Chapter 5 #2
He dropped hard, the breath leaving him in a broken sound as his body hit the floor, the impact jarring enough to send a ripple through the room that hadn’t been there before.
For a second, nobody moved. Nobody spoke.
The only thing that existed was the aftermath of it—the blood, the silence, the reality settling in faster for everyone else than it did for him.
“Jesus, you broke his nose,” someone muttered from somewhere behind me, the words cutting through the quiet like they didn’t quite belong to anyone.
I stood there for a beat, looking down at him, not reacting to the blood, not reacting to the shift in the room, just assessing what was in front of me the same way I would on the ice. It wasn’t emotional. It wasn’t personal. It was simple.
He wasn’t a threat anymore.
“You’re fine,” I muttered, my voice low, steady. “Stay down.”
For a second, it looked like he might. His body lagged behind the hit, his breath uneven as he rolled onto his side, one hand coming up to his face too late, fingers slipping through the blood like he didn’t quite register where it was coming from.
Then he spit on the floor, wiped at his nose with the back of his hand, smearing it worse, and tried to push himself up anyway, stubbornness dragging him forward where sense should have stopped him.
It didn’t surprise me. Guys like him didn’t know when something was over. They only knew how to keep going until something forced them not to.
He came at me again, slower now, unsteady, one arm swinging wide with no real aim behind it, his balance gone, his body working against itself.
I didn’t move much. I didn’t need to. I caught his wrist before it could connect, redirected it just enough to let him carry himself past me, his own momentum doing the work as he stumbled through the space I’d already stepped out of.
“No one’s fighting you,” I added, keeping it even, keeping it calm, the same tone I’d held from the beginning because raising it wouldn’t change anything. “Calm down.”
He didn’t.
Of course he didn’t.
He turned again, slower this time, blinking hard like the room wasn’t holding still for him anymore, and took one more step forward like he meant to try again, but his footing slipped under him before he could follow through, his shoulder clipping the edge of the bar hard enough to rattle the glasses lined up along it.
That was enough.
Two guys from a nearby table pushed back their chairs almost at the same time, the scrape of wood against the floor cutting through the moment as they stepped in without hesitation, grabbing him under the arms before he could even think about another swing.
He resisted for half a second, twisting, trying to pull free, but there was no strength behind it now, no coordination left to back up whatever anger he thought he still had.
“Out,” one of them snapped, sharp and final, already steering him toward the door.
The other didn’t bother adding anything, just tightened his grip and moved, the two of them dragging the drunkard across the floor, his boots catching and slipping as he went, a streak of red left behind where he’d been.
The door opened.
Then it shut again behind them.
The room exhaled a gradual release, like something that had been held in the background finally let go of its grip.
Conversations picked back up in pieces, voices low at first, then normal again, chairs shifting back into place, glasses clinking as people returned to what they’d been doing before any of it started.
I stood there for a second longer, letting the quiet settle back into something familiar, something steady, before turning back to the bar. The stool waited exactly where I’d left it, unchanged, like the last few minutes hadn’t happened at all.
I sat. Picked up my burger. Took another bite.
Marlene was in front of me a second later, her hands braced against the bar, her gaze steady in that way that always meant she’d already read the situation three steps ahead of everyone else in the room.
“You need to go,” she told me quietly, not sharp, not panicked, but firm in a way that didn’t leave much room for interpretation.
I shook my head once, taking another bite of the Jucy Lucy like the conversation didn’t carry any real weight. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” she countered, her voice staying low but losing none of its edge. “You know it’s not fine.”
I glanced toward the door, toward where the guy had been dragged out, toward the space that had already reset itself like it always did, the room settling back into tempo without needing to acknowledge what had just happened.
“He threw the bottle,” I replied, giving a small shrug before taking another bite, the heat of the cheese still biting back just enough to keep me present.
“I saw it,” she returned, the words carrying a quiet frustration now.
“Then it’s fine.”
Her jaw tightened, the lines around her mouth pulling just slightly before she pushed off the bar. “Finish your food,” she muttered, already turning away. “Then get the hell out.”
I nodded once, not arguing, not rushing, not making it into anything bigger than it needed to be.
I just finished the burger.
Each bite steady, deliberate, the same way I’d eaten it a hundred times before, letting the familiarity of it do what it always did—ground me, settle me, bring everything back into something simple and manageable.
The noise of the bar had already leveled out again, voices blending into one another, glasses clinking, chairs shifting, life continuing without asking for permission.
Matt’s didn’t hold onto things. That was part of why I came here.
By the time I set the last of it down, wiped my hands on the napkin, and reached for my wallet, the red and blue lights were already flashing through the front windows, cutting across the room in sharp bursts that didn’t belong here.
Fuck it all to hell.
The door opened before I could move, night air pushing in behind it as the officer stepped inside, his presence immediate but controlled, his gaze sweeping the room once before landing on me like he already knew exactly where this was going.
“We got a call about an assault,” the officer announced, his tone calm, even, carrying just enough to reach everyone without turning it into a scene.
No one answered. No one needed to.
The room had gone quiet again, not tense this time, just watchful.
He stepped closer, his boots measured against the floor, his posture straight, professional, the kind of presence that didn’t escalate anything but didn’t leave room to avoid it either.
Recognition flickered in his expression for half a second when he got a clear look at me, something almost human there before it settled back into neutral.
“I know who you are,” he added, quieter now, close enough that the rest of the room didn’t need to hear it. “Turn around.”
I held his gaze for a second longer than I probably needed to, not challenging him, not questioning it, just… acknowledging it for what it was.
Then I nodded.
Turned.
The shift in perspective hit harder than I expected, my hands moving behind my back without hesitation, my shoulders settling into place as I let him do what he needed to do.
I’d been hit harder than this a thousand times over, taken worse impact without blinking, but the moment the metal closed around my wrists, something in my chest dropped in a way that had nothing to do with pain.
The cuffs tightened just enough to lock, the pressure settling against the tape wrapped up to my wrists, the edges digging in where the padding didn’t quite cover.
“I hate to do it,” the officer muttered, low enough that it didn’t carry.
“I know,” I returned, because there wasn’t anything else to say.
Marlene didn’t speak, but I felt her eyes on me as he guided me toward the door, the weight of it sitting heavier than anything the guy on the floor had thrown at me.
This place had always let me exist without commentary, without expectation.
Walking out of it like this felt… wrong.
Like I’d brought something into it that didn’t belong.
Outside, the air hit cooler than it should have, sharper against my skin, the flashing lights reflecting off the windows, off the cars lined up along the curb, off the red awning stretched over the front of the bar.
People were already watching. Across the street. From the sidewalk. From behind glass. Phones up.
Typical.
I kept my head level, my posture the same, not giving them anything more than what they were already taking, even as the officer opened the back door of the squad car and guided me inside.
The seat was hard, the vinyl cool against my back as I shifted into it, the door closing behind me with a solid, final sound that cut the outside world down to something distant and muffled.
For a second, I just sat there.
Breathing.
Letting the silence settle in around me.
It wasn’t quiet, not completely. The radio crackled faintly from the front, voices low and indistinct, the hum of the engine running beneath it, the occasional burst of laughter or conversation slipping through the glass from somewhere outside.
But it felt contained in a way the bar hadn’t, like everything had been pulled in tighter than it was supposed to be.
My hands rested behind my twisted back, the cuffs holding them in place, the tape beneath them pulling tight as the swelling in my knuckles started to set in deeper.
I flexed my fingers once, slow, testing the movement, feeling the ache spread through my hand and into my wrist where the metal pressed harder than it should have.
I leaned my head back against the seat, letting it rest there, my eyes closing for just a second as the weight of it settled in deeper, somewhere behind my ribs where it had always lived.
Not anger.
Not frustration.
Something quieter.
Something older.
The kind of feeling that didn’t come from one bad night or one bad call or one wrong moment, but from something that had been there long before any of this, long before hockey, long before any of it had a name people could attach to me.
This was what they saw.
This was what they expected.
And maybe it was easier to let them have it than it was to try to be anything else.