Barry's Irish Breakfast ended up on our kitchen shelf. A mug sat on the counter with one sip gone. Since then, Dante has stopped two feet away from her, then one, then two again, like every inch needs measuring twice.
She says something low, just for him. His jaw loosens. The hard line of his mouth softens for three seconds. His eyes stay on hers, and his mouth opens slightly before he catches it.
Three seconds. The crowd roars around them. Neither of them moves.
My hand closes into a fist at my side, and my knuckles go white before I feel them. My chest constricts, my ribs pulling tight around my lungs the same way they did at the dining hall, in the lobby when her bag brushed his arm. Except here it's six thousand people, and I can't press my thumb into my thigh to quiet it because my body is on display for every one of them.
I keep watching anyway.
Watching them stand too close fucks me up, and my body still wants the moment she might step closer instead of back.
Maya steps back. Serena is already close enough to take her arm, the way she always does, easy and natural. Serena claimed Maya the first Christmas she spent at our house and has treated her like a daughter since. They walk off the carpet together.
Dad's hand lands on my shoulder as I stand beside him. He squeezes once.
"His mother's something else," he says.
The families clear the ice. The puck drops. We win.
Dante and I connect midway through the third on a sequence that starts with a look. His gaze finds mine across the neutral zone, and I cut before the puck moves because I already know where it's going. The pass arrives on my tape like it was always there. The net shakes. Six thousand voices merge into a single sound, and for three seconds on the ice, it feels the way it feels at midnight: the two of us operating inside a language no one else speaks.
The arena sees teamwork. I feel his hand on the back of my neck.
The final horn screams. The bench floods onto the ice. Families crowd the boards. Somewhere in the noise, Gio lifts Zoë off her feet near them. Her arms wrap around his shoulders. His face drops into the curve of her neck, and her hand grips the back of his jersey.
After the game, after the locker room and the media crush, the lobby is packed. The doors keep opening and closing as people pour through from the arena. Cold air slides in with every gust, carrying the smell of ice and popcorn.
Everyone is here. Clara and Talia stand near the merchandise table. Clara has a program open in her hands, already marked with pen and notes filling the margins. Talia leans into her shoulder, arms folded, watching the crowd drift past.
Dante stands near the tunnel entrance with a scout, jacket on, posture straight, voice low, coffee in one hand. Marco is beside him, positioned close enough that the scout registers his presence without Marco having to say a word. The overcoat, the watch, the posture, all of it speaks for him. The scout glancesat Marco and recalculates. His shoulders straighten. His voice lowers.
Marco breaks away and crosses the lobby toward me. He moves through the crowd the way Dante moves through crowds, smoothly, with everyone else adjusting around him.
"Cole."
He extends his hand. The grip is firm, warm.
"Good game."
"You drove three hours for this?"
"I drove three hours for my brother. The game was a bonus." He grins. "My mother has been crying since the ceremony. Your stepmother has been handing her tissues. They've moved from the carpet to the booster tables, and I believe they're now planning a summer trip to Milan."
"Again?"
"Serena considers every visit an insufficient amount of time with the people she loves. She's been lobbying for a longer stay since Christmas."
"On both sides," I say.
"On both sides." He grins wider. "They'll never stop." A beat passes. "My cousin Nico offered to fly in for tonight, but I told him not to."
A colder expression crosses Marco's face, there and gone before the sentence ends. The dismissal of a man who measured someone once and never needed to measure again.
"I told him family had it covered."
"That's either the best thing or the most dangerous thing about our families."
"With our families? Both. Always both." He says it lightly, but his eyes stay sharp.
