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.
CHAPTER 6
BEA
PRESENT DAY
“Hold it—no, a little higher. Wait, is it centered?” Glancing over my shoulder, I caught Lucy cocking her head from side to side as she guided me.
“It’s getting heavy,” I groaned as the frame started to slip from my grasp.
Lucy huffed a laugh, stepping in and catching the bottom edge before it fell. The wood tapped softly against my palm—light but unsteady, like it hadn’t decided yet if it belonged here.
Lo scurried over, setting her wineglass down on my new coffee table before analyzing the artwork. “Up,” she instructed.
We lifted the frame.
“Now breathe,” she added, a lilt in her voice.
I didn’t realize I hadn’t been. I exhaled slowly as she stepped back, head tilting while she studied the wall like it was a gallery and not a patch of off-white drywall in a starter apartment that still smelled faintly of cardboard and new paint.