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He unties the tape from the headboard first. He brings my arms down slowly, so they don't cramp. Then he sits on the edge of the bed with my wrists in his lap and unwinds the tape, one pass at a time, the same way he put it on, all seven wraps. When he's done, there are faint pink lines on my skin, and he rubs his thumbs over them in slow circles until they're gone.
He runs a bath. The Country Lodge tub is tiny and the water pressure is terrible, and it takes twenty minutes to fill, and he sits on the edge of it the whole time, testing the water with his hand.
He gets in first. Then he pulls me in, in front of him, between his legs, with my back against his chest. The water comes up to my chin. I can feel his heart through my back.
He just holds me. His arms are around my chest. Every so often, he scoops up water in his hand and pours it over my shoulder.
"Okay?" he says, eventually.
"Yeah." My voice is wrecked. "Yeah. I'm—yeah."
"Truth."
I think about it.
"I've never felt like that," I say. "Like I didn't have to hold anything. I just—let go."
His arms tighten around me.
"Me neither," he says into my hair.
I close my eyes. The water's going cool. Neither of us moves.
On Thursday, I put the fifth puck a foot wide of an open net so I could have this. And lying here in a tiny bathtub in North Dakota, with his arms around me, I think I'd do it again tomorrow, and every morning after that.
20
DANE
The room thaws the way a rink does when the compressor goes down. Slow, from the edges, and then all at once you're standing in water.
It starts at the card table. Thursdays at the Lantern, there are five guys crowded around it now, and Marcy has started bringing a second table and pushing it up against the first one, and nobody's said anything about it. Wes. Petey. Okoye. Two of the other freshmen. Last week Kasper came out of his room long enough to eat and sat there too, mostly because it's closer to the bathroom.
The long table's getting shorter.
On the ice, guys pass him the puck. Not because I told them to. Because he's open, and he scores when he's open. He's got eleven goals since Christmas. He's on the second power play unit now. Halvorsen moved him up after the Thorne Valley sweep and didn't say a word about it.
We've won seven straight.
Even Gunnar's coming around, in his way. On Tuesday, in the shooting drill, Theo walks around him at the blue line like he's a pylon and roofs it on Kasper, and Gunnar skates past him on the way back and says, "Lucky," and Theo says, "Every time," and Gunnar laughs.
It's a short laugh. But it's a laugh.
After practice on Monday, Jace catches me in the parking lot.
He's leaning on my car when I come out. He never leans on my car. He's got his hands in his jacket pockets and his hat pulled down, and he's looking at me like a guy about to take a faceoff he's not sure he can win.
"Got a sec?"
"What's up."
"Halvorsen says there's a guy coming to the semifinal. From the show. Pro scout." He kicks at a chunk of ice by my tire. "He's coming for Lindqvist."
"Okay."
"Just figured you'd want to know."
"Why would I want to know?"
