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He told me about a Viking who’d tried to sell him a horse. About the winter he crossed the Urals on foot and met a woman who read palms and told him he would fall in love with a man who had a “loud soul.” About the invention of the fork, which he’d found deeply suspicious.

Then we’d stop talking. And that part I won’t describe, except to say that Rule One was broken by the second night and Rule Three by the third, and on the fourth I woke up at 3 a.m. with my head on his chest and his hand in my hair and thought, calmly, Oh, right. This is the rest of my life.

Then I panicked and fell back asleep.

He never mentioned any of it. He never pointed out that I’d broken a rule, never smirked, and never said I told you so. He just kept setting small good things in my path like a man laying bread for a wild bird: a coffee at my locker, or a note tucked into my stick tape in his tidy, deliberate hand that said, Do not slouch in the third period. Your back is not what it was. He’d taught himself the emoji, and it was always the sideways smiley, because he thought the others were “dishonest.” I saved every one.

I hadn’t been so happy since the age of nine.

And that, I think, was the problem.

“Lex! Over here! One more!”

It was Thursday, the third day of Frost Cup Media Week, and I had never hated a photographer more.

The committee, in its infinite wisdom, had packed every player from every team into the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel for a four-hour publicity event. There were banners. There were sponsor tables. There was a fountain that didn’t work. Somebody had put a little snowman ice sculpture in the middle of the buffet, and it was melting in a manner that could only be called tragic. All around me, huge men in tailored blazers were being made to smile at cameras.

I hated it. I’m an enforcer. My natural habitat is a penalty box.

“Pendleton! Big grin! Give me the Kings smile!”

“This is my Kings smile.”

“It looks like you’re being held hostage.”

“Same difference.”

The photographer sighed and took the shot. I slid off the stool and went looking for a drink, and that’s when I saw him.

He was standing in front of a blue backdrop on the far side of the lobby, in a black suit and a dark red tie, hands clasped in front of him like a man at a funeral. He looked, as usual, spectacular and unreachable. Half the room was pretending not to stare. And leaning against him, close, very close, with one manicured hand wrapped around his forearm and her head tipped back to laugh up at his face, was a woman.

She was blonde and tanned and twenty-eight or thirty, with a press badge on her lapel that said KELSEY MARSH, WINTER SPORTS DAILY, and a red dress that stopped several inches above where any decent dress should.

“He’s so tall,” she was saying, at a volume meant to be overheard. “Is it true you’re from Novgorod? Say something in Russian, Maksim, I love it.”

Maksim said nothing. He stood perfectly rigid. His eyes were fixed at a point about a foot over her head, and his face wore a look I recognized. It was the look he’d worn at the welcome dinner, the look he’d worn on the ice, the look of a man being politely, silently endured.

A photographer said, “Get closer, guys, you look great.”

She got closer. She put her hand flat on his chest.

I don’t remember walking across the lobby. I remember the click of my shoes on the marble and a small dry voice in my head saying, Rule Two. Nobody finds out. You do not have the right. I remember reaching the edge of the backdrop, and stopping, and standing there with my hands in my pockets like a guy who just happened to be passing.

Maksim saw me.

His eyes moved, just slightly, to my face, then away, then back. Something passed across his expression, a question, an apology, and something else that was very quiet and very fierce.

Help me, said his face. Please.

And I stood there.

I stood there like an idiot and didn’t say a word.

I told myself it was for his sake. That I couldn’t blow the cover. That I was a man in a suit at a media event and he was another man in a suit and there was absolutely nothing between us but a shared bed and a fake arrangement. I told myself that.

Then Kelsey Marsh tucked her arm through his, tilted her head, and said, in a stage whisper, “You know, my hotel is just upstairs. If you ever wanted a private interview.”

And I turned around and walked away.