Page 100 of Bounced!

And the music stopped.

Adrian kneeled there on the floor of the dying bar, wet-faced and unashamed, hand pressed to the boards, and for the longest time, the whole room was so silent I could hear the ice settle in the wells.

Nobody clapped.

Nobody could.

And then it came, all of us at once.

It wasn’t applause. It was the sound a family makes when its heart is too full to stay inside its body, a great broken wave of noise. Rod crossed the entire bar in about four strides, hauled Adrian up off the floor, and crushed him against his chest. This man who never touched anybody held on, and Adrian held back, and the two of them stood there in the middle of everything and shook.

I thought, That’s it. That’s the goodbye. Whatever else this night has, that was the truest thing that will ever happen in this bar, and I’m grateful I was standing here to see it.

But I was wrong.

That wasn’t the last word.

Because that was the exact moment the front door banged open, the cold rushed in, and the hockey guys barged through.

All four of them.

Erik and Tyler and Murph, with Skyler, who’d somehow gotten from Jacks’s side to the door without my seeing him go. They were red-cheeked from the cold, out of breath, like they’d run from wherever they’d parked.

Tyler and Erik were carrying something. It was long, rectangular, and covered over in a black cloth. It was heavy enough that it took two professional hockey players on each end to haul it through the door and set it down.

And they were grinning.

Every last one of them.

Enormous, uncontainable, face-splitting grins.

After a beat, Tyler scanned the crowd and yelled, “Why ya’ll crying, bitches?”

Chapter 34

Mark

Tyler stood there beaming at a room full of people with tears still wet on their faces, and I felt the whole night curdle in my chest.

Because they didn’t know.

That was my first thought, standing there with Dante’s hand still in mine and Adrian still shaking in Rod’s arms.

They’d missed it. They’d been off doing whatever hockey players did on a Tuesday, and they’d blown in late, grinning while hauling some covered thing that was probably another prank or gag. They had no idea they’d walked into the ending of our chapter.

And I was going to have to be the one to tell them. Dear God. Because that was my job, always my damn job, telling people the hard thing gently. I opened my mouth to do it, to say, “Guys, hey, come here and sit down. There’s something we’ve got to tell you—”

“Tyler.” Skyler’s voice was a low growl. “Read the room.”

“I am reading the room. The room’s a fucking bummer.” Tyler was already moving, already tugging at the black cloth. “Which is why the timing on this is, honestly, a chef’s kiss. Erik, help me. On three.”

“We do not need three,” Erik said. “Is a cloth.”

And they pulled it off.

It was a sign. A big one, a professional one, backlit even.

It was the kind of sign you bolt up over a door and light from behind so it can be seen from down the block, and it was heavy enough it had taken two of them to carry. Across the face of it, beside the logo of Tampa’s hockey pride, in the team’s own electric blue and white everybody in this city knew, it read,