"You okay?" I ask, because the quiet is starting to scare me.
He turns his head toward me. In the dark, his eyes are unreadable, but his hand tightens around mine, then loosens, then tightens again. His mouth opens, closes. Whatever the question was, he filed it away instead of asking.
"Yeah," he says.
Dante's breathing evens out, deep and even. He falls asleep, his hand still tangled in mine. The grip that tightened and loosened and tightened again around whatever he wouldn't ask. He heard me sayher.He kept going. He swallowed the question.
I lie awake. His thumb has stopped moving in my palm.
Her.
Chapter 9
Maya
The Chronicle office is quiet at 11 p.m., nothing but the faint hum of overhead lights. My desk lamp throws a hard circle across the keyboard. The corkboard mounted on the wall above the desk catches the edge of the light. Press passes pinned in rows. A printed schedule for the second-half push, every line marked with red pen. And in the corner, a printout of a Globe job listing I found in October. Sports desk, entry level. Applications open in May.
I look at it every night I'm here late. Boston. Seven hundred fucking miles from wherever Cole and Dante end up after the draft.
Twenty games down, eight left. The Titans are climbing the conference standings with the steady rhythm of a team that knows exactly what the next six weeks mean.
My laptop screen glows in the dim room. The document open in front of me is a profile. Top line: Voss-Maddox. Twelve hundred words on the most productive offensive pairing in the conference. Their chemistry on the ice, the way they move through transition, the silent adjustments that turn routine plays into goals. If this piece lands the way I need it to, it goes in the portfolio. The portfolio goes to the Globe.
Earlier tonight, Cole leaned in the doorway with two coffees, one already half-empty, the other held out toward me.
"You're here late," he said.
"I'm always here late."
"I know." His mouth curved, a shadow of a smile. "That's the problem."
He set the coffee on my desk, and his fingers brushed the edge of the keyboard—a touch that landed somewhere low in my stomach. "Dante says your piece on the weak-side rotation changed how he reads zone entries."
My hands stopped on the keys. "He said that?"
"He said 'the data was useful.'" Cole's shoulder rested against the frame, the hallway light behind him catching the edge of his jaw, the chain at his neck. He smelled like the arena—ice and soap and the cold that clings to clothes after a rink. "For Dante, that's a marriage proposal."
"Go home, Cole."
"Going." He pushed off the frame. "Eat something."
His knuckles rapped once on the doorframe as he left, and the sound echoed in the empty hallway long after he was gone.
The coffee sat on my desk, still warm. I wrapped both hands around it, and the ceramic held the trace of his warmth, transferring it through the cup into my palms. I held it there until the heat was mine.
Now it's eleven. The cup is empty, drained an hour ago and pushed to the corner beside the keyboard when I needed thespace for my notes. The cursor blinks at the end of the third paragraph.
I type a sentence. Delete it. Type another. Delete that too.
My right hand reaches into my bag, finds the side pocket where the recorder used to sit. My fingers close on nothing but fabric lining and the slight depression still pressed into the shape of the device. Two and a half weeks since I left it on Dante's desk and walked out of his doorway without it.
I pull my right hand back. Both hands settle on the keyboard.
The hockey itself is easy. I can write about their transition game, their cycle patterns, the way Cole reads Dante's cuts before they happen, shifting a half-step before the puck moves. The numbers. The statistical anomaly of a line that's played together since high school and still produces like this. That's data. That's my job.
The cursor blinks.
The hard part is everything between the hockey. The line changes where Cole's body angles toward Dante before the puck even drops. The way Dante's chin lifts a fraction when Cole comes off the bench, the muscle in his jaw easing in a way it doesn't ease for anyone else. The stick taps after goals—always the same place, low on the shin, where cameras catch nothing and the gesture stays between them.
