She holds my eyes, steady, and the look goes straight through me.
"Go to class," she says.
"This was class."
"Go to your next class."
I give her the half-grin, the one that usually makes her roll her eyes. "Love you, sis."
"Stepsister. Go."
I push off the desk, the bag still on my shoulder, and head up the back aisle that runs along the rear wall behind her row. As I pass behind her chair I set my hand on her shoulder for one second with the same pressure, the same casual weight I've been putting there since we were thirteen. She leans into it a fraction, just enough to register in my palm, and then I'm through the door into the hall, the ghost of her warmth lingering on my skin.
The sweatshirt. Three days, not a week.
Friday night. Game day. The arena is packed: students pressed shoulder to shoulder in the student section, donors behind the glass at center ice, a handful of scouts scattered along the press level above. It's Cornell, the game Addison's been drilling us for all week, and my blood is already humming with the kind of adrenaline that sharpens every sound, every movement.
Dante and I run the same line. The first goal comes off the boards behind the net—Dante pulls two defenders, then slides the puck blind into the slot. My stick is already waiting, because Iknow where it's coming. I know where he is, the way I've known for six years, the way I know where he is in a dark room with the door closed, and the connection runs like a live wire under my skin.
The arena sees chemistry. The analysts see a system. Nobody up there is seeing what it actually is, what it looks like at midnight with the door closed and his hands in my hair, and the truth of it makes my chest tighten.
The second goal comes on the rush when I cross the blue line, drag the defender wide, and leave it behind me for Dante to pick up and send top shelf. Then the buzzer sounds. Ten in a row.
The locker room detonates. Sticks slamming the floor, helmets banging off metal, somebody cranks the speaker until the bass rattles through the tile, and I'm up on the bench with my jersey half-off before I know it, the roar filling my lungs.
"TEN IN A ROW, BABY! SOMEBODY GET ME A CROWN AND A SANDWICH!"
A roll of tape comes flying across the room and I snag it out of the air. "THE KING ACCEPTS YOUR TRIBUTE!" I launch it back into the freshmen, and the laugh that tears out of me feels raw and real.
"Get down before you break your neck," Gio calls from his stall. He smiles, but it's hollow, his attention already sliding back to his phone before the expression fully forms, and the sight of it cuts through my high.
I hop down through the gear scattered across the floor, land on someone's shin pad, and nearly eat the floor before catching myself on the open frame of Declan's stall. Declan looks up, just one look, and my hand—already moving toward his stick for balance—jerks back before it touches. Nobody touches another man's stick on game night, especially not his. I step away, the stumble still buzzing in my knees.
Across the room Adrian sits on the bench, still fully dressed, elbows on his knees. He catches my eye after the near miss with Declan's stick and gives one short nod, and I nod back, the silence between us heavier than any celebration.
I cross to my stall and sink down, my stick across my lap, and start peeling gear off, the tape coming away in a long strip until Dante's borrowed name comes back at me and the strip snaps loose in my hands, the sound sharp in the noisy room.
By eleven Elm House is loud, the post-game party in full swing. The place is packed, music rattling the windowpanes, bass humming through the hardwood under every step, and I move through it like I own the place because right now, I fucking do.
I texted Maya before the game:
Me: Elm House after the game. Everyone's asking about you.
She said yes. Tuesday night she said pass, tonight she said yes. Dante called her a tourist with a borrowed name, and Maya doesn't stay away from a place where someone told her she doesn't belong—she walks right back in and makes them watch her.
I come down the stairs after locking my room and Dante's for the party, the house keys back in my pocket. I shoulder past two freshmen blocking the entry hall, cut around a knot of girls in front of the speaker, and move to the fridge, grab a beer, press it into Calder's hand on my way past, tell him his second-period shift was clean until his spine straightens a little. Dante's deeper in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a glass in his hand and watching the room the way he watches the ice, and I clock him and keep moving, my skin prickling with the weight of his attention.
Gio stands near the kitchen doorway with Zoë beside him, her hand on his arm and his on her hip, both of them posed for the room more than each other, and I drift into the open space at his right.
"You good?" I ask Gio.
"Great," he says, the answer too fast, too bright.
"You've checked your phone all night."
"You noticed?"
"I always notice." It comes out easy the way it's supposed to, but the truth underneath is sharper.
