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He had a camera.

It was a big camera with a long lens, like the ones you see on the sidelines at the Cup, the ones that look like a bazooka. He held it against his face, quite still, pointed at the Northern Lights Lounge behind me, or perhaps at me.

I stopped. I stared.

Slowly, the man lowered the camera.

I couldn’t see his eyes. I couldn’t see much of his face at all, only a pale jaw and a thin mouth. But he stood there, in the light of the streetlamp, and for a long second we looked at each other across the empty road, and I felt something cold walk right down my spine.

Then he tucked the camera inside his coat, turned, and vanished into the alley.

I stood there, breathing hard.

It’s nothing. Some paparazzo. Some weirdo with a hobby. I’ve been photographed before. It comes with the last name.

But I thought about Maksim’s voice. They believe everything like me is a murderer, and they do not check.

I put my hands in my pockets and I started walking a little faster.

I got to the guest house. Outside 118, I stopped. My hand, entirely on its own, went to the wall and pressed flat against the plaster, and I looked up at the ceiling, toward the second floor, toward the corner room I’d left and a door I couldn’t see.

Room 214.

He’d said I had all the time I wanted. He’d said he wouldn’t follow.

He hadn’t. I knew it. All day, all night, not one text, not one knock. He’d folded my underwear and made my best friend promise I’d eat and then he’d vanished, and it drove me out of my mind.

I don’t know what I’d expected. I hadn’t wanted him to follow. That’s not it. It’s just that I’d spent my whole life being chased, or ignored, or handled. And here was someone with all the power in the world who was standing very quietly off to one side, waiting to be asked.

I took out my phone. I looked at it.

I didn’t have his number.

I laughed out loud, alone, in a hallway, at my own ridiculous life.

Fine, I thought. Fine. I’ll do it the old way.

The rink would be empty after midnight. Ravens’ optional skate ended at eleven; the arena’s night crew never locked the side door on the visitors’ tunnel. Everyone knew that. And if there was one man in the entire tournament who skated alone at midnight, on ice so cold it hurt to breathe, because it was the only place he ever looked at peace, I knew exactly who it was.

I needed to test something.

A kiss. One kiss. If it did nothing, I could sleep. I could go back to being a normal guy with a normal problem, and never think about Room 214 again.

And if it did something…

Well. I wasn’t going to think about that.

I went back into 118 and dug my skates out of the bag. Jason was asleep with his mouth open. Chip, who had been evicted to 305 and was presumably still crying, was nowhere in sight. I sat on the edge of the cot, in the dark, and laced up my boots with steady hands.

Then I went out into the night to prove that I felt nothing.

PART TWO

THE BET

Chapter 11

LEX