Thirty
I don’t remember getting the rest of the way home.
One minute I’m on the bus, watching the village smear past the salted windows. Next, I’m inside my condo, forehead pressed to the cool metal of the deadbolt like I can weld myself there and not move again for a week.
I peel myself off it and turn to face my home—the last time I saw it was before the launch. I remember going into it ready to expose the truth and let it all burn. This is typically my favorite part of the day; I expected to feel relief standing here.
The couch sits as I left it—blanket in a heap, my BOSS BITCH mug on the coffee table with a ring of dried coffee around the inside. String lights glow along the big window, soft and yellow. The TV throws blue into the room, the Disney+ menu hanging on a still frame.
I grab the remote and scroll until I hit 10 Things I Hate About You.
Safe. Old. Pretty people being idiots in high school. No hockey. No lawyers. No heartache, whispers the voice I keep locked away.
Silencing it, I start the film and head for the shower.
Hot water beats down on my shoulders until my skin goes pink. I scrub last night’s heist and the bar off and stand there long after the soap’s gone. The drain gurgles at my feet.
Shutting the water, I towel off and drag on my softest sleep shorts and their matching silk camisole. The hoodie I grab without looking.
I catch the logo in the mirror and freeze.
Calgary Blades.
White cracked lettering across the chest, the hem gone soft from a thousand washes. Usually, just looking at it feels like pressing a wound. Tonight, it simply feels like fabric. I don’t know what to do with that, so I just go with it, pulling the hoodie over my head and pushing the sleeves up.
Heading to the kitchen, I start a bag of popcorn and pour myself a generous glass of red. I absently watch the movie from beside the microwave, tuning in at the part where Kat is kicked out of class for arguing about white male patriarchy.
Popcorn done, I consider eating it straight from the bag—it feels like one of those nights.
But I spot the glass bowl in the drying rack, so I empty the bag into that instead and carry it to the living room, a glass of red in my free hand.
The wine sloshes higher than usual, and I take a sip, sinking into the couch.
I set both the popcorn and the glass on the coffee table, within reach.
My body is still keyed up from the past twenty-four hours.
From exposing Westfield and his cronies at his own elite launch to the Wolves offering their time and support to save Dad’s bar—my bar—and sharing what I’d been keeping secret for years, and all that’s in between. Especially everything in between.
The adrenaline’s gone: the extension is in motion, the ten-thousand-dollar-per-day fines will be paused, and the bar is safe for now. I should be celebrating. But what’s left feels heavier, lodged under my ribs.
He leaves tomorrow.
The thought slides in and just… hooks. Catches on something I haven’t dared examine too closely. My phone is face-up on the coffee table beside the untouched wine. I catch myself glancing at it like I can make it light up by sheer force.
That pisses me off enough that I flip it face-down and grab the bowl of popcorn instead, setting it hot on my lap. I snatch a fistful. I chew too hard. Salt grits between my teeth.
I stare at the TV as Cameron pleads with Patrick to give Kat a chance, but I’m not watching the scene.
I’m watching the blank TV reflection when I look past it: a woman in a hoodie that belongs to a life she lost, sitting on a couch that suddenly feels too big, in a condo that’s usually a haven and tonight just feels hollow.
Three slow knocks hit my door.
I jolt. The bowl nearly slides off my lap. I catch it by instinct, both hands clamping around the rim as popcorn spills onto the rug.
My pulse spikes. The knock is unfamiliar. Not Delilah—she does a seven-tap pattern. She also always texts before coming by. Always. It’s too late for the press. And my address is private.
I set the bowl aside, kernels rolling across the cushion, and stand.
Padding across the cold hardwood, I grab the nearest heavy object—my dad’s old hardcover of The Game. Pressing a hand to the doorframe, I look through the peephole.
Gabriel.
He stands under the hallway’s harsh overhead light, squinting slightly the way you do when the corridor bulb is too bright after outside dark.
My pulse does something embarrassing. I tell it to stop. It doesn’t.
I open the door.
“Hey,” he says, his voice rougher than usual, like he hasn’t spoken in hours. Gabriel clocks what I’m wearing down to my silk shorts and back up to my face, lips curving in a lazy smirk. “Nice hoodie.”
I blink, shaking off the shock. The freezing air coats my legs in goosebumps, and I shiver.
“Get in, you’re letting all the cold in,” I say, stepping back and lowering the copy of The Game.
Gabriel steps across the threshold. He fills the space instantly, bringing the smell of winter air and that damn cardamom-cedar cologne in with him.
“I thought you were packing,” I say.
“I did.” He unshoulders the duffel and drops it by the door. It hits the floor with a thud that rattles the console table.
I stare at it.
The weight of it hits hard. Not enough to show, but I feel it anyway. The fact that out of every place Gabriel could have gone tonight, he came here. To my door. With a bag.
I swallow it down before it can reach my face.
“Coat,” I say, pointing at the hook by the door because my brain apparently defaults to bar-owner mode when it doesn’t know what else to do. “Shoes on the rack.”
Gabriel looks at the hook. Looks at me. The corner of his mouth pulls up like he can see exactly what I just buried and is choosing not to name it. He unbuttons his coat without a word and hangs it. Toes off his boots and lines them up on the rack, heels flush with the edge.
I look anywhere but at him while he does it, and my eyes land on the worst possible place instead—the faded crow’s head stitched over his heart, half-hidden under his coat until just now. He’s not wearing Wolves gear. He’s wearing the version of himself that existed before any of this.
The click of the deadbolt sounds loud in the quiet condo. I flip the chain, sealing us in.
The second I turn around, the temperature seems to spike five degrees. My apartment feels suddenly, impossibly small.
I need a buffer. I head for the kitchen.
“You want a drink? I have red. And… more red. Or water.”
“Red works.”
I pull a second glass from the cupboard, pouring his share of cabernet. He migrates to the archway, leaning a shoulder against the frame, arms loose.
“That was decent of Holt,” I say, keeping my eyes on the pour. “Driving across the village on a holiday to tell you about Westfield in person. The ownership thing.” I hand him the glass. “How was the drive?”
He turns the wine once in his hand before he answers.
“Long.” A beat. “Good, though. We talked.” His thumb runs along the stem. “Some stuff I should’ve said to him months ago. About the captaincy. What I let Westfield do with it.”
I wait, the way you wait for a customer to decide whether they’re actually going to tell you the real reason they’ve been nursing one beer for two hours.
“He didn’t make it a thing,” Gabriel says, quieter. “Just—heard me out. Said we’re square.” He takes a sip. “First conversation I’ve had with him that wasn’t about a game.”
It lands soft, and I let it, not telling him that’s good or I’m glad. I just nod, and his shoulders settle like he was braced for me to make it bigger than he wanted it to be, and I didn’t.
We drift into the living room. I sit in my usual spot, tucking my legs up under me. Gabriel takes the other end.
The couch is a deep, velvety three-seater, but with him on it, the distance between us feels nonexistent. He leans back, stretching his legs out, his knee just inches from my foot. A cushion and a half of space between us, the blanket still in a heap where I abandoned it.
The movie keeps playing, voices and laughter filling the apartment. I reach for the remote.
“Leave it,” Gabriel says.
I leave it.
The popcorn bowl sits on the coffee table. I reach for it at the same time he does. Our fingers collide in the bowl, knuckles and cold kernels.
Neither of us pulls back immediately.
Then we both do.
I eat my handful. He eats his. My mind runs laps.
“You could’ve called,” I say finally, eyes on the screen. “Or texted. You’ve got my number.”
“I know.”
“So why the door?”
He’s quiet for a second. “Because you’d have said you were fine.” He says it plainly, no hedge. “Would’ve told me to go pack. That we could talk later, when I’m back.” His glass turns in his hand. “You’d have given me an out. I didn’t want one.”
I keep my eyes on the TV. My pulse kicks up a notch.
“And the address,” I say. “You didn’t have that.”
“No,” he says. Something private crosses his face. “Went to the bar first. Front was closed, but the office light was on. Delilah was doing inventory.”
A wave of warmth hits my chest—relief that he tried the bar, that he looked for me—followed immediately by a spike of proprietary annoyance. Delilah went back. Of course she went back.
“She gave out my home address to a stray hockey player,” I mutter. “That’s a security violation.”
“She made me work for it.”
He turns his glass a quarter-turn on his knee. Doesn’t drink from it.
“Must have been important,” I say. “To go through all that for my zip code.”
His jaw works once.
“I missed you.” Flat. No smirk, no hedge. “Wanted to say it somewhere that wasn’t a phone screen.”
My grip tightens on my own glass. I look at the TV instead of him—teenagers I’ve stopped tracking—and find nothing useful to do with my face.
“And Delilah made you pay for that with what, exactly?”
His shoulders drop half an inch. He reaches into his hoodie pocket and produces a bar napkin, folded into quarters, holding it out between two fingers.
I take it.