Page 93

The bench goes off. I’m on my feet without deciding to be, hands against my mouth. Beside me Sloane’s shouting something at Beau — not on the ice, Beau’s not playing, he’s behind the bench in his brace. She’s shouting at him anyway. Because that’s just what you do when your person is close enough to hear you, even if he can’t do anything with it.

Third period. Camden presses, playing the trap, clogging the neutral zone the way good teams do when they’re protecting a tie against a team they’re scared of. I watch Theo’s frustration build again — the tighter shoulders, the harder stride — but this time he doesn’t let it turn into anything. He absorbs it. Plays through it. I can see the discipline it costs him. The specific effort of a person choosing not to be the thing he wants to be in the moment. Something in my chest goes warm and proud in a way I don’t fully have words for.

With four minutes left, Whitmore gets a power play. I watch the setup — the umbrella formation, the puck moving point to point, patient, probing — and then Wyatt, quiet steady Wyatt, one-times a shot from the circle that beats the goalie clean far side.

2-1, Whitmore.

The building comes apart. I’m screaming something that isn’t words. Sloane’s got both hands on my shoulders. Somewhere on the ice Theo’s part of a pile of celebrating bodies, and I know — the way I know the small things about him now — that he’s smiling underneath all of it. The real one. The one hardly anyone gets to see.

They hold the lead. The final horn goes off with Camden still down a goal, and the whole arena erupts, and I’m on my feet again, hands pressed to my mouth, watching my boyfriend’s team clinch a spot in the conference championship.

He finds me in the hallway after, same as always, hair still wet from the shower, that specific loose-limbed exhaustion of a body that just spent sixty minutes fighting for something.

“You were incredible,” I tell him. “Both times.”

“Both times?”

“The interference penalty, and then the fix after.” I hold his eyes. “I watched you get in your own head about the penalty. Watched you skate the next shift too hot. And then I watched you catch yourself and reset before it cost you anything.”

He goes still for a second. Actually still, the way he does when something surprises him more than he expected it to.

“You saw all that?”

“I see all of it now.” I shrug, like it’s nothing, though it’s very much not nothing to me. “You explained the gap control thing to me in October like I was a golden retriever who’d wandered into a physics lecture. I’ve been paying attention ever since.”

The corner of his mouth moves. “I did not compare you to a golden retriever.”

“You absolutely did. It’s fine. I’ve grown.”

“You have.” He looks at me for a long moment, something warm and a little stunned behind it. “Nobody’s ever watched me play like that. Actually watched. Not just showed up.”

“I like watching you,” I say. Simple. True. “I like understanding what I’m watching even more.”

Cash comes past us in the hallway, still riding the high of the win, narrating some version of the third period that grows more heroic with each retelling, and he claps Theo on the shoulder hard enough to stagger him slightly. “Conference finals, baby! We’re doing this!”

“We’re doing this,” Theo agrees, dry, unbothered, and Cash moves on to find someone else to celebrate with.

Theo watches him go, then looks back at me. “You want to come to the barbecue this weekend? Beau’s already talking about it.”

“Obviously.” I smile. “Someone has to make sure Cash doesn’t set the yard on fire this time.”

“That was one incident.”

“That’s what he said about the smoke alarms too.”

He laughs — the real one — and kisses me, quick, careful, because Cash could turn around at any moment and this hallway isn’t ours to be careless in yet. For a second I let myself have this uncomplicated thing completely. The win. The pride. The specific joy of loving someone who’s good at something and getting to see it happen in real time, close enough to read every shift of it.

I don’t know yet that this is the last uncomplicated night I’m going to get for a while.

It starts small enough that I almost don’t notice.

Monday, the smell of the protein shake mix in the Sailmaker kitchen turns my stomach in a way it never has, and I chalk it up to a bad batch, pour it out, don’t think about it again. Tuesday, I skip breakfast because nothing sounds appealing, which isn’t like me — I’ve never once in my life not wanted food — and I tell myself it’s nerves about the LSAT practice test.

Wednesday, at cheer practice, Kara catches me mid-stunt looking pale enough that she calls a water break I didn’t ask for.

“You good?” she asks, handing me a bottle.

“Fine. Didn’t sleep great.”