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"I stand next to you."

"Then I'll be there," Owen says. "Win or lose. I'll be standing next to you."

I put my head back down on his chest. I close my eyes. For the first time in five days, I'm not nervous at all.

On the nightstand, next to my phone, all three lists are stacked on top of each other. His old one, two pages, both sides. My five rules on his building's notepad. The new one's on top, with two rules on it, one in his handwriting and one in mine.

Sometime before I fall asleep, he reaches over in the dark and puts his hand flat on the top of the stack, like he's making sure it's still there.

Chapter Thirty-Three

OWEN

The truck's parked on the street outside the arena again, under the same light. Red pickup, cracked windshield, Quebec plates. The sign in the back window has been rewritten in fresh marker.

ALLEZ RÉMY! GAME 7! ALLEZ LE SAD BEAR AUSSI!

Webb reads it over my shoulder as he helps me out of the minivan. He reads it twice.

"Is that you?" he asks. "The sad bear?"

"Don't."

"Owen. Is that you?"

"Get my crutches, Marcus."

He gets my crutches. He's grinning so hard I think his face might crack.

There are more reporters in the hallway outside the dressing room than I've ever seen in one place. More than opening night. More than the morning after the picture. They're lined up three deep along the cinderblock wall between the players' entrance and our door, with cameras and phones and those long microphones on sticks, and every one of them turns when I come around the corner.

It takes me a long time to crutch down that hallway. Thump and swing. Thump and swing. The shutters start clicking before I'm halfway.

Priya's waiting for me at the end of it, by our door. She's not holding a folder. She's not holding anything.

She falls into step beside me. On my left. Close enough that her shoulder brushes my arm.

"Owen." It's the Tribune guy. Of course it's the Tribune guy. He steps out from the wall, into my path, not rudely. Just there. "Owen, the photo that circulated last week. The one from the hotel in Nashville. Was that you?"

The hallway goes quiet. Not all at once. In a wave, from front to back, as everybody realizes what he asked and turns to hear what I'm going to say.

Priya doesn't move. She doesn't say no questions. She doesn't say last one. She just stands next to me.

I stop. I lean on the crutches. I look at the Tribune guy, who's been asking me questions in front of a logo wall for as long as I've been captain, whose name I've never once used.

"Yes, Dan," I say. "That was me."

Somebody behind him says, "Holy⁠—"

"I'm bisexual," I say. My voice is steady. It's not my reporter voice. It's just my voice. "I found that out later than most people do. I'm thirty-five. I lied about it last week, in a meeting with my organization, and I lied about it for a lot of years before that, mostly to myself. I'm sorry for the lie. I'm not sorry for anything else."

The shutters are going so fast it sounds like rain.

"Owen, who was the other⁠—"

"That's all I'm going to say about me," I say. "Anything else isn't mine to tell. It belongs to somebody else. If they ever want to tell it, they will. If they don't, that's their business." I shift my weight on the crutches. "Tonight's game seven. It's about the team. I'd appreciate it if you'd let it be about the team."

I start moving again. Thump and swing. The reporters part in front of me like a crowd letting an ambulance through.