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We stay locked together for a long time after, breathing the same air, sticky and half-dressed and quiet. Eventually I soften and slip out. He makes a small sound at the loss. I help him down off the counter. His legs are unsteady. So are mine.

After, we're lying on the blue rug in the living room, because we never made it all the way to the bedroom. The Christmas lights are blinking over the window. The rice is burned. I can smell it.

His hand's in my hair. My head's on his chest, where I can hear his heart, the way I like it.

"Don't sign it," he says.

I lift my head.

"Don't sign it for me," he says. He's looking at the ceiling. His voice is rough. "If you want the money, sign it for the money. If you want the campaign, sign it for that. But don't sign it because of me. Don't sign it because of the list."

"You said I should take it."

"I was wrong." He turns his head and looks at me. "I've been wrong about a lot of things. I say the wrong thing, and then I stand there, and then it's too late. I did it in Nashville. I did it tonight." He swallows. "I'm going to keep doing it. For a while. I'm sorry. I'm trying."

"I know you are."

"Rule one," he says. "Until the season's over. I know what it costs you. I didn't know before. I thought it was just—waiting. It's not just waiting, is it?"

"No," I say. "It's not just waiting."

He's quiet for a long time. His hand keeps moving in my hair.

"I'll tell you the minute I'm ready," he says finally. "I'll tell you before I tell anybody. I swear. You'll be the first."

"Okay."

"Don't sign it for me."

"I won't," I say. "I don't know if I'll sign it at all."

I put the folder in the drawer by his front door on my way out the next morning. The one where he keeps takeout menus and dead batteries. Under a menu for a Thai place.

I don't take it with me. I don't know why.

Maybe I just want it somewhere I don't have to look at it.

Chapter Twenty-One

OWEN

We clinch on a Tuesday in the first week of April, against Winnipeg, with nine games left in the season.

It's not a pretty game. It's a grinding, ugly, two-to-one game where nobody can breathe and every puck feels like it weighs ten pounds. The winning goal comes with four minutes left. Sorel throws it toward the net from a bad angle, and it hits a Winnipeg skate and trickles through the goalie's legs, and the season gets decided by a puck that didn't know where it was going.

The horn goes. The building stands up. Somebody in the upper deck starts a chant, PLAY-OFFS, PLAY-OFFS, and it spreads until the glass is rattling.

I'm on the bench. My knee's locked. It's been locking on and off since February, a sharp catch in the middle of the joint, like somebody jammed a doorstop in it, and when it happens I can't straighten my leg until it lets go. It let go twice during the game. This time it doesn't.

Rémy hops over the boards and skates toward the pile around our goalie. Halfway there he turns around and looks back at the bench. At me.

I wave him on. Go.

He goes. He jumps on the pile. He doesn't do the slide. He hasn't done the slide since December.

I sit on the bench and wait for my knee to let go, and watch the only person I've ever been in love with celebrate the biggest night of his career without me.

The room's loud. Somebody's got champagne, which you're not supposed to have for a clinch, and Moretti pretends not to see it. Webb's got his arm around Kowal's neck. Kowal is almost smiling, which is the equivalent of anybody else crying. Adeyemi's filming everything on his phone.