Page 45

"You get rules too. That's how it works." He's watching me now. "Unless you don't have any."

I think about it. I think about him against the workbench with his hands behind him and his throat bare. Can I come, please. I think about what he looked like when I said yes.

"In there," I say slowly, "you do what I say."

"Yeah. I got that part."

"No. I mean in there you don't perform. You don't do the mouth for me. You don't do the smile. If it's too much, you say whistle, and if it's not, you take it. And you don't pretend."

His breath catches.

"And you tell me the truth," I say. "In there. Whatever I ask you. You tell me the truth."

Something moves across his face, fast. It's gone before I can read it. He looks down at the floor, at the glass.

"In there," he says. "Yeah."

"And out there?"

"Out there you do whatever you want." He shrugs, and winces. "I signed up for out there."

I don't like that. I don't like it at all. I don't know why, and I don't say so.

"Okay," I say.

"Okay." He lets out a breath. "So. Are we doing this?"

"Not tonight."

"I wasn't—obviously I didn't mean tonight, I can barely sit up⁠—"

"Not until that's healed." I nod at his side. "Not before."

"Deb said three or four weeks."

"Then three or four weeks."

He stares at me. "You're kidding."

"I'm not touching you like this."

"You touched me in a cage with a pile of skates around us, but you won't⁠—"

"Not like this, Theo."

It comes out louder than I want. He shuts up.

I take the peas off him, gently, because they've gone soft, and I go to the bathroom down the hall and wet a hand towel with cold water, and I come back and fold it over the bruise. He watches me do it the whole time. He doesn't say anything. When I'm done, I sit down on the floor next to the bed, with my back against the mattress, because I don't know what else to do with my body.

"You're sitting on my floor," he says, after a while.

"Yes."

"Is that a goalie thing?"

"Go to sleep."

He lies back, slowly, propped up on two pillows the way Deb told him. I hear him breathe in, a little deeper than before, and stop when it catches.