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I picked up my paper plate, slid it across the table, and put my pizza next to his wine.

“Here,” I said. “Take my pizza. You should eat.”

I don’t know why I did it. I really don’t. It was like watching my own hand do something on its own. It just seemed wrong, somehow, that a guy that big and that strong was sitting in front of nothing, and my whole life I have been the type of person who hears “no” and does the opposite, but I don’t remember ever, ever, giving someone half of my food.

He looked at the pizza.

He looked at me.

Then, slowly, with the enormous caution of a man defusing a bomb, Maksim picked up the slice, and he took a bite.

I watched him chew. He chewed like he was remembering how. Slow and careful, eyes on the middle distance, as if the taste was a language he hadn’t heard in a very long time. And for half a second, so quick I could have imagined it, something moved across that stone face, small and unguarded, and it was the most human thing I had ever seen him do.

I felt warm and stupid.

Score one for me, I thought.

I didn’t know why it felt like losing.

Chapter 4

LEX

The Sable

“Puck! Here! Here! “

My blood was up and my lungs were on fire and I was flying. It was Game Two, in the second period, with the score tied at one apiece, my stick loud on the ice and the whole arena a roar so thick it felt like breathing through a wall.

I love this. I want to be clear that, whatever else is wrong with me, I love this. There’s a version of me that only exists for sixty minutes at a time, in a helmet, when everything gets simple, and all I have to do is skate and hit and steal and score. Nobody asks me what I’m thinking, and nobody needs me to be nice. When I’m out here I’m not an antisocial rich kid with a temper. I’m a blazing fireball, and if you’re standing on the other end of the ice, you should probably move.

I had already scored once, and my goal for the night was three. I’d promised myself that first thing this morning, staring at the ceiling in Room 214 while an entire Russian slept, or didn’t sleep, on the other side of the room. I wanted three goals and a win, and I wanted that stone-faced ice prince to watch me do it.

Because he would watch. I’d noticed that already. He never looked at me when I was looking, but every time the play turned and I glanced up, there he was, gray eyes sliding away a half second too late.

There was no way I was going to let Maksim’s team win. It would make him even more unbearable. He’d go on looking down at everyone the way he always did, like the whole world was a rink full of children.

So when I saw him go for the puck, I went for him.

Maksim had gotten control near center ice. He was skating the way he always does, no wasted motion, no strain, like the ice was pulling him forward on a string. Enforcer or not, the guy had hands like a surgeon. He had his head up and was looking for the pass, and I lowered my shoulder and drove.

He saw me coming. I know he saw me. He chose to pass anyway, a quick, clean flick to his winger, and I got my stick on the puck an inch before it landed and stole it clean out of the air.

Yes!

“Beautiful!” somebody screamed from our bench.

I turned and looked for Maksim, because, honestly, I wanted him to see it, and he was already on me again, with our sticks clashing and our shoulders locked. The puck was dancing between us, back and forth and back and forth, and I don’t know why, but I couldn’t stop fighting for it. Every time I got a foot ahead he took it back like it was nothing, and I hated that, and for the first time ever during a game I felt something under my ribs that wasn’t rage. It was something closer to hunger.

Focus.

He got it away from me. I chased. It jumped to number six, one of theirs, and the guy tried to send it to their captain, and I stepped in and picked it clean off his tape and threw it to my own winger, a nice pass, an easy pass, a pass a toddler could have finished.

And that idiot let them take it right back.

I almost put my glove through the boards. All that effort. All that chasing. And Sorensen let the Ravens pick it off his stick like he’d forgotten what team he was on. I wanted to quit the game and go over there and punch him in the face. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true.

This is a serious game. Breathe. Be all in.