Page 68

"Your turn," I tell him. "Come for me. Right here. Looking at me."

It doesn't take long. Three, four strokes and he's spilling over my fist and onto the gray sheets, hips stuttering, face pressed into my neck. He says my name when he comes—quiet, almost reverent—and I feel the word against my skin like a brand.

We stay like that for a while, breathing the same air, sticky and quiet. Eventually I get up, find a washcloth in the bathroom (gray, of course), and clean us both up. He watches me do it without speaking. When I come back to bed he reaches for me immediately, pulling me down against his chest.

I turn the lamp off. The city lights through the blinds paint thin stripes across the ceiling and across his face.

He falls asleep first.

I didn't know he could. He told me he hasn't slept a whole night since June, and here he is, out cold on his back in his own gray bed, one arm under his head, breathing slow and even. His face is soft. The line between his eyebrows is gone again.

I lie next to him and look at his ceiling. It's gray. Obviously.

Five rules. I made five rules, and he said okay to all of them, and then he let me, the way I asked him to. It was better than anything I've ever had. He looked at me like I'd hung the moon.

I should be happy. I am happy.

But I keep thinking about the kid in the front row, with his too-long sleeves and his little rainbow pin, clapping so hard.

Don't hide. That's what I told him. It's so much work to hide.

I turn my head on the pillow and look at Owen asleep beside me, and I think about rule one, the one I wrote first, the one I wrote fastest so I wouldn't have to think about it.

Nobody knows. Until the season's over.

It's the middle of November. The season's over in June.

That's seven months.

I tell myself it's fine. I tell myself it's not the same as Rimouski, or the bus. He's not ashamed of me. He's scared. There's a difference. I know there's a difference.

I get up, quietly, and go out to the living room in the dark. The list's still on the coffee table under the pen. I pick it up and read it by the light from the window.

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

In my handwriting. I wrote it.

I fold it back up and put it in the pocket of my jeans, next to the other one. His list. Two pages, both sides. Rule ten.

Then I go back to bed, and I get in beside him, and he turns over in his sleep and puts his arm across me without waking up, like he's keeping me from falling off.

Chapter Fifteen

OWEN

Moretti changes the lines on a Thursday, at the morning skate, without telling anybody first.

He does it the way he does everything. He walks out onto the ice with a whiteboard under his arm, props it against the boards by the bench, and skates away. The guys crowd around it. There's a lot of muttering.

I'm at the back. I can't see over Kowal.

"Huh," Webb says, somewhere up front.

"What?"

He turns around and looks at me. He doesn't say anything. He just steps aside so I can see.

The top line used to be Brandt at center, Sorel and Kowal on the wings. The second line was me, with two grinders who've been my wingers for three years. Castel's been bouncing around the bottom six since opening night, getting power-play time and not much else.