51 - Haven
HAVEN
The bar was loud.
Not just music loud — team loud. Voices over voices, glasses slamming wood, someone shouting across the room like they were still on the ice and not five beers deep.
Mercer’s warnings aside—
This was exactly what they needed.
Steam blow off. Release. And maybe… a little bit of trouble.
I stood just inside the doorway for a second, taking it all in. The Reavers had already taken over half the place. Ares was at the bar, leaning in like he owned it. Sebastian was laughing at something Zack said, which probably meant it was stupid or dangerous.
Or both.
Grayson stood beside me, scanning the room like he didn’t trust it. Like he didn’t trust anything, anymore.
Finally, he elbowed me.
“You coming?”
I wanted to loop my arm through his. Dispel that broody stare, and get him half-drunk so he could smile again.
But I also wanted to keep up appearances.
“Let’s go,” I bumped him back. “All that beer’s not gonna drink itself.”
The heat hit me first. Then the smell — grease, beer, and something fried to within an inch of its life. Zack waved me over from a table already covered in chicken wings and french fries.
“MAXWELL!” he announced to half the planet. “You need to come try this!”
With Zack, that was never a good sign.
I looked down at what he was holding. It was… something. Brown. Possibly breaded. Possibly alive, at one point.
“What is that?” I asked.
He grinned.
“Deep-fried chili cheese… something,” he laughed. “They wouldn’t tell me.”
I stared at it. It might’ve even moved.
“You’re going to die.”
“I am not going to die.”
“You are absolutely going to die,” I reiterated. “Or at least the rest of us are, once you get back to the house.”
Ares came up behind me. His body language said everything.
“We’re boarding over the bathrooms,” he growled. “If you eat that.”
Zack took a huge bite. Everyone at the table watched, completely enraptured, as cheese, grease, and something that looked like special effects from the Alien movie franchise oozed down both sides of his mouth.
There was a beat. Then another.
Then—
“… oh, no.”
Sebastian leaned back, already laughing.
“Oh no.”
Zack’s face went through at least four stages of regret in under three seconds.
“I made a mistake,” he said hoarsely.
“You think?” I laughed.
He pushed the plate away.
“That’s going to come back later.”
“Yeah,” Ares agreed. “And when it does, you’ll be in the back corner of the yard. The bathroom’s off-limits to you, for at least the next twenty-four hours.”
Zack flipped him off while clutching his throat. The laughter grew louder. Smiling despite myself, I slid into the booth.
This — this right here — felt good.
Normal.
Almost.
Ares dropped into the seat beside me like a freight train coupling up. It was close enough that our legs brushed. Not accidental. Never accidental.
“You good?” he asked quietly.
I glanced at him.
“Yeah.”
His eyes searched mine for a second longer than necessary. Sebastian caught the look from across the table, and smirked.
Grayson didn’t.
He was still standing, still watching.
Always watching.
“Sit down,” Ares ordered. “You look like a creepy fucking stalker.”
Grayson’s gaze shifted to me. I smiled at him, and something in his eyes softened. Just a little.
He sat down, and the table filled out. Noise pressed in from all sides. The rest of the team filtered around us, drinks flowing, arms rising, fists clenching glasses of frothy beer that spilled out on every toast.
For a while, it stayed like that. Laughing. Talking. Unwinding.
Pretending that there wasn’t something bigger, sitting just under the surface.
Like there wasn’t a game in less than two days that meant everything, or a man in an expensive suit pulling strings from the upper levels, or a goalie on the Quebec Sentinels who already knew we were coming.
And then—
The doors opened.
It wasn’t dramatic. No music cue. No sudden silence.
Just a shift in atmosphere. One of those subtle, almost imperceptible changes in the air your body notices before your brain does.
Ares felt it first. I saw it in the way his shoulders squared.
Sebastian’s laughter died, mid-sentence.
Grayson didn’t turn at all. Not right away.
He already knew, though.
I followed their line of sight. And there he was.
Carter Sutherland.
He walked in like he belonged there. Like this was just another night. Another bar. Another game, waiting to be played.
Except this time?
He wasn’t on our team.
A couple of his guys followed behind him — Sentinels. Loud. Confident. Already looking like they were sizing up the room.
Sizing us up.
Sutherland looked taller than he did in the footage I’d watched. His eyes moved across the bar, among the tables, over the crowd. Eventually they landed on us… and stopped.
For a few seconds, no one in either group moved. Then Zack — who was busy packing up the grease-pocket thing into a takeaway container, presumably for later — leaned over and muttered:
“… well, that’s not great timing.”
“No,” I agreed quietly. “It’s not.”
Especially since the moment Sutherland saw us—
He smiled.
Shit.
The opposing goalie immediately bounded over, winding his way through the maze of tables. As he did, Ares leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“Say the word,” he murmured.
Sebastian cracked his knuckles under the table. Grayson finally turned his head.
Their eyes met. Captain to ex-teammate. Truth to lie.
Everything that hadn’t been said hung heavily, in the space between them.
Sutherland didn’t look away, didn’t hesitate, didn’t slow down. If anything, he picked up speed.
Like he wanted this.
Like he’d been waiting for it.
I could feel my heart racing. Not fear, not nerves. Something closer to inevitability.
Ares exhaled through his nose, as Sebastian edged closer toward the end of the booth.
Grayson didn’t move at all. He only watched. There was no hesitation in his eyes. Only decision.
Sutherland finally reached our table. And finally, at long last—
The line between past and present disappeared.