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“The box?”

“Coach’s doghouse.” He rolls his shoulder. “I feel bad about it, honestly. He’s a really good player. Better than I was as a freshman, and I’m not saying that to be nice.”

I look at him. “That’s generous. He punched you.”

“He’s eighteen.” His mouth does something rueful. “I was eighteen once. I said worse to guys who deserved it a lot less.”

It’s such a good answer that my shoulders come down an inch.

“Did he say anything about it?” he asks. “After.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you leave with him and your friends?”

I blink at him. “Who said I’m friends with Nash?”

“You’re not?”

“No,” I say, looking down at the ice, and under my breath, I mutter, “What the fuck?”

He smiles at the ice. “He’s a wall, that kid.”

The conversation dies after that. He tries to revive it, but I mostly listen. He’s awfully charming. He’s almost too kind; nobody is this nice all the time. I watch him and start to think some of it has to be for show.

A door bangs somewhere below us, and three guys come out of a tunnel at the near end in workout clothes, one with a towel around his neck, cutting across the bottom of the seats toward the far side. Nash is the one in the middle. His shirt has the sleeves cut off, his hair is wet, and he’s carrying a water bottle with nothing in his face at all. The other two are talking. He isn’t. He looks like a guy who just finished doing something extremely unpleasant.

Then he looks up. Nobody said anything, but he looks up into the stands, straight at us, and sees me, and then sees Declan beside me with his arm along the back of my seat. He looks for maybe a second and a half. Then he turns his head and keeps walking.

“Kennebeck!” Declan calls. His voice goes up into the roof and comes back down. One of the other two guys glances up at us, then at Nash, then at the floor. “Good workout?”

Nash doesn’t turn around. He goes through the far door, and it swings shut behind him with a bang that echoes for about four seconds.

Declan settles back into his seat. “He’s not much for small talk.”

I look at the closed door at the bottom of the stands. Nash didn’t have to do that. It sits in my stomach while Declan talks about something else, and I watch the ice with my gut swimming. Nash didn’t react like a normal person would, and it almost feels like Declan brought me here to prove a point. Tuesday was the library, which felt like an ambush. Then tonight.

I sit through another twenty minutes of drills.

He walks me home, and the worst part is that it’s a good walk. He’s funny. He asks about my classes and remembers what I told him earlier in the night. He tells me a story about his freshman year involving a bus, a tuba, and a broken thumb, and I laugh so hard I have to stop in the middle of the sidewalk. He never buys me anything fried. I notice that too.

At the doors of Corvin Hall, he doesn’t try to come in, and he doesn’t lean down. “This was good. I’d like to do it again.”

“Yeah.”

Then, halfway down the walk with his hands in his pockets, walking backward, he says, “Tell Kennebeck I said hi.”

What?

I wave at him instead of saying anything.

I don’t go to the third floor. I go straight up to 412, texting Paige, Kenzie, and Bianca on the way, and I run into Paige in the hallway.

“How was it?” she asks.

I point at her door. “I need an intervention.”

They sit and listen, and I don’t leave anything out: word for word what Declan said about Nash, how weird the study hall was, how he took me to the rink and never bought me the food he promised.