Page 39 of Fractured Ice

I write that down too.

It goes on like this. Every time something goes wrong for someone else on the ice, Ethan's there. Not in a performative way, not in a way that calls attention to itself, just consistently there. And when Knox scores on the power play and the bench erupts, Ethan's reaction is the same as if he'd scored it himself, full-body, no filter on it at all.

Rory glances at my notebook.

"That's a lot of notes," she says.

"It's a good game."

"Can I—" She tilts her head to read. I tilt the notebook slightly away. She's already read enough. "Sienna. Those are all about Ethan. I’d think some should be about the entire team."

"Character observations are essential for a long-form profile."

"That one says 'celebrates other people's goals like he scored them himself'."

"That's a character observation."

"That one says 'the way the freshmen look at him'."

"Rory."

"I'm just saying." She's trying not to smile. "Those aren't hockey stats."

"Nobody wins a journalism award for hockey stats." I cap my pen. "What."

"Nothing." She is definitely smiling now. "Nothing at all."

I go back to watching the game and try to care more about the power play structure than I currently do.

We're quiet for a few minutes, the comfortable kind, and then Rory says, "Can I tell you something about him?"

"About Ethan?"

"You don't have to use it for anything. I just—" She watches the ice. "I think you should know."

I wait.

She tells me about the night he found her.

She doesn't tell me everything, but certain moments she describes in detail. I can feel the shape of what she's leaving out, the weight of it, and I don't push. What she does tell me is enough. She'd been at her apartment, at Kingsport, and something had happened, something bad enough that she couldn't manage it alone, and Ethan had been the one who came. She doesn't explain how he knew to come. She just said he showed up, and when he saw her condition he didn't say anything for a second. Just looked at her.

"He cried," Rory says. She says it simply, without drama, like it's just a fact she's reporting. "Not a lot. But I saw it. And then he picked me up and carried me to his car and took me to the hospital and he wouldn't leave."

Below us, the game continues. I'm not watching it.

"The doctors were—" She stops. Chooses her words. "Some of them were not helpful. The way they framed things. Like maybe I'd done something to cause it. And I was too—I couldn't argue with them. I couldn't find the words."

She’d told me a lot, but not this part. "What did Ethan do?"

"He argued for me." She glances at me. "He pushed back. Calmly, but completely. He told them exactly what happened and what they needed to do about it, and when one of the officers seemed like he was about to let it go, Ethan didn't let him." A pause. "He stayed until everything was settled. The entire night."

I don't say anything for a moment.

"I'm sorry," I say, when I can get it out the right way. "I'm really sorry, Rory."

"I'm okay." She means it, I can tell. "I just—I don't know what I would've done if he hadn't been there. Ethan was the person I didn't know I needed until he showed up." She looks back at the ice. "He doesn't talk about it. He's never once mentioned it or held it over me or made me feel like I owe him anything for it. He just did it and then acted like it was nothing."

I think about the party. About waking up in his room. About the way he'd said I would never do that to you with his voice completely steady.