We’ve played it enough times to know every track, every shortcut, every glitch.
He hands me a controller. “First to three?”
“You’re on.”
The engines rev as the race starts. Snow keeps falling outside the window, the glass fogging from the fire’s heat. Ryker beats me twice in a row, grinning just once before covering it with a sip of beer.
I call him a cheat. He calls me slow. It’s the same argument we’ve had for a decade. It fills the space where grief used to echo too loud.
Halfway through the next round, my phone buzzes on the table. I glance at it, thumb swiping across the screen. A small smile tugs at my mouth before I set it back down.
“Amber?” Ryker asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “She and Luke just got back from the doctor. Said the baby’s kicking like crazy.”
Ryker chuckles under his breath. “Guess your niece is going to be trouble.”
“Or my nephew,” I counter. “They don’t know yet.”
He takes a pull from his beer. “Amber always said she wanted another girl. Somebody for Maisie to boss around the way Amber used to boss you.”
“Oh, don’t remind me,” I say, laughing. “She used to be so annoying.”
“That’s sisterly love for you.”
He says it easily, but the words hang there a second too long, brushing up against all the quiet spaces between us. Ryker doesn’t have anyone left who calls just to check in. I do. And I don’t take it for granted.
The firelight catches his face, sharp and calm in the same breath. I drink the rest of my beer and lean back against the couch. The heat, the smell of smoke, the faint hum of the game—it all presses together into something that almost feels like peace.
Ryker stands and walks to the kitchen, grabs another beer, and passes one my way. When he sits again, his gaze drifts toward the photo above the fire.
“She’d have loved that hall,” he says finally, voice rough.
“Claire?”
He nods. “She used to talk about fixing it up someday. Thought the town should use it for weddings or festivals. Said the bones were good.”
I remember that. The way she’d sketch out plans on napkins while we sat at the Smokehouse, her pencil smudging everything she touched.
She had a way of seeing what things could be, not just what they were. Ryker’s different. He builds what he can hold. Claire built what she could imagine.
I study him for a beat. “You really think you could work on it? The community hall, I mean. With everything it brings up?”
His jaw flexes. “I can separate my feelings from my work.”
“That’s a lie.”
He doesn’t argue. Just stares at the fire, beer balanced on his knee. The flames crackle, shadows shifting across the stone floor.
“We need this money,” I say after a while. “It’s not small change.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Enough to get through winter and then some.”
He nods again. The silence between us is comfortable in the way long friendship gets when you’ve already broken down once and know you won’t survive doing it again.
He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “We’d need the full crew coverage if we take it. Maybe bring back Chase from Corvallis. He’s been begging for work.”
