“Theo,” she says, sucking me off.
I glance down at her.
“Are you going to come for me?”
My eyes flick to her glistening lips. She slides me down her throat, keeping her eyes on me.
I rub the back of her head and say, “Depends.”
“On what?” she whispers, jerking me off.
“If you’re going to do everything I tell you from now on.”
She smiles, swallowing me again. Her eyes water when she works her hand again. “Tell me what you want me to doafteryou fucking come.”
Afternoon skate is sharp.
Coach Crick runs us harder than usual, the Denver loss sitting in his jaw. He doesn't yell. He just sets the pace and raises it and raises it again until the ice is telling us everything we did wrong in Colorado without him having to say a word.
I skate through it cleanly.
My edges are where they should be, and my reads are a half step ahead of everyone except Beckett, who is skating like he has something to prove or something to forget, and I can't tell which one it is today.
After the drills, Coach pulls us into systems work, and I move through it on autopilot — breakout, neutral zone, defensive zone.
The note is in my jacket pocket in the locker room.
You took the book.
I know it was you.
Bring it back.
Cody has the same exact note in his phone. At the very least, he’ll know it’s about a stupid fucking book and not anything serious. I can continue that, but I can’t take any more chances on thelibrary again. Cody is smart. He knows Serena was mine first, and I don’t doubt that he doesn’t trust a single word she says.
The whistle blows. I redirect to the drill. Beckett cuts across my path, and we exchange a look that communicates nothing yet everything at once. He knows something is running underneath today, and he's leaving it alone, which means he's leaving something alone too, and we are two people keeping our own counsel inside the same silence.
After skate, I shower, change, and tell Silas I'll see him tomorrow. I'm in my car and pulling out of the athletics lot before most of the team has their gear off.
My parents' house is twenty minutes from campus on a good day.
I make it in fifteen.
The lights are on in the front room when I pull into the drive — my mother's doing, she has never once in her life left a room dark if she could help it, something about the quality of empty lit spaces being more welcoming than the alternative. I used to find it excessive. Today, in this cloudy weather, I find something closer to relief.
I let myself in with my key.
The house smells like an early dinner — something with onion and garlic. I follow it and find my mom at the island with aglass of wine and a medical journal open in front of her, reading glasses pushed up into her hair the way she does when she's finished reading but not ready to admit it.
She looks up when I come in.
"You look tired," she says.
"I'm fine."
"You look tired," she says again, because my mother has never once accepted fine as an answer and isn't going to start now. She closes the journal and studies me.
I drop my bag by the door, open the refrigerator, and stand in the cold for a moment without taking anything out.
