Page 34 of Thin Ice

"She always knows," Misha said.

I sat in Vern's stall and did my job. I answered a beat writer with a question about Boston's forecheck. The equipment guys asked about the new steel, and I said it felt good. I was fine. I'm world-class at sounding fine.

Still, something had changed overnight. I was more aware of every answer I gave, as if I were floating near the ceiling and looking down, watching.

Jamie dropped onto the bench next to me with his skates half unlaced. "Petey looked at the shoulder," he said, before I could ask. "It's nothing. Rotator's clean."

"Good."

"You were right to push me, though. It was grabbing at the top of the reach. I figured that was normal."

"Some of it's normal." I peeled the tape off my socks. "The trick is knowing when it's not. You don't have to figure that out alone. That's why the team hired Petey."

Brick found me in the players' lot, standing with Elias beside the gray truck we rode in on the way to the arena. Elias had swapped it overnight without a word. Brick walked up to us peeling a banana.

"Maddie made a cake for breakfast," he said. "Game One. Put one candle in it. I asked if she's doing that every game the rest of the way." He took a bite of the banana. "She says yeah. Says if we don't win the Cup, at least I'll be fat and happy on cake."

Elias pulled out of the lot and took Lindell home, wipers going, with the blue ribbons on the planters in the median wilting in the rain.

Dee had finished before we left for the rink, and Elias had carried the new keys in his pocket all day. We used them to get back into the condo. The spare set sat on the island in a small manila envelope, the kind banks use, with a receipt folded around two brass keys.

Elias sat on the sofa and opened his laptop.

"Did Michael get anywhere with the leases?" I asked.

"Two units changed hands since January. He's running both."

"Is there anything in all of this that I don't know yet?"

He didn't flinch. He gave it a moment.

"There was a car on the street two nights ago," he said. "Under the sweetgum. It sat there most of the night with somebody in it, and it was gone before I got downstairs. I didn't get a license plate. Michael logged it as fan traffic." A beat. "Then last night somebody broke into your place and moved your maintenance equipment and pills. I don't think those are two different things. I think they're one, but I didn't say it because I can't prove it."

It was true. That was clear in his voice, but it wasn't all of it. I knew how to read people holding something back.

I let it go.

The condo was quiet around us, only the rain and the hum of the refrigerator.

Elias walked up to me and didn't say anything. He stopped close enough that I had to look up, and he put one hand on the side of my neck, thumb along my jaw, and the rest of his fingers warm against the muscle there.

"I know how horrible it is, but they don't get to have this part," he said. "Whatever they took. They don't get you."

I couldn't remember the last time anyone had touched me like that. People touched me to move a joint, tape a muscle, or work a knot out of my back. They slammed against me, hugging me on the ice. Nobody ever meant it as comfort.

I reached up and closed my hand over his wrist, holding it there. With my other hand, I reached for his shirt, gripping the fabric in a fist.

We kissed. The first in the gaming room had been a question. This one wasn't.

Elias's mouth was warm and sure. We broke apart far enough to breathe. His eyes were dark and steady on mine, and he leaned in, his cock hard against my hip. Knowing I'd done that to him made my breath catch.

"Not here," I said. "Bedroom."

We made it three steps down the hall before I stopped him with a hand flat on his chest. His heart was beating hard under my palm. He was already as far gone as I was.

I pulled his shirt over his head in the doorway.

I'd seen swimmers' bodies my whole life, on TV and in magazines. I'd never had my hands on one. His shoulders were broader than they read under a shirt, and when I ran my palms down his back, feeling the muscle laid in long flat sheets, built for pulling water.