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I see it.

He gets to the end of the line and turns around to wait for me, and he's smiling, and his eyes are shining, and he looks happier than I've ever seen him.

I smile back. I don't say anything. Not tonight.

But I know what that hitch is. I know what a man looks like when he's hiding something. I've been watching him do it all year.

Chapter Twenty-Three

OWEN

There's a rule about the conference trophy.

You don't touch it. Everybody knows that. You win the conference, they carry it out onto the ice on a table with a white cloth, and the captain stands next to it for the photo, and he does not touch it. Not with a glove, not with a finger, not with anything. The only trophy you touch is the Cup. You touch the conference trophy, you've decided you're happy with second-best, and the hockey gods take the Cup away.

I've been in this league seventeen years. I've never been close enough to that table to worry about it.

We beat Edmonton in five. The last one's at home, a four-to-one game that's over by the middle of the second period, and by the end the whole building's on its feet, and the noise is so loud I can feel it in my back teeth. When the horn goes, the guys pour off the bench, and I stand in the middle of the pile with Webb's arms around my neck and Sorel screaming in French in one ear and Kowal pounding on my helmet, and I look for Rémy.

He's at the edge of the pile. He's not in it. He's looking at me.

His whole face is lit up, all the way, the way it was on opening night before anybody told him to dim it.

Then two guys from the league come out from the Zamboni doors carrying a folding table and a white cloth, and behind them, a man in a suit with white gloves carries out the trophy.

"Captain," says the man from the league. "For the photo."

I skate over. I stand next to the table. The trophy's big and silver and shaped like a bowl on a pedestal. I keep my hands behind my back. The photographers crowd in along the boards.

"Guys," somebody yells. "Everybody in!"

The team gathers around the table, a big messy group, everybody sweaty and grinning. Rémy squeezes in right next to me. His shoulder's against mine.

"Don't touch it," I tell him out of the side of my mouth.

"Why not?"

"It's bad luck."

"That's superstition."

"It's hockey. Everything's superstition."

He looks at the trophy. He looks at me. He's got that expression, the one he had in Denver when I gave him the list, like he's deciding how many rules he's going to break today.

"Rémy," I say.

He reaches out and puts one finger on the rim of the trophy.

A sound goes through the team like somebody let the air out of a tire. Webb says, "Oh no." Kowal puts his glove over his face.

The flashbulbs go off.

"There," Rémy says, taking his finger back. "Now it's my bad luck. Not yours. You're clean."

I stare at him. Around us, the guys are losing their minds. Sorel's laughing so hard he's bent over. Adeyemi's got his phone out, filming. Somebody's yelling, The rookie touched it, the rookie touched it, like it's a war cry.

"You're insane," I say.