The cut under my collarbone still stings. The blanket is still draped over my shoulders, but I feel colder than I’ve ever been.
I sit there for a long time.
Staring at the door.
But he’s gone.
And I don’t know if he’s ever coming back.
24
ZANE
I don’t sleep.
I lie in my hotel bed staring at the ceiling, watching the numbers on the clock change. The world is supposed to be quiet and my brain is supposed to shut up.
It doesn’t.
She lied.
The thought circles back again and again, a shark in murky water. She lied to me. To all of us. For weeks. Walked into that locker room every day pretending to be something she wasn’t and no one knew.
I think about that night with her. I don’t want to go there yet.
But it comes back anyway.
The way her body fit against mine like we’d been doing this forever.
Was any of it real?
She didn’t plan that. I believe her. I have to believe her, because if I don’t-
I roll onto my side. Punch the pillow. Stare at the wall.
The chemistry on the ice was real.
I’ve been playing hockey my whole life. I know what it feels like when it works. You can’t fake that. You can’t manufacture the way we didn’t need to talk because we were already reading each other’s minds.
But she knew.
That’s the part I keep coming back to. She knew who I was at Halloween. She’d been playing beside me for weeks by then. Watching me. Learning me. Passing me the puck and skating beside me in practice.
And she still came home with me.
She still let me-
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes.
Let me.
That’s the wrong word. She didn’tletme do anything. She was there. Present. Wanting. How she looked at me, touched me, kissed me-
That wasn’t letting.
That was choosing.
I think about what Russo said between periods.
