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Dr. Adler looks at me for a long moment. Longer than last time.

“That,” she says, “is still the most honest answer I’ve heard all semester.” She uncaps her pen. Writes something down. Looks up. “Though I notice the defender delivers it with considerably less anxiety than she did the first time she said it.”

A small laugh moves through the room. I feel my face go warm.

“Must be the material,” I say. “Grew on me.”

Dr. Adler’s mouth does something that isn’t quite a smile but is adjacent to one. She doesn’t push further. She doesn’t need to. I think she’s known since week four, the same way Cash knows and Beau knows and everyone who’s ever watched us in the same room for longer than five minutes knows.

I sit down. My hands are steady. My chest is doing something warm instead of something frightened, which is new, and which I like considerably better.

The seminar ends at ten-thirty. Grades by the end of the week. Dr. Adler dismisses us without ceremony, same as always, and the room empties around us.

Theo waits at the door. We end up in the hallway, same as always, except this time there’s no excuse expiring and no cover story dissolving. There’s just us, and the fact that we don’t need the project anymore to have a reason to be in the same room.

“Good defense,” he says.

“Excellent,” I correct him. Automatic. Bright.

“Right. Excellent.” He almost smiles. “The Adler answer.”

“Same one as last time.”

“Better delivery.”

“I had a good night’s sleep.” I raise an eyebrow. “Four hours of it.”

He laughs — the real one, quiet, just for me — and something in my chest does the thing it’s been doing for a week now every time he laughs like that. Like I did that. Like I get to keep doing that.

“Game’s tonight,” he says. Not really a question.

“I know. I have practice until five, but I’ll be there.” I adjust my coat. “Front section. Same as always.”

“You don’t have to rush.”

“I want to.” I look at him. “I’ll be there before warmups end.”

He nods, like that settles something he wasn’t going to say out loud anyway.

“Sunday too,” he adds. Raven House. The standing thing. The life that built itself around us while we were pretending we were nothing.

“Sunday,” I agree. “But tonight first.”

He goes one way. I go the other. I walk out into the March morning with my excellent grade and my grandfather’s watch on someone else’s wrist, already running through the day ahead — practice, a shower, the drive to the rink, finding my seat before the puck drops.

For the first time in longer than I can remember, I’m not bracing for any of it.

I’m just walking into it.

Chapter 20

Theo

Warmups start at six-forty.

I’m on the ice before most of the team. Normal for me. I like the quiet lap before the building fills — the specific silence of an empty rink that’s about to stop being empty. I skate the blue line twice. Feel the edges. Check the give in my knees.

Cold air. Good ice. The Zamboni’s fresh cut still holding its shine under the lights.