The half-breath stays in my ear.
Cole’s half-breath stays too.
The night I told them about Ashford, Cole’s concern arrived half a beat late. His surprise was perfect. I filed it before I could stop myself, then left the drawer closed.
Cole murmurs something against my shoulder that might be love you too or might be nothing at all. His arm is heavy across my waist. Heavier than it used to be.
I close my eyes.
My breathing starts its count without permission. Four in. Four hold. Four out. The wiring installed at thirteen runs whether I ask it to or not. One cycle. The bed holds. Two bodies hold. Two cycles.
The count stops at two.
It was eight a month ago. Five the week of the hearing. Three the night of the bath. Two tonight.
Two leaves room for my eyes to open.
Eight did not.
The bed holds. Around us, the house holds. The two men holding me between them hold.
Somewhere under the refrigerator, a clove of garlic holds too.
Dante’s phone is on the nightstand. Dark screen. Silent. The number he memorized at seventeen lives in his head the way my breathing count lives in mine, permanent and embedded.
I know this. I chose to go upstairs Wednesday night. I chose the closed door over the sound of the call.
My eyes open.
I choose to lie here anyway. Dante at my back. Sight lines clear.
The lamp stays on.
Chapter 32
Cole
The roar moves through the arena before it hits me.
Sixteen thousand people are stacked to the rafters in TD Garden, and the sound they make rolls over the ice like weather. It beats against my helmet, rattles through my chest plate, and comes up from the ice through the steel under my boots. Frozen Four semifinal. Briarcliff versus Michigan. Two periods down. Tied 2–2. The third is about to start, and the building is so fucking loud I can feel individual syllables vibrating in my molars.
I’ve played in this building twice. Showcases, high school tournaments, college scouts lining the concourse with clipboards before I even step on the ice. Those games felt important. This game makes every breath drag harder through my chest. Four NHL teams have scouts in the building tonight.The draft is in June. Every shift I take is an audition for the rest of my life, and I have to do it in the loudest room I have ever occupied.
Addison pulls us in at the bench. The huddle tightens, helmets touching, Declan just outside the crush, sweat and cold air and athletic tape trapped between bodies. Addison’s voice cuts through the arena noise, sharp and steady enough that we go still around it.
“Third period. Twenty minutes. You’ve played forty minutes of hockey tonight and you’ve earned every second of ice time you’re about to get. Now go earn twenty more.” He looks around the huddle. His eyes land on each of us, Adrian, me, Dante, Gio, then Declan at the edge. The starters. The first line and the brick wall behind it. “Play your game. Trust your linemates. Stay out of the box. Michigan’s power play has been killing us. Don’t give them chances.”
Adrian taps his stick on the ice. My legs answer before I have to think.
We go.
I take the ice for the opening faceoff with Dante beside me on the left wing, Adrian at center, and my place on the right. The positioning locks in before I have to think about it. Years of skating together have done that to us, since high school, since we were sixteen and running the same drills on a rink in Connecticut until our lungs burned and our legs quit forgiving us.
I know where Dante will be before the play fully forms. He knows where I’ll be. A shift of his shoulders tells me I’m cutting behind the net. The angle of my blade tells him where I’m going. Trailer. Back door.
The puck drops.
Michigan comes out hard. Their forecheck is relentless, two men deep, rotating, putting pressure on every touch. Faster thanthe tape showed. Their top line has a center who is six-foot-two with NHL hands and a shot that comes off his blade too fast. He gets position on Adrian in the first shift and rips a wrister that Declan snatches with his glove, casual and efficient, the save of a goalie who has been stopping rubber since he could stand.
