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RULES, it says at the top, in block capitals. Underlined twice.

There's only one.

1. I STAND NEXT TO YOU.

The letters are pressed so hard the pen almost went through.

"I thought I'd need a lot of them," Owen says, very quietly. "Like before. Two pages. I sat in Webb's van for twenty minutes trying to think of more. But that's the only one. That's the only one that matters."

I look at the paper. I read it again. The words go blurry.

"I'm not asking you to hide," he says. "I'm never going to ask you that again. I'm not asking you to wait for me, either. I'm asking you to let me stand next to you. In the hallway. In the lobby. In front of Ray. In front of anybody." He takes a breath that shakes all the way down. "I love you, Rémy. I've loved you since before I knew what it was. I'm sorry it took me so long to be brave enough to deserve you."

I don't say anything.

I can't. I sit there on the orange couch with the list in my hands and tears running down my face, and I can't make a single sound come out.

He waits. He doesn't push. He just sits there with his leg on my coffee table, on a pillow shaped like a hockey puck, and waits for me.

Finally I fold the paper back up. Carefully, along the crease he made.

I get up. I go into the kitchen. I open the drawer where I keep my passport and my car registration and the pierogi menu Sorel left, and there, on top of everything, are the other two.

His list. Mine.

I don't know why I took them back. I found them in Sorel's room in Nashville, on the nightstand, the morning after game four. Owen must have given them to Adeyemi to give to Sorel to give to me. I put them in my bag. I didn't look at them. I didn't throw them out, either.

I bring all three back to the couch. I put them on the coffee table, next to his brace.

"Rule four," I say, and my voice is wrecked. "Mine. If you ever call it a mistake in front of anybody, it's over."

"I know."

"You broke it."

"I know."

"I'm going to make a new one," I say. "Right now. It replaces it."

He doesn't say anything. He's watching me.

I pick up his new list, the one with one rule. I pick up the pen from the coffee table, the one I was using to write the lineup on the back of an envelope, like a kid, all afternoon.

Under his rule, in my messy handwriting going uphill, I write:

2. So do I.

I hand it back to him.

He reads it. He reads it for a long time. His face does something I've never seen it do, not in the stairwell, not on the ice, not at the lake. It comes apart. All of it, all at once. Like a dam going.

"Rémy," he says, and that's all he can get out.

"That's one," I say. "For today. You're still counting, right? No expiration."

He laughs. It's wet and broken and it's the best sound I've ever heard, better than the ping.

I climb across the cushion. I'm careful of his leg. I put my knees on either side of his good one and my hands on either side of his face, and I kiss him. Gently. The way I did the first night in Toronto, with my hand on his jaw so he knows exactly where I am.