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"Rémy, it's the Final. Let's talk about this after⁠—"

"No," I say. "Not after. Now. Tell them no. Tell them I'm not signing section nine. Tell them I'm not going to be anybody's secret. Not for three years, not for three days. Not for any amount of money." I close my eyes. "Tell them if they want the gay hockey player, they get the whole gay hockey player. Or they get nothing."

Marc's quiet for a long time.

"Okay," he says finally. His voice is different. Softer. "Okay, kid. I'll call them in the morning."

"Thank you."

"You know," Marc says, "I've been waiting twenty-five years for one of my players to say something like that to me."

I hang up. I sit in my stall with the phone in my hand, and across the room, Owen's sitting in his, with his back to me, not moving.

Neither of us has any rules left.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

OWEN

The lists are still on my pillow when I get back from game four.

I don't touch them. I sit on the edge of the bed with my bag still on my shoulder and look at them. Two pieces of paper. Soft at the folds. They've been in his back pocket since October. I've watched him take them out and put them back a hundred times, on buses, on planes, in hotel rooms, when he thought I wasn't looking.

Adeyemi's in the other bed. He came in an hour ago with his bag and a face like a funeral, and said, "Sorry, Cap," and I didn't ask what for. He's asleep now, or pretending to be. His back's to me.

I pick up the lists.

Mine first. Two pages, both sides, block capitals. RULES, underlined twice. Lights out at ten-thirty on game nights. No music without headphones. No photos of me. It looks like somebody else wrote it. Some other man, a long time ago, who thought if he made enough rules he'd never have to feel anything.

10. If anybody in the room gives you trouble, you tell me.

I was the trouble. I was the trouble the whole time.

Then his. The building's notepad, the logo at the top, his handwriting going uphill across the page because he never writes in a straight line.

1. Nobody knows. Until the season's over.

2. You don't lie to me.

3. You say my name. Every day. No expiration.

4. If you ever call it a mistake in front of anybody, it's over.

5. In here, I'm in charge.

I read rule three again.

I haven't said it today. For the first time since Denver, since the night he made me promise, I haven't said it once. I called him Castel in the hallway after game three, in my captain voice, with Webb standing there. That was the last time I said anything to him at all.

"Rémy," I say, to the empty side of the room.

Adeyemi doesn't move.

It doesn't count. He isn't here to hear it.

On the plane home, he sits in the back with Sorel. I sit in the second row. That's how it's always been, on planes. Nobody on the team would notice anything different.

Everybody on the team notices.