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“Walking where?”

I don’t say anything fast enough.

“Kennebeck. You do not go near Greeley.”

“Bit late.”

“Nash.”

He’s never used my first name. Not once since I’ve known him, not on the ice, not in the room, not in his office.

“My office,” he says. “Now. That wasn’t a suggestion.”

We’re at the corner of Greeley’s street. A car with a mattress strapped to the roof goes past, somebody’s music comes through a window, and the gray house is fourth down on the left with the porch light on.

“I’ll be there,” I say, and hang up on my coach.

Mathers answers the door, because Mathers lives here. He’s in sweats with a bowl of cereal in his hand, and he looks at me and then at Koda and Rafe behind me. He doesn’t say anything stupid like what are you doing here.

He says, “He’s inside,” and steps back.

The front room’s got a couch, a TV on a stand, and a coffee table with a laptop on it. Greeley’s standing in the middle of it in a Woodbury hockey T-shirt. He knew I was coming. He’s not sitting down, and he’s not acting surprised. He’s not smiling like I thought he would be. He’s as angry as I am.

“Why are you standing in my house?” he says once we’re all inside.

His eyes drop to my hands. I hadn’t realized I was clenching them.

“Take it down,” Koda says.

Greeley shrugs. “Why would I do that? People deserve to know the scum walking this campus.”

I step forward.

Greeley laughs, and there’s the fucking smile I want to wipe off his face. “I didn’t make you do anything, Kennebeck. That’s the thing, isn’t it? You still did what you did.”

And there’s the whole argument. He’s been carrying it around for a month.

“You want to know what I’ve been doing all weekend?” he says. “Standing in a tunnel in a suit. Scouts in the building Friday, and I’m in a suit. My second year in that room, every early skate, every video session, and a fucking freshman shows up in August who puts a guy through a wall at a party, and he gets the second line and the last draw of the game with Montreal watching.”

“That’s hockey,” I hear myself say, like a reminder to myself.

“I know it’s hockey. But now everybody knows who you really are.”

I stare at him, and that smile crawls back onto his face. There’s half a second where I almost close the distance. I could have him on that coffee table before Rafe got to me.

“Go ahead,” Greeley says.

Rafe shifts behind my shoulder. Koda’s already moving to my left.

“Come on,” Greeley says, quieter. “Nobody’s going to record it this time.”

I take one big step, close enough that he has to look up, close enough that I can see his pulse going in his neck, close enough that Rafe says my name behind me.

“You keep waiting for me to hit you,” I say.

His mouth twitches.

“Keep waiting.”