“All right,” Justin said. He reached over and turned the radio on. A country station out of Green Bay, somebody singing about a highway.
They worked. Justin went back to the injector jets. Dawson’s hands found a fuel line that needed checking, a fitting that was due for replacement, and he picked up the line wrench that fit. The radio played, the fluorescents hummed, and the barn was warm enough as long as he kept moving. Outside, the light drained from the sky in stages—gray to charcoal to the deep, flat dark that came early this time of year.
Justin handed him a beer at some point. Dawson drank half of it before setting it on the bench and forgetting about it. Justin didn’t comment. He was pulling the throttle linkage now, giving Dawson the same thing he always gave him. The barn, the work, the quiet. No questions. No timeline. Just the two of them, the rig, and the radio filling in the parts where talking should go.
At six-thirty, Dawson set his tools down. Justin was wiping off on a shop rag, the manifold reassembled, the jets back in place.
“Same time Thursday?” Justin said.
Dawson nodded. He was halfway to the door when Justin spoke again, voice easy, no weight on it.
“I’ve known you since tenth grade. You’ve never been this wrecked over something you didn’t care about.” A beat of the wire brush against the bench. “Whatever you did, sitting here with me isn’t gonna fix it.”
Dawson stopped. His hand was on the barn door, the cold coming through the gap, and Justin was right.
“You need to fix it,” Justin said. “Or don’t. But don’t come out here and pretend you’re fine. I’ve got eyes, Dawson.”
Dawson didn’t turn around. He pushed through the door, got in his truck, and sat there with the engine running and his hands on the wheel.
Fix it.
Like his life was a seized bearing or a blown gasket. Like Dawson could crawl under it, find the part that failed, swap it out, and tighten everything back down.
The Penalty Boxhad the game on. The Stags were in Rockford tonight, down two to one in the second period. It was funny how Dawson used to tune out the livestream on the TVs over the bar, but now he couldn’t keep from listening no matter how he tried.
He took his usual stool and ordered a beer. The book was in his jacket pocket — the same paperback he'd been pretending to read for weeks. He pulled it out and set it face-down on the bar. He didn't open it. The TV was right there, and once he looked up at it, he couldn't look away.
Number twelve was on the ice. Dawson found him before he was ready, and his hand stopped around the cold glass without lifting it to his mouth.
Leo was skating fast, cutting across the ice with the puck. Dawson didn't understand the play, but he understood Leo. He'd been learning the way Leo moved for weeks now. He knew the difference between Leo playing because he had to and Leo playing because something was driving him.
He was looking for proof that what he'd done was still in Leo's body. He needed to know whether Leo had shaken it off or whether some part of him was still carrying it, and he wasn't sure which answer he was hoping for.
Leo looked fine. He was fast and steady, taking up space on the ice like it belonged to him. Dawson watched Leo take a hit along the wall and skate away from it. The relief that came with it was uglier than Dawson wanted it to be.
He's fine,Dawson thought.He's going to be fine without you.
Then Leo missed a pass. The puck went past him, and Leo just stood there for a half-second too long before reacting, and Dawson’s hands tightened on his glass. He didn’t know if that half-second was a sign that he was distracted, too.
Maybe Leo wasn’t fine. Leo was just better at working through the pain.
“Didn’t know you watched hockey.”
Dawson looked up. Wes was leaning against the bar with a towel over his shoulder, his voice easy, his eyes not.
“I don’t,” Dawson lied.
Wes didn’t push it. He put his hand on Dawson’s forearm, firm and brief, and went back to work. But halfway down the bar, he stopped and said, without turning around, “Did you know you both check your phones every time the other one’s in here. And you leave within five minutes of each other. Every time.” A beat. “You’re not as subtle as you think.”
Dawson stared at his beer. He’d thought they’d been careful.
“Wes.”
Wes stopped. Turned around.
Dawson didn’t know what he was going to say until he said it. “Did I—” He stopped. Tried again. “Does everyone know?”
“No,” Wes said. He came back down the bar, close enough that nobody else could hear. “Gunnar and I know because we know what it looks like to want someone you think you can’t have. Most people aren’t paying that kind of attention.” He leaned against the back counter. “But you’re sitting in this bar watching a game you claim to not like, and your book’s been on the same page for a week, and you look like someone died. So it’s getting less subtle by the day.”
