Chapter 5
ALOIS
PRESENT DAY
The door to Matt’s stuck for half a second before it gave.
It always did.
Wood swollen from years of harsh Minnesota weather, hinges that had learned how to complain without ever quite failing. I leaned into it with my shoulder out of habit, felt the resistance give way, and stepped inside to the same low hum that seemed to shut the world the heck up for a while.
Warm. Dim. Alive in a way that didn’t ask anything from you.
The smell wafted in as I took a deep breath—grease, grilled beef, onions caramelizing on an aged flat-top behind the bar, timeworn wood soaked with decades of beer and stories that didn’t belong to anyone anymore. It wrapped around you instead of cutting through you.
A few heads turned when I came in. Not many. That was the point.
Matt’s wasn’t a hockey bar. No jerseys hanging from the ceiling.
No highlight reels looping on a dozen screens.
A couple TVs mounted high in the corners played whatever game was on, volume low enough it never took over the room.
People came here to eat. To drink. To sit in their own lives without interruption.
I moved through the space without breaking stride, boots heavy against the original pine flooring. The same stool near the end of the bar was open, and I slid onto it, settling my forearms against the cool surface, letting the solidity of it ground me in a way that nothing at the rink ever did.
“Rough one?” Marlene’s voice came from behind the bar before I even looked up, her tone steady, practical, and entirely unsurprised.
She stood where she always did, moving with the same efficient rhythm I’d watched a countless times before, her presence constant in a way that made the place feel anchored. Late fifties, maybe early sixties, sleeves rolled, eyes sharp enough to read a room without needing to ask questions.
“Jucy Lucy?” she added, already halfway through turning toward the grill.
I gave her a small nod. “Yeah.”
“Fries?”
“Always.”
She didn’t bother writing it down, just called it back toward the cook in one smooth motion, her voice carrying easily through the noise.
“Fear the cheese,” someone muttered a few stools down, not looking at me, and a quiet chuckle followed it.
I didn’t react. I didn’t need to. The pulse of the place didn’t require participation, and that was the point.
I settled into the space, shoulders loosening by degrees as the pressure from the game began to bleed out of my system.
It didn’t leave all at once. It never did.
The fight in the barn replayed anyway, the impact, the timing, the way everything slowed in that split second before contact, and I let the loop in my mind run its course without engaging with the self-defaming thoughts.
I flexed my fingers once against the bartop, the tape wrapped around my knuckles pulling tight beneath the outer layer I hadn’t bothered removing yet. The ache sat there, steady and deep, familiar enough that I didn’t question it.
“Hell of a hit tonight.” The voice cut through the room louder than it needed to be, slurred just enough to drag the edges of the words together.
I didn’t turn. I didn’t respond. I let it pass. That was always the move. Most of the time, it worked.
A stool scraped somewhere behind me, then closer, the sound dragging across the floor in a way that set my teeth on edge before the guy dared to breath another word.
“Hey,” he pushed, leaning into it like he needed to prove something. “I’m talking to you.”
I kept my gaze on the bar, from the faint scratches in the mahogany, to the condensation forming along the sides of the plastic water cup Marlene had set down in front of me without comment.
The drip slid slowly toward the base, gathering before it finally let go, falling into the shallow ring already built there.
Ignoring him wasn’t difficult.
Patience wasn’t something I’d learned in locker rooms or on the ice, not really.
Hockey had refined it, sharpened it into something useful, something controlled and deliberate, but the foundation had been there long before any coach tried to put structure around it.
Long before anyone called it discipline or composure or leadership potential.
It started in smaller spaces. Tighter ones.
A kitchen table where silence meant more than words ever could.
A house where the wrong response bought switch, overreactive consequences.
I has learned quickly that reacting only made things worse, that meeting noise with noise didn’t end it—it extended it.
Instead I absorbed it. Let it pass through.
Let it burn itself out without giving it anything to hold onto.
By the time I got to hockey, it already lived in me. Coaches called it control. Teammates called it focus. Fans called it cold. They weren’t wrong. It was easier to be still than it was to give someone a reason to keep going.
“Big man doesn’t want to talk,” he slurred on, louder now, his voice carrying just enough that people nearby started paying attention without making it obvious. “Figures.”
The smell hit next when he moved closer, cheap beer and something sour underneath it, his elbow bumping into mine as he dropped onto the stool beside me like space didn’t belong to anyone but him.
I shifted slightly to create distance. He followed it.
Asshole.
“Thought you guys were supposed to be tough,” he muttered, leaning in, his breath warm and unpleasant against the side of my face. “All that fighting.”
I exhaled slowly through my nose, keeping my posture loose, my shoulders relaxed, refusing to give him anything to use as cannon fodder.
The sizzle from the flat-top cut through the low hum of conversation, sharp and steady, the delectable smell rolling through the space as the cook worked just a few steps from the front door.
I didn’t need to look to know he was pressing the patties down, timing it the way they always did here—quick, practiced, deliberate.
A second later, Marlene moved down the narrow stretch behind the bar, sliding the paper basket in front of me with a quiet efficiency that didn’t interrupt the rhythm of the room.
It looked exactly the way it always did—simple, solid, unassuming until you knew better. The cheese sealed inside, molten and waiting, the kind of thing that demanded patience whether you had it or not.
I reached for it. Unwrapped the wax paper to let the burger cool.
“Unbelievable,” the guy muttered beside me, watching now, his voice rising again as he searched for a reaction he wasn’t getting. “Guy goes out there, takes people’s heads off, and then just… sits here.”
I took a bite. The heat hit immediately, sharp and contained, and I let it settle instead of reacting to it, letting the burn register and fade on its own.
“Hey.” His hand came down harder this time, the impact rattling the glassware. “I’m talking to you.”
I set the burger down, wiped my fingers once on the napkin, and turned just enough to meet his eyes.
“Hey, man,” I groaned, keeping my voice even. “I’m just a guy trying to eat a burger after a shitty day.”
It should have been enough.
Of course, it wasn’t.
He blinked at me, like the answer didn’t line up with whatever he’d already decided I was, and then he laughed, sharp and humorless. “A shitty day,” he repeated, the disbelief thick in his voice. “You don’t know what a shitty day is.”
I didn’t respond. Picked the burger back up. Took another bite.
He leaned closer, louder now, the alcohol stripping away whatever restraint he might have had left. “You skate around, hit whoever you want, get paid for it, and you think that’s a bad day?”
I chewed. Swallowed. Reached for a fry.
“Frosthawks finally trying to rebuild somethin’,” he went on, his words dragging as he tried to keep up with his own thoughts. “And they bring in you.”
There it was. Judgment.
“No one wants ya here,” he added, his voice tightening with something that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with him. “You’re a problem. Everyone knows it.”
I stayed quiet.
The room shifted around us, attention tightening without fully locking in, people watching in the way they always did—indirectly, through reflections, through peripheral vision, through the understanding that something might happen.
“Say something,” he snapped.
I didn’t.
That was when he lost whatever line he’d been holding. His hand disappeared from the bar and came back up with the neck of his beer bottle, the motion unsteady but deliberate enough that I registered it before he fully committed.
There was a half second where he could have stopped.
He didn’t.
The bottle left his hand in a sloppy arc, too fast and too high, missing my head by inches before shattering somewhere behind me.
The sound cut clean through the room, sharp enough to pull every ounce of attention in our direction, the low hum of the bar collapsing into something tighter, something expectant.
Everything in me went still for a split second.
I turned on the stool, not rushed, not reactive, just controlled, my boots finding the floor as my body aligned before the rest of the moment could catch up. He was still leaning forward, still off balance, still stuck in the version of this that existed in his head where he had the upper hand.
My hand came up and connected clean.
The crack was unmistakable. Not loud, not exaggerated—just sharp enough to register exactly what it was the second it happened.
His head snapped back, and then the blood came just as fast, spilling from his nose in a sudden, bright rush that didn’t belong in the warm, dim space of the bar. It hit his lip, his chin, the front of his shirt before he even seemed to understand what had happened.
That’s all I gave him. One quick jab.