Page 35 of Cross Ice

I read it twice. Then I kept going: draft history, career statistics, contract details. His current contract was listed. The number made me set the laptop on the cushion beside me and look at the ceiling for a moment.

Ryan had made that kind of money. I knew what came with it.

I picked the laptop back up.

The images were next. Nico in his jersey, number seventeen, mid-stride on the ice with an expression I’d never seen on his face—focused to the point of ferocity, nothing like the easy warmth I knew. Nico at press conferences, patient and composed in Lasers-branded gear, answering questions with that half-smile. Nico signing autographs outside an arena, a line of fans stretching out of frame, each one getting a moment of his full attention.

That last one was the one that stopped me.

I knew that posture. The slight lean forward, the pen in hand, the way he angled himself toward whoever was in front of him. I’d seen Ryan do it a thousand times—the practiced performance of accessibility, the public-facing warmth that existed separately from anything private. I’d spent years watching Ryan perform warmth to strangers and treating it as proof of something real. It wasn’t proof of anything except that he was good at it.

I told myself Nico wasn’t Ryan.

I kept scrolling.

His Instagram was public. Of course it was, it was part of the job, he’d said that. Seven hundred and fifty-three thousand followers. The posts were mostly hockey: game highlights, practice clips, the occasional team event, a few sponsor posts, clearly marked. Nothing personal—no apartments, no restaurants, no candid moments that might tell me what his life looked like when the cameras weren’t there. He controlled his own feed carefully, that much was clear.

But Google was less curated. There were fan sightings—someone’s blurry phone photo outside an arena, a restaurant candid that had made a gossip site’s “spotted” column, a group photo from what looked like a charity event. In all of them he was alone, or with teammates, or with fans. Never with anyone who looked like more than that. Never with anyone who appeared twice.

That should have been reassuring. Partly it was. Years of nothing visible meant he’d been telling the truth about keeping his private life private.

But it also meant I had no idea what I was walking into. No ex who’d talked to a magazine. No relationship that had surfaced and shown me how he handled it when things got complicated. Just a clean slate that told me nothing about what came next.

I clicked on the most recent post of a game photo, Nico in mid-celebration after a goal, arms out, face open in a way that I recognized. That was Nico. Whatever else was on this page, that was actually him.

Then I made the mistake of reading the comments.

You can wreck me any day, number 17.

The way he moves on the ice should be illegal.

Marry me Nicolás

I would literally do anything.

Hundreds of them. Thousands, on some posts. Men and women both, all of them directed at a person I’d fallen asleep on four hours ago. A person whose laugh I knew, who made eggs and forgot everything else his mother taught him, who had covered me with a blanket when he left.

I closed the laptop.

Sat in the dark for a moment.

This was the part I hadn’t let myself think about while he was here, while his hand was in mine and his voice was careful and sincere and I was deciding to try. This was the part that lived on the other side of that decision. Three quarters of a million people who felt entitled to him in some way, who had an opinion about him, who would have an opinion about anyone he was with. If this became public—when, not if, because I’d learned that lesson already—those comments would have a target.

That target would be me.

I’d been written about once. I hadn’t asked for it. A gossip site had run a piece after Ryan and I broke up—Ryan Pierce’s mystery boyfriend—and within forty-eight hours strangers had found my LinkedIn, my old Twitter, a photo from a friend’s wedding where I was in the background. They’d posted my workplace. They’d sent messages to my personal email.

I’d had to change my number. Change my name. Move to a different city and become someone new enough that the searches stopped finding me.

I sat on my couch at two forty-five in the morning and tried to be rational about the difference between then and now. Nico had said he wasn’t making any public statements about his personal life. He’d said he knew how to keep things separate. He’d been doing it for fourteen years.

He’d also said he couldn’t promise that nothing would ever get out.

I picked up my phone and texted Danny.

Evan

Are you awake?