Page 73

He's in the bathroom brushing his teeth when I start. I'm on his bed, of course. On my back on the moose bedspread in nothing but a pair of boxers, scrolling on my phone, eating his protein bar.

He comes out with a towel around his neck and stops.

"Get off my bed."

"No."

"Theo."

"Hmm?" I take another bite. "Sorry. I didn't catch that. Can you say it with feeling?"

He looks at me. I look back at him and chew.

"That's mine," he says.

"Was."

I lick the chocolate off my thumb. Slowly. He watches me do it.

It's been building all week. All the way through practice, through video, through the four-hour bus ride with my knee pressed against the back of his seat. Every yes I've said to him on the ice has been so polite it's practically a middle finger. And he knows. I've watched him know.

He drops the towel on the chair.

"Last chance," he says.

"For what?"

"Get off the bed and say yes."

I put the last bite of the protein bar in my mouth. I hold eye contact the whole time I chew it. I swallow.

"Make me," I say.

Something changes in his face.

He doesn't grab me. That's not how he does it. He goes over to his hockey bag on the floor and unzips it and gets something out, and when he turns around he's holding a roll of tape.

Black. Hockey tape. The same kind I use on his sticks every night.

My mouth goes dry.

"Hands," he says.

I don't move.

"Theo." His voice drops. Quiet. Not angry. It's the voice from the hallway that first morning, the one that made the whole locker room stop breathing. "Hands."

I sit up. I hold my hands out.

He sits on the edge of the bed next to me. He takes my left wrist in his hand, and turns it over, palm up, and looks at it. His thumb rubs over the inside of my wrist, where my pulse is going crazy.

"Word?" he says.

"Whistle."

"Tell me what it's for."

"If I want to stop. Anything. Everything stops."