Twenty-Eight #2
Delilah hip-chucks the door shut. The latch hits with a dull bang. She slaps the deadbolt in place and plants her back against the metal as if she’s bracing it with her spine.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she pants, eyes sweeping Ivy’s face. “I wasn’t going to let you get besieged without backup.”
Ivy’s arms fold across the daggered heart. “Pretty sure this is a two?person disaster maximum, D.”
“You’re adorable when you’re wrong.”
Delilah’s fingers fumble with the end of her scarf, unwinding it in jerky loops. She talks while she peels off layers.
“That drunk guy you snapped at in the street last night? He posted a video. Barefoot Ivy sprinting through slush, Gabriel on your heels.” Her eyes flick to me for half a second.
Heat crawls up Ivy’s neck.
She keeps going, text?fast. “Some producer stitched it into the ‘last seen’ montage. They’ve been running it on loop since six a.m. ‘Last seen entering local favorite Whistler bar The Penalty Box together.’ Over and over.”
Ivy nods, her gaze flicking between Brock and Delilah. One eyebrow lifts a hair—Details, later. Delilah shoots the same look back at us, and I don’t bother hiding the fact that I don’t look away.
Snow melts off Brock’s toque and drips onto the mat. He pushes the hat back, scanning the room, then the two of us, eyes hitting my face last.
“She said you were holed up in here with cameras at the front.” He jerks his thumb toward the alley. “I wasn’t letting you ride that out alone.”
I brace for the punchline. The pivot where he tells me the team is throwing me under the bus. It never lands. He’s just standing there, dripping snow on Ivy’s floor.
“You walked down the alley in front of a news van to come sit in my mess?” I raise an eyebrow. “That’s a choice, bud.”
He shrugs, mouth twitching.
“Good story for the grandkids. ‘I once ignored PR advice to bring coffee to a goat rodeo.’”
Delilah glances down at her phone, her cherry lips forming an O.
“And before you ask…yeah. At least one crew saw us duck down the lane.” Her thumb skates across the screen.
“Local station just said, ‘Looks like another Wolves player has joined them through the back.’ They didn’t get a clean shot, but they know you’re here, Brock. ”
He blows out a breath through his nose. “Good. Saves me a walk later.”
My shoulders drop half an inch.
Ivy’s arms stay folded tight. She doesn’t look relieved. Her eyes dart from Brock’s snowy boots to the rattling front door, calculating the damage.
A camera flash leaks around the edge of the blind, white for a second, then gone.
Delilah flinches, head snapping toward it.
“Okay.” Ivy claps her hands once; the sound sharp. “We’re not doing war council in this tiny kitchen. Out front. Let’s go.”
She spins and strides toward the bar. Bare feet, Bon Jovi, bedhead, running the pivot like it’s a rush drill.
We follow.
She hits the light switches behind the bar, one by one. Not the neon—those stay dead—but a couple of overheads hum to life. The room shifts from bunker black to dull morning.
Chairs still sit stacked on tables. The mechanical wolf looms in a winter scarf in the corner, ridiculous and vaguely judging. The CLOSED sign glows in reverse on the front door.
Ivy rounds the bar, reaching for the industrial coffee machine like it’s any other morning.
Brock drags a barstool back, keeping his boots planted toward the door.
I lean against the wood opposite Ivy, blocking the line of sight from the glass.
Delilah prowls. She peeks through one blind with two fingers, mutters something, then moves to the back door to make sure the deadbolt’s fully seated. Her phone never leaves her hand.
Coffee filters come out of the plastic tub. Ivy fills the basket with coffee, a few stray grounds spilling over the lip and scattering across the stainless steel. She brushes them into the garbage with sharp movements and slams the basket home. Water sloshes as she fills the reservoir too high.
“Fuck,” she mutters, snapping her hand back, flicking off droplets.
The coffee maker hisses to life, the scent of drip coffee wafting in the air.
Delilah snorts at her screen.
“They’re running the ‘mascot’ line again,” she calls, not looking up. “Freeze?frame of your face right before you drop it. Your PR people are going to have an aneurysm.”
“Agent’s thrilled,” I say.
Ivy ducks under the bar to grab mugs, bangs her head on the underside as she straightens.
“League’s involved,” I add. “Which is usually code for ‘sharpening the axe.’”
Brock lets out a low sound halfway between a laugh and a growl. “Not this time.”
“You clairvoyant now?”
“Nah. Holt’s been on with the NHLPA since before sunrise.” Brock’s eyes go to Ivy first when he speaks. It fits. Whatever happens next gets decided in her bar, on her terms.
Brock accepts the first steaming mug Ivy slides across and spins it in his hands. She pushes a second mug toward me. Our fingers brush as the handle changes hands.
“Speaking of—” Brock pulls his phone out and thumbs the screen. “He told me to call when we got to you.”
Brock sets the phone on the bar. The ringtone echoes off the wood. One ring. Half of another.
I take a sip of coffee. It’s too strong, a little bitter. Perfect.
Holt answers on the second ring. “Hey, Thomps.”
“Mornin’. You’re on speaker.”
“Both of them there?” Holt’s voice comes through stripped and flat.
“Yeah, Cap.”
“Good. Castellano, your agent reach you?”
“Darius texted. Said sit tight.”
“He’s right. GM called me about an hour ago. Westfield went to him last night, wanted conduct detrimental filed and your guarantees voided before sunrise.” A beat. “GM said no.”
My stomach drops.
“The NHLPA rep’s been looped in since early this morning,” Holt continues.
“Offices don’t reopen until the second, so nothing formal moves today—but a complaint’s been filed, and the league’s been notified.
Any discipline against you before that review clears wouldn’t fly.
Darius will loop you on this; talk to him. ”
“Will do,” I say. I catch Ivy’s mouth quirk into a smile, and I sit up straighter.
“And one more thing,” Holt says. “I passed something along to the league this morning. There’s a group that’s been in conversation about the franchise situation for a while.
The governance complaint gives them a real entry point.
I don’t know what happens with it. But I made sure they knew the door was open.
” Holt pauses, an unfamiliar voice warbling in the background like he held the receiver away for a second.
“Thompson, the rep’s asking if she should stick around. ”
“Keep her there.” Brock doesn’t look at me when he says it. “I’m on my way after this.”
Ivy’s hazel eyes find mine across the bar, her full lips parting.
The call ends.
I set my mug down. “You’re doing this.”
“Yeah.” He turns the mug once on the wood, still not meeting my eyes. “Remember Marty’s motto? ‘Leadership means discretion.’”
His eyes find mine now. My mouth goes dry. Every time one of us needed to say something and didn’t.
“I remember,” I say, and hold his stare.
Brock nods slowly, like that’s the answer he needed from me out loud, before he does this.
“Should’ve said something years ago.” He shrugs. “Better late than never, eh.”
I look down at my coffee. My reflection sits in it, unblinking.
Ivy’s shoulders come down half an inch. Whatever she was holding herself against, this isn’t it.
“Okay,” she says. Then, quieter: “Okay.” She sets the towel down. “About time someone called bullshit on his definition of leadership.”
Brock lifts his mug in a small salute. Then he stands and exits out the back. Delilah follows him to lock the door behind him. When she returns, she drags a barstool around, drops onto it, and pulls out her phone.
“Okay, we need a game plan,” Delilah says. “Who talks to who. What we drop on socials. And what we keep to ourselves.”
Ivy nods once. Then again, slower, like the rhythm steadies her. She curls her fingers around her mug, knuckles no longer white.
I watch her for a long beat. The woman who stood on a stage and stripped herself open in front of a room full of enemies. The woman who’s now running a war room in bare feet and a Bon Jovi shirt, like this is just another Friday.
She built this. The bar. The fight. The version of me that walked away from the notecard.
My phone buzzes once. I don’t look at it.
The penthouse is up there somewhere—glass and stone and that view the league pays too much for, the one that looks down on the whole village like it’s a thing to be observed rather than lived in. Clean. Quiet. Perfect on paper.
I look at the chipped mug in my hand.
I look at her.
I don’t move.