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“It’s family. Aggressive is the house style.”

Then she left. The door clicked shut behind her, and my condo settled into quiet.

I stood at the kitchen counter with my coffee and the very inconvenient realization that Isabela Rey was right about everything she had ever said to me and probably always would be.

Chapter eleven

Evan

Ranger hit me like a freight train the second I opened the car door.

Eighty-two pounds of golden retriever momentum collided with my legs, tongue aimed at any available surface of exposed skin. He did not care that I was carrying two coffees and a bag of groceries. He did not care about anything except the fact that I existed and was within licking distance.

“Easy,” I said, which had never worked in the five years I had been saying it.

He ignored me with the cheerful disobedience of a dog who understood exactly one command, come, and obeyed it only when it coincided with what he was already planning to do.

Ranger was technically Lena’s dog, according to paperwork and feeding schedules. Emotionally, he had claimed joint custody of me years ago.

Lena was on the porch, arms crossed, watching the assault with the detached amusement of a woman who had been awake since five and had already handled two children and a dog who had eaten another shoe.

“You’re early,” she said.

“I brought coffee.”

“You always bring coffee when you want to avoid a conversation.”

I stepped over Ranger and handed her a cup. She took it, studied my face for approximately two seconds, and made a sound that was half laugh, half diagnosis.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, this is interesting.”

“What?”

“You look different.”

“I look the same.”

“You look like you slept four hours and spent the other four thinking about something that isn’t hockey.” She sipped her coffee, eyes sharp over the rim. “That’s new.”

I did not answer. She did not need me to. My phone had already buzzed twice in my pocket, once from Ryan and once from Zach. Ryan’s message was practical, captain-level checking in disguised as a question about tomorrow’s skate. Zach’s was less subtle: three question marks and a photo of my stall with the caption, you alive or just brooding professionally?

Inside the house was the same controlled chaos it always was. Tommy, seven, restless and incapable of sitting still for more than six seconds, was in the living room constructing something out of blocks that appeared to be a stadium with a moat. His engineering was ambitious. His structural integrity was questionable.

“Uncle Evan!” He looked up with a grin that had three missing teeth in it. “Look! I built Frost Bank Center.”

“Frost Bank Center doesn’t have a moat.”

“It should.”

Fair point.

I set the groceries on the counter and let Ranger shove his head under my hand, demanding the scratching pattern he had trained me to provide over five years of relentless conditioning. Behind the ear first. Then the chin. Then the chest. Any deviation from protocol resulted in a paw on my knee and a look of profound personal betrayal.

Lena leaned against the kitchen doorframe, watching me scratch the dog with one hand and unpacking groceries with the other.

“So,” she said. “Who is she?”

My hand paused on Ranger’s ear. He nudged it back into position.