Toni thinks we’re reviewing footage. I told her CoachBriggs wanted to run something past her. I told her this with a straight face, which is the most impressive thing I have ever accomplished. She walks in ahead of me in her work clothes — green blazer, badge clipped, clipboard tucked under her arm. She looks at the empty rink. Then at me. Then at the rink.
“Where’s Coach Briggs?”
“Not here.”
“Max.”
“He had a thing.”
She turns. The clipboard drops slightly. She reads my face with the efficiency she applies to everything — quick, complete, seeing past whatever I’m presenting straight to the actual situation. Her expression shifts. “What are you doing?” I step past her and onto the rubber mat at the edge of the ice. Then I hold out my hand.
She stares at it. “We’re not in skates.”
“I know.”
“The ice isn’t?—“
“Antonia.” Just her name. The way it sounds when I’m done performing and there’s no audience, and I mean it. “Come here.” She takes my hand. She looks at my wrist and realizes I’m still wearing the superstar bracelet.
“You kept it.” She smiles.
I shrug, “Christopher says the powers stop working if I take it off.”
I walk her onto the ice. We’re in shoes, both of us, and the surface is slick, and she grips my hand tighter, andI hold her, and we don’t fall because I will not let us fall, and she knows that.
The rink is empty. The overhead lights are at thirty percent, the pre-game setting before the crew comes in, and the ice glows. The Gold Coast Guardians logo is at center and the boards are dark and the arena breathes around us that specific sound it makes when it's empty. Alive. Like a building that knows what it's for. “I fell in love with you before I even knew your last name.” Her hand is in mine, and she’s watching my face, and the guarded expression is completely gone. “You know what the worst part was?”
“Of what?” Her head tilts.
“Thinking for two years that Rockford was the best thing that would ever happen to me.” I pause. “And then you walked back into my life, anyway.”
She blinks and tears roll down her cheeks. “Max”
“Yeah, okay, don’t look at me like that. I have a speech.” She gives me a watery laugh. “You built something here. Out of nothing except your own standards. And I watched you do it. I watched you bench me in front of the entire team and walk away without letting anyone see what it cost you, and I watched you hold your father’s opinion like it was the only metric that mattered, and I watched you sit in a parking lot for four minutes trying to decide if you were allowed to want something.” I reach into my jacket pocket. “You’re allowed.” She sees the box. Her hand tightens on mine.
“I’m not asking you to be less mindful,” I say. “I’m asking you to be careful with me instead of against me.” I open thebox. The stone catches the ice light, it’s green, small, hers. “I’ve got you, Antonia. I’ve had you since a service dock by a dumpster in October. This is just making it official. Marry me.”
“Max, you’re insane.”
“Correct. Marry me anyway.”
She looks at the ring. Then at me. “That’s from the dock,” she says.
“The inscription. Yeah.”
She looks at it for another second. Then she holds out her left hand. Steady. Deliberate. The choice made before she speaks. “Yes,” she says. “Obviously, yes.”
I put the ring on her finger. It fits. Of course it fits. I measured her mother’s chain three weeks ago while she slept. I am a man who pays attention.
She pulls me by the jacket lapel and kisses me in the middle of the empty rink under the ice lights, and somewhere in the building Gerald is almost certainly aware this is not a film review session, and neither of us cares at all.
Chapter Forty
Toni
I stand in front of the mirror while Piper fusses with the back of my dress for the third time. “If you poke me with that pin again, I’m calling off the wedding,” I warn.
“You’re not calling off anything,” Piper says instantly. “You’re surviving Max Stevens in playoff season. Marriage is the easy part.”
