Page 86 of Home Ice

“The papers have spent weeks telling the wrong story. They keep asking whether the relationship between Max and Rafe was real, and they’ve got the wrong relationship. So I’ll tell you once, plainly, and then I’m done.” I kept my hands still on my knees. “The Gregory brother in love with Rafe Mikkelsen was never the one in the photos.”

The shop was so quiet I could hear the ring light’s small electric hum.

“Nobody’s asked him about me. He doesn’t know I’m saying this, and I’m not saying it to ask him for anything. If you’re watching this to find out what happens next, I can’t help you because I don’t know.” I looked into the lens, at the man on the far side of it. “He came into my shop in January and asked me how a dovetail holds without a nail, and he wanted the truth. That’s who he is. Everything the city fell for is who he really is, but it’s only a small part of him, and the man I know is better than the story you’ve heard.”

I stopped.

“That’s it,” I said. “That’s the whole announcement.”

Max reached out and tapped the phone, and neither of us said anything for a moment.

“Niko.” His voice was soft. “That’s the take.”

“I know it is.”

Max edited it, standing at the bench with the phone in one hand, and I watched him work, thumbs quick, trimming the front of his statement and the dead air off mine. He stitched the two takes into one piece. It took him twenty minutes, and he didn’t narrate any of it. When it was done, he played it through once, all the way, and then he stood there with his thumb over the button.

“Okay, now the professional truth,” he said. “It’s almost midnight. Midnight’s the wrong time to post. Engagement’s garbage. The East Coast is in bed, and the West Coast is out at dinner. All of my rules say we sit on it and put it up at nine in the morning.” He looked at me over the phone. “That would give you all night to think about it. So I’m asking once. Do you want to wait?”

“Do it now,” I said.

Chapter twenty-one

Rafe

Max had posted a video.

I sat up in bed. I pressed play before I’d thought about whether I was ready. That didn’t matter. If Max was talking again, I wanted to hear him.

He sat on a stool in Niko’s workshop.

“Hi. It’s me,” Max said. “I want to tell you what actually happened, and I want to do it in one take, so this is going to be a little rough. You can all live with that.”

He described everything that happened in order.

“Nobody was suckered,” he said. “I’ve read every word written about me this month, and I need you to hear this from the alleged victim.”

He looked so honest and believable, and he was doing it for me. I started composing a text to him in my head before he finished talking.

There was a cut, and then Niko appeared. He wore his apron and had his hands on his knees.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Niko had never let cameras into his shop. Max said he asked over and over.

Niko opened it to the world for me.

“My name is Niko Gregory,” he said. “I’m Max’s brother. I build furniture, and I’m going to be brief, because everything my brother just told you is true, and I only have one thing to add to it.”

He looked directly into the lens.

“The papers have spent weeks telling the wrong story. They keep asking whether the relationship between Max and Rafe was real, and they’ve got the wrong relationship. So I’ll tell you once, plainly, and then I’m done.” His hands remained still. “The Gregory brother in love with Rafe Mikkelsen was never the one in the photos.”

I almost dropped the phone.

He continued on and then closed with, “That’s the whole announcement.”

The video ended on a frame of Niko, silent with his hands on his knees.

I was standing in the living room. I didn’t remember getting up, and I didn’t remember walking out of the bedroom, but I was standing on the rug in the dark with the phone in my hand. Niko’s console was a long, low shape against the wall, and above it the weaving held its colors even in near darkness.