Page 51

The arm stops lower.

A lot lower.

“Fuck.”

Roman’s cable goes quiet behind me.

I can feel the room notice.

Not pity. Nobody in here would be stupid enough to offer me that. What they’re doing is math. Roman plays my position when they need a second center. Brick has a brother-in-law who is an agent. Every man on this floor loves me, and every one of them is working out what my right shoulder means for his own next two years, and both of those are true at once and neither makes him a bad man.

I would be doing it too.

I square my feet and start again.

“Number three,” Astrid says.

My arm stops before it moves.

Do not perform for the room.

I meet her eyes. “The room’s performing for me.”

“The room can entertain itself.”

Brick laughs from the cable machine.

Maren does not.

Astrid keeps her eyes on mine. No softness in them. No warning either. She’s not asking me to pretend nobody is watching.

She’s asking me not to lie because they are.

I breathe out and lift the arm exactly once.

The number is worse.

She records it.

Roman starts his cable again. The room moves on.

Something in me does too.

Maren changes the screen. “Want the reach with the stick?”

Astrid looks at me, then toward the rink corridor.

“I want to see what the ice asks him to do.”

I step off the plates. “Finally. Somebody here with priorities.”

“You may regret that sentence.”

“I regret very little before coffee.”

“That explains the parking lot.”

There she is.