Hey. Look at me.”
My throat tightens. I force my eyes up.
His face sits stripped bare under the dim light—bruise fading on his cheekbone, mouth split at the corner from some earlier fight, eyes too bright and too still.
“Are you hurt?” His gaze flicks down to my legs.
My stockings are ruined—snagged, soaked dark with slush, clinging to my skin like icicles.
“I’m fine.”
“You walked through snow in silk.”
“I ran,” I correct, my voice rough. “Faster than you.”
“You’re freezing, Ivy.”
“I’m numb. There’s a difference.”
“You’re shaking.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
His thumbs press lightly over the inside of my wrists where my pulse hammers. Proof of life. Proof of now.
He lets go slowly, like he’s testing whether I’ll bolt.
I snatch the bottle again like I have something to prove. I pour. This time I get most of it in the glass. A few drops still miss.
I shove the glass toward him across the bar. “Congratulations. You’ve unlocked the ‘post-riot special.’”
He doesn’t reach for it. He reaches for me instead.
His hand lands on my shoulder, fingers pressing into the wool of my coat. He frowns.
“You’re wearing ice. Ditch the coat.”
I pull back, clutching the lapels. “And wear what? Air?”
He shrugs off his own overcoat—black wool, dark with melted snow—and drops it onto a barstool. It lands with a heavy, wet thud.
Then he shrugs off his suit jacket underneath. This one is dry.
Gabriel stands there in his white dress shirt, the fabric sticking to his chest. He holds out his jacket.
“Trade me,” he says. “My dry jacket for your wet coat.”
“I don’t want your—”
“Ivy. Take it off.”
He comes around the end of the bar, crowding the narrow gap behind it. The space smells of spilled whiskey and the cold radiating off his shirt.
He reaches for the zipper at my throat.
My shoulders lock. “Don’t—”
“Hold still.”
He pinches the metal tab. His fingers slip. He tries again, slower. The zipper doesn’t budge.
His hands are huge, scarred, usually steady enough to thread a puck through traffic. Now they have a micro-tremor.
He exhales, sharp.
The tab rattles against the metal teeth.
I stare at that tiny, traitorous shake, and something inside me cracks.
A sound bursts out of me. High. Broken. Ugly.
I clap a hand over my mouth, but it doesn’t stop.
Gabriel freezes, fingers still on my collar. He stares at me, eyes wide, totally lost on how to handle a woman laughing in the middle of a disaster.
I bend forward, the laughter punching out in jolts.
“This is—” I suck in air. “We just— we just torched his launch and you can’t—”
My laugh turns into a choke.
He looks down at his own hands, furious at them.
“I can do it.”
“Sure.”
He goes again. The zipper catches halfway, then jams.
My laugh spikes again, hysterical and helpless.
I shove his hands away.
“Move.” I grab the tab and yank it down in one hard pull.
In the motion, my knuckles brush his. Warm skin. Real pulse. A tiny tremor answering mine.
My laughter dies.
Gabriel watches my hands. His breathing is fast, uneven.
I shrug the coat off my shoulders. It slides down my arms and hits the rubber mat with a heavy, wet slap.
My dress is thin. The air in the bar bites instantly, pricking my skin.
Gabriel lifts his suit jacket from the bar top—dry, still holding his body heat—and settles it over my shoulders. The weight lands instantly. Heavy. Solid. Its satin lining warms my bare arms, and it smells like him—cedar, warm cardamom, and adrenaline.
He doesn’t let go of the lapels. He holds them, pulling the jacket tighter around me, trapping that heat against me.
He looks at me, his eyes dark.
I swallow.
The silence presses in.
I stare at his chest. The white dress shirt is damp, sticking to his skin.
My brain is still stuck on the stage. The screens. The noise. Gerald’s face going purple. Braxton fumbling his excuses, his forehead dripping with sweat. The way Gabriel looked under the lights—a pixelated version of a man.
I need to know he’s real.
My hand lifts before I authorize it.