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It is where Lex’s parents live.

I did not tell him. I want that known, and I want it understood as a failing and not a virtue. I stood there for a long time with the phone in my hand and the fear rising in me like cold water in a well. Then I typed, with my hands shaking: Stay there. Copy everything. Come home.

And then I deleted the phone’s history, and went to shower, and told myself I would tell him in the morning.

I did not tell him in the morning.

It was the first, and the worst, of my mistakes.

Chapter 24

LEX

Game Five

The night before the last game, I broke Rule Three so hard it left a dent.

There wasn’t a rule left to break, honestly, because I’d eaten the coaster in the first week. But it felt good to say it in my head as I climbed the stairs to Room 214 at eleven p.m., with a bruised rib and a split lip and a heart going like a slot machine: Rule Three: no sleepovers. It was cute, and it was ancient history. I had a toothbrush in his bathroom and a sweatshirt in his closet, and I’d started, God help me, to leave my socks on his floor.

He opened the door before I knocked.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

“It’s a lip. It’s cosmetic.”

“That is my line.”

“I stole it.” I stepped inside and shut the door and put my back against it. “Hi.”

“Hello.”

“I won a game today.”

“I was present.”

“I scored a goal. “

“I was very impressed.”

“You put your hand on the glass in front of nine thousand people.”

“I did not think anyone was watching.”

“ I was watching.” I crossed the floor in three strides and took his face in my hands, and he closed his eyes. “Maksim. I can’t stop thinking about it. What you said. In the box.”

“I should not have said it there.”

“You should’ve said it everywhere. “

“Lex—”

“No. Listen.” My voice cracked. “I haven’t said it back. I know. You said you didn’t need me to. And I don’t know why I can’t. I think it’s stuck, like a bone in my throat. I think if I say it, I’ll be the guy who said it, and I’ve never been that guy. I don’t know how to be him. But I want to be.” I swallowed. “I want to be, Maksim. I’m working on it.”

He opened his eyes.

I’ve seen a lot of things in those eyes. Hunger, fear, patience, humor. I had never seen this: a gaze so soft and so wrecked and so full that it looked like the sea at dawn.

“You are doing beautifully,” he said.