And between Melly and Gianna, sitting with a smile on her face is Aspen Linwood.
Normally, she’s working the game — phone out, head down, breaking it apart like a math equation. But right now, she’s wearing a smile.
The air goes out of me all at once, like somebody pulled a plug.
I haven’t seen her since I left that morning. And yeah, this is a public space, but the family section sure as hell is not. Neither are my teammates’ girlfriends that she’s sitting with. That’s not public, that’s private. That’s the friend group. We haven’t talked all week. She doesn’t see me. She’s too busy belonging.
I just look at her for a second, and then I glare at Blue.That smug fucker.
“Ermington.” Coach, behind me. “You’re up. Go.”
I go.
Here is the case, as I assemble it over the back half of a hockey game, in the windows the sport allows me, which are cruelly short.
Window one. Bench, head down, water bottle in hand. Who invited Aspen to hang out in the family section? Did Benson and Blue tell their girlfriends about this fake ordeal, so now they’re making her a laughingstock? Nobody just hasAspen’s number. The woman doesn’t have many friends. That’s something I’ve always noticed.
“Up, Stan.”
I go. I forecheck a guy so hard he’s immediately plotting revenge. I can see it in his eyes. I come back.
Window two. Captain Benson Reeve. The man who couldn’t stand the house rules and how serious I took them. I look down the bench. Benson is watching the rink with the serene, untroubled face of a man whose conscience is clean. He feels me looking. He just gives a small nod at the ice.
“Benson.” I lean down the bench. “You put her there, you prick.”
“Faceoff’s coming.”
“You put her in with your girlfriendandyour sister. Reeve, I want it on the record—”
“Go. You’re up.”
I go. I’m up. I take the draw mad — mad at Benson, mad at Lucy, mad at the matchmaking cartel that has clearly turned its full attention on me now that Blue’s safely married off — and mad, it turns out, is good. Mad is fast. I win the puck, I dish it, and Blue of all people roofs it, and the crowd comes apart. Blue points at me down the ice with both gloves, beaming, and I point back. I love him, the puck-flipping idiot, I genuinely love him.
I get to the bench. The boys are mauling me.
I look up at the family section.
Linwood’s on her feet. She’s clapping. She’s looking right at me, and she’s not performing it for anyone, because nobody’s watching her watch me, and the thing her face is doing isn’t for a room or a story or a contract.
That one I don’t make a joke about. Not even in my own head. I just hold it the length of the line change, and then I have to go play hockey again, with it sitting in my chest like a swallowed coal.
We win. It barely registers as information. I shake the hands, I do the thing, I get off the ice.
I corner Benson in the tunnel before the room, helmet off, still steaming.
“You and I both know what happened tonight,” I say.
“We won.” He’s unlacing a glove, ignoring me. “Good win.”
“You need to get a life. You’re spending too much effort trying to make sure we’re all married off before the draft––” I catch it, lower it, the tunnel’s got people in it. “Is that it? You wanna fuck things up?”
Benson looks at me. And here’s the part that kills me: I am the guy. I am, in this whole operation, the one with the unreadable face, the one nobody can crack, the one who can hold a grin over a thing for three months and never let it slip. And Benson Reeve looks me dead in the eye with a face like a closed door and says, “She didn’t have a seat, Stan.”
That’s it. That’s the whole confession. That’s also bullshit because I know she attends every game to keep tabs on me.
“Reeve—”
“Lot of empty chairs in the family section. Seemed rude of G not to offer it.”
