I’d been doing everything right and still felt the gap betweenrightandbelonging. I thought about the OHL letter reducing everything we were—our Mate Bond—to a compliance issue. About the donors upstairs, right now, with their careful bland voices talking about rules and preferential treatment and belonging.
“No,” I finally said. “They didn’t.”
Dakvaar nodded again, still unhurried, as if this was the conversation he’d been waiting to have, and he wasn’t going to rush it.
“She doesn’t quite fit into mine either,” I said. I thought about Lila at the axe-throwing bar, eyes bright and completely herself. Her laugh when she hit the bull’s-eye. Her hair down. Her hand in mine on the bleachers at a minor league game nobody important was watching. “But she’s beentrying.”
“So have you,” Torrk said quietly, which from Torrk, without an accompanying fart sound effect, meant something.
I looked at the tuxedo.
I looked at my locker, where my jersey hung—the one with my name and my number, the one I’d been wearing in some form since I was twelve years old and first realized that the ice was the one place where being exactly what I was counted for something.
The one I might not belong to after tonight.
The choreography. Three movements. Two separate things, moving toward each other, finding their own language, making something neither could make alone.
Joshua hadn’t asked me to stop being a hockey player. He’d asked me to bring what I was onto her ice and let her meet me there.
Maybe that was the answer. Not fitting into her world. Not pulling her into mine. Something we built in the space between—a new world, if we were lucky enough, if we werebraveenough.
I stood up.
“Maybe,” I said slowly, “if we’re very lucky, we could build a new world together.”
Torrk opened his mouth.
“Don’t,” Dakvaar said, hands still wrapped around the younger man’s throat, but his attention on me.
Torrk closed his mouth.
I reached past the tuxedo and took my jersey off the hook.
Together.
Chapter Fourteen
Lila
By the timeI reached my office, my tears had stopped. Well, I’d never truly allowed them to fall tonight; I mean, putting on that eyeliner was a complete bitch, and I didn’t want to ruin it. But the tears had been threatening all through that conversation with Mr. Matthew Albright.
Now, though?
Now I’d swallowed down that sorrow, that hopelessness…and what had emerged was anger.
Maddie was right.
I’d been so focused on trying to be perfect that I thought I had to handle everything myself. Maddie’s reminder to talk to Daddy about it was a good one, and I told myself that if I could just make it through five minutes on the ice, pretending not to love Kardok, then maybe Daddy could help us figure this all out.
Together.
Imagine my surprise when I took a shaky breath and pushed open the door to my office, only to find my father pacing back and forth in front of my desk.
I stopped short. “Daddy!”
He swung around, his look of worry turning to profound relief. “There you are! I was hoping, when I saw the skating costume hanging in your washroom, that meant you’d be coming back here before the exhibition.”
Curious, I pushed the door closed behind me. “Why? What’s wrong?” Why did he need to see me before the performance? “I don’t have long to get ready.”
