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I don't.

"Do you know why I came out at sixteen?" I ask.

He doesn't say anything.

"There was a guy on my bantam team. Older. Seventeen. Everybody knew about him. Nobody said it, but everybody knew. He had a girlfriend who went to a different school that nobody ever met. He laughed at every joke in the room, even the ones about him. Especially the ones about him. He was so good at hiding that he was the best at it on the whole team." I pull in a breath. "Then one day he just stopped coming to practice. His mom told the coach he'd quit hockey. He was so tired, she said. He was just so tired."

Owen's face has gone very still.

"I was fifteen. I watched him get so tired of hiding that he quit the thing he loved most," I say. "So a year later, I came out. On purpose. To everybody. I said I'd never be anybody's secret. Not a team's, not a guy's, not my own. Never. I made that promise to myself when I was sixteen years old."

"Rémy—"

"I came out at sixteen so I'd never be anybody's secret," I say. "And I let you make me one."

The room's so quiet I can hear the ice machine down the hall. The same one. The one I went to at midnight.

"I let you," I say again. "I wrote nobody knows at the top of a list. I stopped doing the slide. I took out my laces. I lied to Sorel, and I lied to my mother, and I lied to my agent, and I stood up in front of a hundred kids and told them don't hide, and then I went home and hid. For you. Because I loved you, and I thought if I waited long enough, you'd be ready."

"I am ready. I'm almost⁠—"

"You told Pruitt it was a mistake," I say. "This morning. In front of Moretti. In front of me. You didn't have to. You could have said no comment. Nadia would have written no comment. You didn't have to say mistake." My voice cracks, finally. "You chose that word, Owen. You chose it on purpose. It was the one word I asked you never to say."

He puts his hand over his mouth.

I take the list out of my back pocket. Both lists. They're soft as cloth now from folding and unfolding. His two pages, both sides, in block capitals. Mine, on the building's notepad, in my messy handwriting.

I put them on his bed. On his pillow. Right where he'll see them.

"Rule four," I say. "You know what it says."

"Please don't."

"If you ever call it a mistake in front of anybody, it's over." I look at the lists on his pillow. I can't look at him. "I'm not ending it because I don't love you. I love you. I'm going to love you for a really long time, probably. I'm ending it because I promised myself something when I was sixteen, and I broke it for you, and I can't keep breaking it. I'll disappear if I keep breaking it. I'll turn into that guy from bantam. I'll just get tired."

I pick up the suitcase.

He doesn't move out of the way. He just stands there between me and the door with his hand over his mouth and his eyes wet.

"Owen," I say. "Please move."

After a long, long moment, he does.

I walk past him. I open the door. I don't look back, because if I look back I'll stay, and if I stay I'll hide, and I'll keep hiding until there's nothing left of me to hide.

The door closes behind me. It's a heavy hotel door. It makes a sound like a puck hitting the crossbar, a clean hard ping, and then nothing.

Sorel opens the door to nine-twenty before I can knock. He's got Adeyemi's bag in one hand, like he was about to carry it down the hall himself.

He takes one look at my face and puts the bag down.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. Come in."

I come in. I put my suitcase on the floor. I stand in the middle of the room, and I don't know what to do with my hands, so I put them in my pockets. My pockets are empty. The lists are gone. I keep reaching for them anyway.

"Adeyemi's switching," Sorel says. "Beth called. He's fine with it. He said to tell you he's sorry."

"Sorry for what?"