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My name. On her. In front of twenty thousand strangers and on a woman who swears she wants somebody else. She wants that fucker, Ethan.

I know we’re fake. I know it but go ahead and explain that to my heart.

The puck drops and the world shrinks to the good clean violence of the game. First shift I eat a hit at the blue line that rattles the fillings in my head, and I give it back with interest and a grin.

By the second period we're down one and I can feel the building start to hold its breath, that specific playoff-push hush where the fans pray the same prayer at the same time.

Ryker springs me on a two-on-one, and the whole rush I'm aware of exactly where she is, like she's true north and my body just knows the heading.

I drag the D across, slide it to Ryker, he slides it right back, and I roof it top shelf where Mama hides the cookies.

The building comes apart at the seams.

My skates lead me to her.

The horn is still blaring, the guys are already coming for me, and instead of skating into the pile I peel off toward the glass near the family box, find her on her feet screaming with the rest of them, and I point.

Straight at her. My name on her back and my goal on the board and I point at her like she belongs to me, and the broadcast eats it alive, and somehow the place gets louder.

We close it out three to one.

After, in the tunnel, cameras stacked and Meridian's people watching from the wall, she's waiting where the families wait, cheeks flushed and eyes bright.

This is the shot we planned. The money shot. The reformed bad boy and his girl.

I take her face in both hands and I kiss her.

It's supposed to be for the cameras. A few seconds, clean, sell the story, let go. But she makes a small sound against my mouth and her fingers fist in my jersey, and I forget the cameras. I forget Meridian and the fans and the man named Ethan.

I kiss her the way I want to and she kisses me back like she means every second of it too. It doesn’t last long but it’s definitely a kiss.

A flash goes off. Then a hundred more.

And past her shoulder, at the end of the tunnel, in a Boston travel jacket with a duffel still slung over one shoulder is Cade.

And his face has gone white just like the ice.

Chapter 10: Margot

"Since when does business kiss like that?"

Cade's voice cuts through the noise, and my stomach drops to the floor.

My brother is here.

His face is pale, looking at the two of us like the ice just split open under his skates.

He’s built like our dad and grown further into it since I saw him last. The same red-brown hair as mine, shorter now, shoved back off a forehead creased with worry.

And I know that look on his face. It's the one he wears when he thinks his little sister is in trouble.

Every excuse I have ever built evaporates.

I can still feel the kiss. That's the problem.

Somewhere in that kiss, it went from fake to real.

I’m still shaky in my legs when I have to spin around and pretend to my brother that it was nothing.