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“Just drive.”

“We’re walking.”

“Then walk faster.”

The bar was called Gilt, and it lived on the ground floor of the Ambassador Hotel, the same one where I’d watched a reporter put her hand on my— on Maksim’s chest. It was a great choice, Jason, wonderful, nothing like ordering a drink at the scene of the crime. But the place was packed, with glass chandeliers and a mirror-topped bar and a live band in the corner and the whole Frost Cup circus in its good clothes. Half the Kings were there, and half the Ravens, too, players from six countries in one gold-lit room, laughing too loud and drinking too fast and wearing a hundred kinds of cologne.

I told the bartender, “Champagne.” He said, “Which?” I said, “Whatever costs the most.”

Jason ordered gin and tonic. Chip ordered a glass of milk, and defended it against all comers.

“You okay?” Jason asked, over the music.

“Great.”

“You keep touching your neck.”

I took my hand down. “It’s new.”

“It’s cute.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying it’s cute. “

I drank the champagne. It was cold and sharp and made my nose fizz, and the second glass went down easier. By the third I’d stopped watching the door.

It was around then that they found us.

There were five of them. Bachelorettes, from the look of it, in matching pink sashes and a truly dangerous amount of glitter. The leader was a tall woman in her thirties with a wild laugh and a plastic tiara reading BRIDE, who marched straight up to our table, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Which of you can dance?”

Jason pointed at me.

“Traitor,” I said.

“I’m a defenseman, I can’t dance.”

“I can not dance.”

“Everyone dances!” said the bride. “It’s a bar! It’s a law! My name is Bree, I’m getting married on Sunday to a man named Doug, he owns a Subway, and if I don’t dance with somebody handsome and tall tonight I’m going to have a breakdown. “ She grabbed my wrist. “Come on. One song. You can leave after.”

“Lady, I really—”

“I’ll tell your mother.”

“I don’t know how you know I have a mother.”

“Everyone has a mother. Come on. “

I looked at Jason. Jason looked at me with an expression of supreme innocence, and mouthed the words Have fun.

I went.

I should mention I’m a terrible dancer. I have two moves: the Hockey Shuffle, which involves standing still and nodding, and the Enforcer, which involves being dragged around by a smaller person until the song ends. But Bree was good at this. She was loud and warm and fearless and she spun me like a top, and somewhere in the second chorus I stopped thinking about anything and just moved. The band was doing a slow, jazzy cover of some song from the nineties. The crowd had begun to draw back, making room. Somebody whooped. Bree whooped back, and pulled me into a dip, and I laughed out loud for the first time in three days.

That’s when I saw him.

He was standing at the edge of the dance floor, by the pillar near the stairs, half in shadow, arms folded, in a black suit. No tie. Collar open. He must have just come in from the cold: there was a dusting of snow on his shoulders, and it wasn’t melting.