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"Hi," I say.

He looks up.

His face is wrecked. His eyes are red. His lips are cracked from the cold, and his hair is sticking up on one side like he's been running his hands through it all night. He's shaking. He's been sitting on ice in dress pants all night. Of course he's shaking.

"You didn't answer," I say.

"No."

"I came anyway."

"I know."

I don't know what to do with my hands. I put them in my hoodie pocket.

"You're going to get hypothermia," I say. "Seriously. Lou's going to come in at six and find a goalie-shaped ice sculpture on center."

He doesn't smile. He looks at me.

"Tell me," he says.

"Nico told you."

"I want you to tell me."

So I sit down. On the ice, in front of him, cross-legged, so we're eye to eye. The cold comes through my jeans right away. I don't care.

And I tell him.

I tell him about the room at Harrow before the third period. How Marrack came over to my stall while I was retaping my stick, crouched down so nobody else could hear, and put his hand on my knee.

"He said, Their best D is killing us. Take him out of the series." I look at the green numbers on the scoreboard. "That's it. That's all he said. He didn't say how. He didn't say hit him from behind. He patted my knee and went back to the whiteboard."

Dane's very still.

"Seven minutes into the third, your brother went back for a puck in the corner. And I was coming in on the forecheck, and I saw his numbers. Four." I swallow. "And I had a second. More than a second. I could have rubbed him out on the wall. I could have played the puck. I could have pulled up."

I make myself look at him.

"I decided," I say. "I didn't freeze. Nobody pushed me. I knew exactly what would happen, and I did it anyway, because I was scared of Marrack and I wanted my scholarship more than I wanted your brother's spine to be okay. That's the truth." I stop. Breathe. "That's what I did."

He doesn't say anything.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me. I don't want you to. I'm not saying any of it to get anything back." My voice is cracking. I let it. "I'm saying it because you made a rule. In there, I tell you the truth. And I've been lying to you since September, and I'm not—I can't do that anymore. That's all."

The building hums. The compressor kicks on somewhere under the ice.

"I've been so angry," Dane says.

It comes out of him rough and low, like it's been sitting in his chest for a year.

"Since April. Every day. I wake up angry. I go to sleep angry. I put on my pads angry. It's the only—" He stops. "It's the only thing that holds me up. And Nico said last night he never blamed me. Not once. And I don't know what to do with that. I don't know how to stop being angry. I don't know who I am if I stop."

I look at him. At his hands, gripping his own arms so hard the knuckles are white.

"So stay angry," I say.

He looks up.