“Do we?” I head for the kitchen and walk right past him. I go to the fridge and grab a beer I don’t want, because a man with a beer in his hand looks like a man with nothing to hide.
“You’ve been holding out on me, man.” He’s delighted. “Aspen Linwood? You? Since when?”
I pop the cap one-handed against the counter edge. I take a sip I don’t want either. And I look at him, friendly, with nothing whatsoever behind it.
“Since none of your business, Gav.”
The room makes a sound that isn’t a laugh. It’s the other sound a room makes when a man puts another man flat on his back without ever lifting his voice. Benson is still staring, but the corner of his mouth twitches. Blue stops pretending to read his phone. Percy, in the doorway, does whatever Percy does, which is unreadable by design. Rowan’s tuning in. The poor fella needs to get to sleep.
Gavin recovers fast — it’s the most useful thing about him and the least trustworthy. He laughs.
“Fair, fair. Just — you, man? Linwood?” He makes a face. “Didn’t see that coming.”
“Yeah.” I drink. “Funny how that works.”
Gavin laughs, and then he shifts on his feet, and I watch him decide to tell a story — because there is nothing on this earth a hockey player loves more than the story where he almost died.
He sets his beer on the table by Benson. He’s grinning already.
“Yeah, funny,” he muses. “Me and Aspen, when we were a thing? Coach Linwood found out about a week in. That was a rough FaceTime.” He wipes his face, smiling at the memory.
Benson and I lock eyes for a moment, and I can already hear what he’s telling me.You shouldn’t have let this guy stay at our house.I glare back.I know.
“Best moment of my life. Coach Linwood tells me––” He mocks Linwood’s voice. “Stares right at me through the phone and goes, ‘If you mistreat my daughter, I’ll personally cut your dick off and feed it to the dogs.’”
The room is silent as Gavin laughs, drinking his beer. I can’t imagine Coach Linwood talking to me like that, so he must have a strong opinion on Gavin.
“We lasted four months.” Gavin shrugs, drinks. “Dogs never came for me. So I figure I did all right.”
Then he looks at me.
“Curious what he told you.”
And there it is. Friendly little blade, slid in sideways. I dated her. I survived her old man. Were you man enough to handle it? And under that, the part he actually wants me to hear. I had her. I know exactly what she’s like behind a closed door.
I give him my lazy grin. I don’t touch the dad story. That’s the trap — the second I bite oncurious what he told you, I lose.
“That’s a hell of a story, Gav.” I take a sip. “Real edge-of-your-seat stuff.”
He watches me.
“I’ll tell you mine sometime.” Smooth, easy, mild. A man comparing receipts, not dicks. “Mine’s got no dogs in it. Mine’s just me, dating his daughter for real.”
Gavin’s grin doesn’t move, but it goes flat behind the eyes. He nods, slow. “Damn. Okay.” He lifts the beer an inch — a little toast to a hand he didn’t see coming. “Yeah. Sure.”
He drinks. And then he can’t leave it, because Gavin doesn’t lose conversations, and Gavin can feel himself losing this one in front of a room, so he reaches for the thing that always wins. He gets personal.
“Hey, no — I’m happy for you, brother. For real. Aspen’s a—” He smiles up at the ceiling. “She’s a good one. She’s a really good one. I’ll tell you, man, the first time I — when she — yeah.” He lets it hang there, unfinished, on purpose. “You’re a lucky guy.”
The sentence is the chirp. I’ve been somewhere with her that you haven’t.
Then he leans back into the couch, loose, comfortable, a man who’s decided he’s still in a game everyone else can see he’s already lost.
“She still keep that little stuffed shark on her pillow?” He grins. “Couldn’t believe that the first time I saw it.”
The room doesn’t move. Benson’s eyes cut to me.
He knows about the damn shark.
