I lock the spare room door from the inside. The envelope is back in my bag, the key is in my pocket, and the sounds of two men settling into their rooms press in from either side.
The envelope has my dead name on it. Dante just told me to lock my door without knowing why. Cole's hand is still warm on the back of my neck.
Around me, the house breathes.
The lock clicks cleanly into place, and the envelope stays inside the room with me.
Chapter 16
Dante
Maya's breathing count starts at 2 a.m.
I am awake in the space between cycles, the thin hour when the house goes silent and my mind starts running inventory. Marco's unanswered texts. The draft. The season. Cole breathing through the wall.
For three nights now, Maya has been at the end of the hall, pulling air into her lungs by force of structure.Four in, four hold, four out.I hear it only when I hold still enough. Night one, three cycles. Night two, five. Tonight, eight. The repetitions are increasing, and I lie in the dark with both hands flat on the mattress, counting her counting.
On Tuesday, we play the conference quarterfinal at Providence and win. The system works, the Voss-Maddox line produces, and Addison's adjustments hold. I play the way I play when my body knows the game and my mind is at the end of the hall. Efficient. Violent. Precise enough that scouts write it down and coaches call it focus.
In the second period, a two-on-one develops off a clean zone entry. I have the pass. Cole is open on the weak side, and my eyes cut to the press box for one second before I can stop them.
Her seat is empty.
It should be empty. She is at Elm House. Spare room at the end of the upstairs hall. Door that locks from the inside. Eight cycles last night before the house went quiet. The pass still finds Cole on muscle memory, the read late by half a stride. Addison will not catch it on film.
Cole will.
He notices between the second and third period, in the tunnel, when he puts his shoulder against mine.
"Where are you?"
"Here."
"You're playing hockey the way you drive a car. Your body's doing it."
"My body scored twice."
"Your body scored twice while you were somewhere else. I'm asking where."
I do not give him an answer because I do not have one that makes sense. My head is at the end of the hall, counting breathing cycles, lying awake at 2 a.m. tracking Maya's four-count through a wall I used to only listen through for Cole.
We ride the bus home for two hours with film running on tablets. I watch the same shift fourteen times and see nothing.
Marco texts during the ride, three messages in succession.
Papà wants to talk about the summer. The Milan meeting is confirmed.
Papà expects you in June.
Call me, Dante. The silence ends this week or I come to campus. Your choice.
The summer. June. Milan. I have been deflecting the meeting since October, the one where the family discusses the transition. Marco's word for the moment when the draft money starts flowing and the Voss infrastructure extends into whatever city I land in. Restaurants. Consulting firms. Investment vehicles.
My thumb hovers over the thread. I delete the texts, but Milan stays printed behind my eyes. It will still be there tomorrow and the day after, because Marco does not ask twice without following through.
The bus pulls into Briarcliff at midnight. Cole and I walk to Elm House through the cold with our bags over our shoulders, the three-inch gap between us, and four minutes of silence.
The living room light is on when we get inside, the pale glow of a laptop screen leaking into the hallway.
