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“Yes.”

“Even if it was bad?”

“Yes.”

“Even if you were mad?”

I think about the answers I almost gave her tonight and did not.

“I would try very hard.”

“That’s not yes.”

“No. It is the truth.”

She watches me a moment, then looks down at her book.

“I think he’s staying.”

“So do I.”

I turn back toward the counter. When I look again, she has moved her mathematics book to the side and pulled the stool beside hers out with her foot.

She does not look up to see whether it works.

It works.

Chapter forty

Colt

Their defenseman gives the pass away with his feet.

His shoulders sell one direction. His skates tell me the truth.

I step into the lane before he releases the puck, catch it on my blade, and send it back the other way. Roman is already moving. He takes the pass in stride and puts it over the goalie’s glove before the defenseman has finished swearing, and nineteen thousand people come up out of their seats.

Two to one, halfway through the second.

Finn is waiting at the door when I come off.

“How’d you know?”

“He told me.”

“He didn’t say anything.”

“His feet did.”

“Feet don’t.”

Finn stops.

He’s still looking at me, and the end of the sentence doesn’t arrive. On a bench with the whole building watching the replay above us, that’s a long time.

“Talk,” he says. “Feet don’t talk.”

“His are fluent.”