“God, this is hell,” Wren yells, sliding up behind us. “I love it.”
“I think they’re over the crowd limit,” I try toshout above the din.
Kat cackles and steers us toward a small empty spot at the bar, already signaling the bartender with two fingers and a grin. Bodies pack in around us, the sound sticky-thick and unrelenting. In the corner, someone starts the first ugly chords of Auld Lang Syne on an old, battered piano, and a semi-drunken cheer rises like a threat.
My gaze does what it always does—it scans the room, looking for familiar faces. I find our family first: Rory at the pool table, Declan with a beer and a protective eye on the back wall, Kane already wedged into a booth with Kori, Connor, and Mia, arguing about something. Wren, Lana, and Kat are with me, and I’m just starting to relax when I spot a familiar shape. Tall, still, shoulders squared, alone as always at the end of the bar.
Jake Brennen.
A quick electric pulse zaps through me, and I look away. He’s wearing a battered olive T-shirt under an unbuttoned flannel, dark hair tucked under a faded cowboy hat. He lifts his glass, lets the whiskey burn, and keeps staring forward, as if the wood-paneled wall requires deep personal study. I’m not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed that he doesn’t acknowledge me. But at least he’s not home alone on the anniversary.
It’s been a week since Christmas—since I left that unwanted dinner on his doorstep, nearly broke hisface with my words, then slammed the door behind me. We haven’t spoken since; he’s kept to his fences, I to my bread ovens, both of us orbiting the edge of something neither dares to name.
Kat’s hand finds mine, squeezing until the bones creak. “Shots?” she asks over the roar.
“God, yes.” My voice sounds strange in my ears, like a bead of cheap plastic in a bowl of glass.
“Whiskey!” Kat shouts to the bartender with expert confidence, and the shots appear so quickly it’s like magic.
I throw mine back and feel the heat mushroom in my stomach. I try to keep my gaze pinned to Kat, Lana, and Wren, to the swirling mass of rural Alberta’s finest, but Jake is gravitational; my eyes return to him every few minutes, to check. He looks carved from ice, jaw set, dark stubble outlined in neon by a sign above his head.
Someone steps up on the plywood stage beside the piano, taps the mic until it howls, and announces karaoke. The crowd explodes with laughter and groans. For a blessed few minutes, strangers take the stage and murder holiday classics, each rendition worse than the last. Kat leans close and hovers her lips near my ear. “Jake’s been watching you for the last twenty minutes,” she says, not even bothering to whisper.
“I know.” The warmth from the whiskey isn’t enough. Something in my chest collapses intowinter.
“Do you want me to run interference?”
“No. I just want to have fun.” I say it so firmly I almost believe it.
“Then let’s get you another shot.” Kat grins and disappears into the crowd.
The next voice is right at my shoulder, buttery-smooth with a hint of beer. “You new around here?” I turn, and the man is a stranger—mid-thirties, clean-shaven, tight at the edges in a flannel shirt and clean boots. Too clean for Pinecrest.
“Not really,” I say.
He cocks his head, appraising. “You look new. Or maybe just lost.” His smile is too wide. “I’m Vince. Vince Mullen. Used to work in this town before moving to Edmonton for a better gig. You from around here?”
Not willing to give too much away, I nod my head. “I am. I work at the bakery here in town.”
He tips his bottle toward me. “Let me buy the next round.”
I hesitate, but Kat’s voice—now mid-boisterous song from the stage, howling with Wren—reminds me that I’m supposed to be having fun. I shrug. “Why not?”
Vince calls for two beers, then two again because we drank them so fast. He’s harmless in that waymen get when they want to seem both cocky and safe, cracking jokes about living in the city, egging me to critique small-town karaoke, pretending he’s not tracking every inch of me. When the clock tips toward eleven, he’s already begun to touch my elbow and guide me through the crowd with a palm at the small of my back.
I don’t consciously think about Jake; I don’t have to because he’s always on my mind. He’s still at the bar, shoulders hunched, drinking a bourbon neat. The only time he looks up is when Vince’s hand settles a little too low on my hip, and I laugh—because what else am I to do? I catch Jake’s scowl in the mirror’s reflection behind the bar, which was as quick as a switchblade.
The bartender drags in a new keg. Vince slides his card and leans in. “Dance with me?” he says, already pulling me toward the scattering of bodies on the dance floor. I go, because why not, and because the air there is marginally less suffocating than by the bar.
The band arrives—some local boys who double as ranch hands and trip over their own cords. Their rendition of “Brown Eyed Girl” is loud and off-key, but the crowd moves as one entity, swaying, hands high, faces shining with midnight anticipation. Vince puts both hands on my hips and draws me closer. I tolerate it. I let myself be spun in clumsy half-circles, letting momentum and the beer do their work.
Then his hand wanders, his fingertips grazing the waistband of my jeans. I laugh it off, swat him gently, but his grip tightens. I catch a whiff of expensive aftershave, a stench of desperation, and suddenly he’s too close, palm spanning my lower back, one thigh slotted between mine, insistent.
“That’s enough,” I say, clear and cold. But the band is louder, the bodies around us thicker, and he grins and says, “It’s just a dance. Relax.”
I push at his chest, but he leans closer, his breath fogging up my ear. “Thought you were the fun one. Come on—”
A hand more forceful than mine clamps down on Vince’s shoulder and yanks him back. The violence is so sudden that the music halts for a second. Jake’s arm is a brace of iron between us. His face is carved in fury.
