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Then he glanced over his shoulder, straight at me, and I whipped my eyes back to my screen so fast I almost threw my phone. I started whistling. I typed random words into the chat. My face was on fire.
Pucksworth is typing…
Pucksworth is typing…
Pucksworth: ARE YOU EVEN READING THIS
“Nope,” I said out loud, to no one.
Nothing happened that night. That’s the part that annoyed me. I lay on the big bed with my hands behind my head, full of energy, and planned. I figured he’d come and get into the bed, because where else would he sleep? I figured I’d wait until he was almost asleep and then give him a couple of heavy, dangerous kicks and pretend I was dreaming. It was a brilliant plan. I lay awake for hours waiting to execute it.
At some point around midnight he got up, put on a jacket, and left. Didn’t say a word. Just opened the door, stepped into the hall, and closed it very quietly behind him.
He didn’t come back.
I woke up alone at six, spread out across the whole mattress like a starfish. I had the big bed to myself. The daybed under the window was made, corners tucked in, untouched.
Where did the guy go at night?
Huh.
“Give me a pizza, an apple, and a bottle of milk,” I told the woman at the guest house diner. It was seven in the morning. She gave me a look. I gave her a tip. She stopped giving me looks.
Then I carried my tray across the dining hall to the corner table where Maksim Volkov was sitting, alone, in a black sweater, like a man attending a funeral for himself.
I couldn’t believe it. I was literally sharing a room with the enforcer from the other team.
“What’s up, buddy?” I said, and dropped into the chair across from him.
He lifted his head, just barely, and gave me the smallest possible glance. It landed on my tray, and I swear I saw one eyebrow move a millimeter.
“So what have you got?” I asked, pulling my pizza closer. “I got pizza. I got an apple. I got milk. What are you having?”
No answer.
I looked at his plate.
There was no plate. There was a glass of red wine. At seven a.m. Sitting on the table by itself like a lonely little sculpture. That was his breakfast.
“That’s it?”
He looked at the wall.
“Is that what you’re having for the rest of the day?”
Nothing.
“Hey. Ice prince. Is that what you’re having for the rest of the day?”
He pretended not to hear me. I’ve spent my entire life being ignored by professionals, and I could tell this was a professional. But something was starting to itch at the back of my head, because I’d noticed this before, at the rink, at the welcome dinner, and on the shuttle from the airport. Whenever I’d looked, he’d been drinking wine, and he’d never once been eating: no fries, no bread, nothing. When the Ravens all ate together, he sat at the end with a glass and looked at the table.
I don’t know what made me look closer. He was so still. His hand around the stem of the glass was pale and long and perfectly steady, and there was nothing on his face at all, but he looked… tired. He didn’t look sleepy. He looked old, in a way I couldn’t explain.
Why doesn’t this freak eat? Where does he go at night?
I decided, right then, right there, that I was going to find out.
But first I did something dumb.
