Page 196 of Wild Card 13

I rubbed the back of my neck with my glove and immediately regretted it because hockey gloves were not built for subtle emotional coping. “I wasn’t going to do anything.”

Alois stared at me.

“Fine,” I said. “I was going to do several things.”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t.”

“No.”

“Because you grabbed me.”

“Yes.”

I gave him a look. “This conversation is emotionally rich.”

“You prefer I use more words?”

“No, actually. This is awful enough.”

His mouth moved. Barely. On anyone else, it would have been the beginning of a smile. On Alois, it was probably a system failure. He shifted his helmet under his arm. “You are not as hidden as you think.”

I looked toward the doorway, where the hallway flashed alpine green every few seconds as the arena lights rolled through their pregame sequence. The guys were still out there. Waiting. Chirping. Getting ready to become a team instead of a room full of unresolved personality disorders with sticks.

I should have moved. Instead, I stayed in front of my stall with my heart doing something stupid against my ribs. “What do you—” I started.

Then stopped. Because I did not want to know. Because if Alois said Bea’s name, or Lucy’s, or somehow looked straight through me and dragged eight years of unfinished history into a visiting locker room in Denver, I was going to have to survive that thirty seconds before warmups, and frankly, the altitude was already asking a lot.

Alois watched me decide not to ask. Then, because he was apparently capable of mercy when it was inconvenient, he let it go. “Burns,” he said.

“Yeah?”

He adjusted his grip on his stick once. For the first time since I had known him, Alois Müller looked almost uncomfortable.

Not nervous. That would have been too human and possibly illegal under whatever contract kept him terrifying.

But there was a hesitation in him. A carefulness. Like whatever he had to say mattered enough that even he knew blunt force would not work.

I straightened a little.

He looked toward the doorway, then back at me. “Bea and I are setting the wedding party.”

Something in my brain changed directions too fast. “Okay.”

“I want you to stand with me.”

I blinked.

The crowd outside roared at something. A player banging his stick against the wall, maybe. A camera finding the home bench. The beginning of the show before the game became real.

Inside the locker room, everything narrowed to Alois standing in front of me with his helmet under his arm, asking like the answer was not already obvious and still somehow mattered.

“You want me to be one of your groomsmen?”

“Yes.”

I waited for the insult. The qualifier. The dry little comment that would make the moment easier to hold.