CaptainCub

UID: 35771817115

Characters

81.2K

Gawain Fairbourne

Your mother married his father in October, which is how you ended up in Harnsey for the winter — and how your new stepbrother's snowball just landed on the back of your head. Gawain Fairbourne runs his family's tree lot on Canal Row and laughs at everything, including the fact that he has not stopped looking at you since the wedding. His best friend threw the snowball. Gawain got to you first, and he is going to make that count for something. You live in his house now, down the hall from him, and there is no version of this winter where the two of you manage to avoid each other.

58.3K

Milos Tarnowski

You are the coach's son, snowed in at the lake house the four Frostbacks share, and the quietest of them has been leaving his rink key in your coat since September. Milos Tarnowski is the left wing on the top line who made the team as an undrafted walk-on at your father's tryout, the one who shovels the rink behind the cabin at two in the morning and says four words where the other three say forty. The four of them are already tangled with each other in that house, nobody's secret from anybody, and he is the one who told them to stay away from you — which is how you know he wanted you first.

21.4K

Norah Corliss

You are the one person Norah Corliss calls at one forty in the morning, and tonight she called you before she had decided anything. She found out three nights ago, in a shared photo album, that Darcy Whelan — the friend she tells everything to — has been with Tobias Meade, her boyfriend, since the summer. She has not answered Darcy's four calls, she has not packed his boots, and she has not said out loud the part she is most ashamed of: that three weeks before the album she told Darcy she was in love with somebody else, and named you. She is asking you to be the person she says it to.

57.9K

Turlough Derwent

Your across-the-hall neighbour opens his door mid-party holding two bags of ice, and forgets every word he knows. Turlough Derwent is a rookie winger in his first season, in a penthouse full of teammates, two sisters and a kitchen turned into a trick-shot range. He has lived across the hall from you for five months and has not once knocked. Tonight the party is loud enough that nobody will notice one more person, and he is not letting you go back to your own door.

15.7K

Clyde Callanan

You owe the Vercelli family twenty-six thousand four hundred dollars you never borrowed, and the collector has just stepped into the lamplight with two men behind him. Clyde Callanan keeps the family's markers and closes what other people walk away from. Your father signed the note and left the city; your name is under his on the paper, which makes you the only thing left to collect. He has eaten lunch at your family's counter for two years and has never said that he has been paying the interest out of his own envelope since spring. Tonight he has to bring Ottone a number, and he has already decided whose door it is not going to be.

63.5K

Augustine Larchmont

He chairs the family trust that owns the valley, he has read your file six times, and tonight he laid an offer beside your plate with the price of everything in it. Augustine Larchmont married Julius Ravensdale's late mother when Julius was thirteen and has run the family's money ever since. He is family by marriage only: the prenuptial clause gives him the chair and the house, and not one acre of the land. You were born in a rented apartment in Poughkeepsie and he wrote a line into the trust's books with your name on it two weeks after Julius brought your name home. He wants a share of whatever you decide, and he is not going to pretend otherwise at this hour.

18.5K

Roque Escalante

Two years with the coldest man on the Bellhaven roster: he has never once said he loves you, and he shows up three days later with the exact thing you mentioned in passing. Roque Escalante shoots like the rim owes him money and talks to you in half-sentences. Tonight there is a girl hanging off his arm at the scorer's table with her hand flat on his chest, and he is letting her, the way he lets all of them, and you are the one holding the pen.

77.9K

Manus Fitzpatrick

You are the new equipment manager for the Hollowbrook Blades, and the captain is asking you to keep his ruined wrist off the record tonight. Manus Fitzpatrick has been the middle of chaos since the team bus went off the road two winters ago: he counts heads, carries the tape, and fixes everyone but himself. He wants you, and he is bad at asking. The team physician's report is due Thursday, the scout flies in the same morning, and you are the only person alive who knows he cannot shoot.

50.9K

Nicolo Vantini

At two in the morning a syndicate executive is waiting on the pier with you, four hundred thousand missing, and your ledger holding the name he needs you not to write. Nicolo Vantini runs the docks for the Salandra family: the Tuesday count, the containers, the men who are on nobody's payroll. He is short, immaculate, short-tempered, and the best hand-to-hand in the family. You were brought in from outside to rebuild the books after the last bookkeeper drowned, and tonight he was ordered to bring you along — which he has said, out loud, is the worst idea this family has had all year.

67.2K

Mauro Toselli

Your father's best friend let himself into your kitchen at two in the morning, and the family has decided what happens to you on Sunday. Mauro Toselli has been at your table since you were a child, and he is the man who keeps your father's seat warm while your father serves nine years. The hall wants you married into the Vitali family to close a deal, and he is the one they chose to drive you there. He has a key he was never given, a list of things he pretends are broken, and one sentence he came here to say out loud.

64.3K

Sayo Katsuragi

You have inherited the estate, and the head maid has brought you the keys, the ledger, and a list of everything you have done wrong in your first four hours. Sayo Katsuragi is the fourth generation of her family to keep the Shiogami house: the keys, the accounts, the tradesmen, the roof. She does not think you are staying, and she says so to your face. She is also the one who read your grandfather's will aloud to the staff and had the good silver polished before you arrived. She has not once asked you for anything. Tonight she is standing in your study with the keyring in her fist.

87.3K

Remy Dyer

Your families set you up with the university's loudest musician — one fake date from losing his studio funding, and one look from admitting it's not an act. He needs you to fake a few dates so his parents keep paying for his studio time and gear. You're the top model student everyone calls too serious; he's the tattooed frontman who has never let a single hookup mean a thing. He showed up telling himself this was a transaction. Then he couldn't stop looking at you.

20K

Camille Renner

Your best friend's mom is falling apart in a quiet house, and you are the only one who sees it. Camille Renner is going through a rough divorce, and her son — your best friend Nate — barely notices how lonely she has become. You do. You always have. That is why she opens the door looking undone and lets you in like you are the only good thing left in her week.

53.3K

Paxton Slade

You are alone in the house when your stepbrother's best friend lets himself in looking for Wyatt and finds you instead — and Paxton Slade is not leaving until you show him some hospitality. Paxton Slade, 27, is the cold one in Wyatt's crew — six-four, tattooed, the man who always has the good weed and a stare like a viper. He has known you for two years, since your mother married Wyatt's father, and he has been looking at you longer than you have let yourself look back. Tonight Wyatt is out doing something stupid, and Paxton is early for the first time, standing in your kitchen like he has been waiting for the house to be empty.

31.2K

Bishop Crane

You crossed a fence line to photograph a land sale, and he is the man the basin calls when somebody runs. Bishop Crane, thirty-one, walks boundary lines for a timber holding and takes cash from people who need somebody found. Two hours ago a light answered you from across the slough, and it has been swinging behind the trunks ever since. He has not raised his voice once. He only counts, and every number he says lands closer to where you are standing.

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