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She drops the act. “You absolutely walk like that.”

“What are you even doing out here?”

She looks at me like I’m stupid. “I live here,” she gasps, “and I’m doing laundry.”

I look at her basket. “Right.”

She picks the basket back up and doesn’t go anywhere.

“Am I dismissed, Your Majesty?” I say.

“No.” She steps in closer, right into the two feet in front of me, tilts her head, and looks at my face. “You look like you want to hit something.”

I don’t say anything.

“Did something happen?”

I don’t answer that either. She’s so close now that I can see how blue her eyes really are. I was never sure, and now I definitely am.

“Do you fight for fun?” she asks seriously.

She has no idea.

She says, “You shouldn’t resort to violence.”

“Violence,” I repeat, quietly. “Do you watch hockey?”

She shakes her head.

“Maybe you should.”

Somebody comes into the hall, and whatever that was breaks. I go into my room and close the door behind me. Rafe is watching me with that look on his face. I ignore him and pull out my laptop.

My phone buzzes two minutes later.

Kylie: Should I Google hockey fights?

I scroll back to last season, a game in December, and send her the clip without a word: me and a guy in a different jersey going in circles on skates, gloves off, the linesman standing right there letting it happen.

Kylie: That is not what I expected.

Kylie: So it’s normal?

Me: Yeah.

Kylie: Wow. Okay.

15

Hockey Players Are So Weird

Kylie

“Hockey players are so weird,” I tell Paige, who’s lying on my bed scrolling. Tessa is at her desk with her headphones on, ignoring both of us, or pretending to.

Paige laughs. “No, they’re hot.”

“Hot-headed,” I say, thinking about the video Nash sent me. He sent it so fast I’m convinced he keeps every clip of his fights in an album on his phone. It was him and some guy in a different jersey spinning in circles on skates, punching each other, and I could literally see the referee standing right there, letting them go at it.