“I'm aware of my own deadline, thanks.” But she stood, stretched her arms above her head until her back cracked, and grabbed her mug for the sink. “Just — don't sit up all night catastrophizing, okay? Whatever it is, it'll still be there in the morning and it'll look smaller.”
“It usually doesn't.”
“No,” she agreed, with the dry honesty that was her version of comfort. “But at least you've slept.” She paused at the kitchen doorway. “I'm proud of you, you know. Even when you're running on autopilot. Still showing up.”
She was gone before I could say anything back, which was very Talia — land the thing and then leave before it could get emotional.
I stood in the kitchen alone and listened to the apartment settle into quiet around me. The faint sounds of a TV two floors up. Traffic moving slow and distant outside. The hum of the fridge doing its job.
I walked over to the window and stared out at the city lights scattered across the dark. Toronto was home now, had been for years, but some nights it still felt like I was just passing through. Like I was waiting for everything I'd built to quietly collapse, for the universe to remind me that people like me didn't get to keep good things for long.
And then, because I was tired enough that my defenses had stopped doing their job, I let myself think about Rowan Kincaid.
I didn't go there often. Couldn't afford to, really. Thinking about Rook meant thinking about everything I'd walked away from, everything I'd given up when I'd disappeared without an explanation and decided he'd be better off not knowing why. But tonight the apartment was quiet and the city was dark and I was too wrung out to stop it.
I'd built an entire life without Rowan in it. New city, new career, a version of myself that looked functional enough to pass inspection. I'd gotten through custody battles and legal fees and years of scraping the bottom of the account and telling everyone I was fine. I'd raised my siblings and played every show and kept going on the nights when keeping going felt like the hardest thing in the world.
And still. On nights like this, when the exhaustion cut down past the defenses—he was always the first place my mind went.
CHAPTER THREE
echoes on replay
SOREN
The gig ran late, which meant I was still buzzing with leftover adrenaline and stage lights when I hit the street at one in the morning. My hands wouldn't stop moving—tapping against my thighs, drumming on the strap of my gig bag, restless in a way that made my skin feel too tight. The night air was cold enough to sting, but it didn't help. Nothing was helping.
I should've gone home. But the apartment felt too quiet lately, too full of thoughts I didn't want to sit alone with, so I kept walking until I found a bar that was still open. One of those places that didn't care what you looked like or why you were there, as long as you paid for your drinks and didn't cause trouble.
Inside, the air was warm and stale, thick with the smell of old grease and spilled beer. A handful of people were scattered around the room—a couple in the corner booth, a guy at the far end of the bar nursing what looked like whiskey, and a bartenderwho glanced up when I walked in but didn't bother with a greeting.
I slid onto a stool near the middle, dropped my bag at my feet, and tried to figure out what I actually wanted. The answer came too easily—whiskey, neat, and maybe another one after that if the first one didn't take the edge off. I'd been drinking too much lately, knew it was turning into a pattern I should probably break, but tonight I didn't have the energy to fight it.
The bartender didn't ask questions, which was exactly why I kept coming back to places like this. He just nodded, poured two fingers of whiskey into a glass, and slid it across the bar before moving down to refill someone else's drink. I wrapped my hand around the glass, felt the weight of it, and knocked back half of it in one swallow. The burn felt good. Felt like it was doing what it was supposed to do, which was turn down the volume on everything else.
I pulled out my phone, scrolled through a few messages I hadn't answered yet, then put it away again because looking at it made my chest feel tight. The whiskey was helping, but not enough. Never enough.
The TVs were on. Three of them mounted above the bar, all tuned to different channels. One had the news, one had some late-night talk show I didn't recognize, and the third was playing sports highlights. I wasn't paying attention at first—just letting the noise wash over me, background static to fill the space where my thoughts kept trying to creep in.
Then I heard the commentator's voice shift, getting excited about a play, and I looked up without meaning to.
The screen showed a hockey game. I recognized it immediately—Wolves versus Boston from a month or two ago, the one where they'd come back from being down two goals in the third period. I'd watched it live on my laptop while pretending to work on a set list, unable to stop myself eventhough I knew it was a bad idea. Knew it would mess me up the same way it always did.
The camera panned across the ice, following the puck as it moved between players, and then it cut to a close-up of the captain calling a play from the bench.
Number eleven. Rook.
My hands tightened on the edge of the bar without me meaning them to, and I felt the air go thin in my lungs the way it always did when I saw him. It didn't matter that I'd been watching his games for years now, that I could probably recite his stats from memory if someone asked. It still hit me every single time.
I finished the whiskey and flagged down the bartender for another one without taking my eyes off the screen.
He looked good. Better than good, if I was being honest with myself. His face had lost the last traces of boyhood. His shoulders were broader than they'd been back when we were eighteen, his jaw more defined, and there was a weight to him now that hadn't existed before. The weight of a man who'd spent over a decade carrying a team on his back and refusing to let it break him.
The camera zoomed in during a stoppage in play, catching him as he skated over to the bench and said a few words to one of the younger guys. Then he tapped his stick against the boards in that familiar rhythm, the one he'd always used to punctuate whatever point he was making, and my throat closed up so fast it hurt.
I'd seen him do that a thousand times. On the ice after practice when we were kids, in the locker room before big games, in the parking lot outside the rink when he was trying to explain a play he'd been thinking about. He'd always talked with his whole body, used his stick like a conductor's baton to shape the words into patterns the rest of us could follow.
The commentators were going on about how dependable he was, how he was the backbone of the team, the captain every franchise wished they had. They showed the replay of the assist he'd made in the second period—a perfect pass that threaded through three defenders and landed exactly where his winger needed it—and I felt that familiar surge of pride twist into ache before I could stop it.
