Page 36 of Cross Ice

Three minutes passed.

Danny

I am now. What happened?

Evan

He told me everything.

Danny

Everything?

Evan

He’s Nicolás Briggs. Number seventeen. San Jose Lasers.

A pause that was longer than typing time.

Then my phone rang.

“Say that again,” Danny said, his voice rough with sleep.

“Nico. The guy I’ve been seeing. He’s a professional hockey player. For the Lasers. He’s… Danny, he has a Wikipedia page. His contract is public record. He has three quarters of a million Instagram followers and women are leaving comments that…” I took a shuddering breath. “I’ve been here before.”

“You haven’t,” Danny said. “Listen to me. You haven’t been here before.”

“He’s famous. He’s public. People recognize him on the street⁠—”

“Evan.” His voice was firm but not unkind. “Did you look at his Instagram?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“Did you see any relationships on it?”

I thought about the grid of posts. The game photos, the sponsor content, the team events. “No.”

“Any dates? Anyone who showed up twice?”

“No.”

“Any indication at all that his private life has ever been public?”

I was quiet.

“That’s not nothing,” Danny said. I heard the click of a keyboard in the background. “I just looked him up.” He paused for a few moments. “He’s been in the NHL for eight years and there’s nothing. No relationships, no scandals, no one who’s talked to a magazine. Ryan’s relationships were public from day one because Ryan wanted them public. It was part of his brand. But with Nico, there’s nothing.”

“That could just mean he’s been closeted.”

“It could. It also means he knows how to protect what matters to him.” I could hear Danny shifting, settling into the conversation. “Tell me what he said. All of it.”

So I did. The tattoo, and Morelli and Savard’s photo. The first night at the club, wanting to be nobody. The way recognition changed how people treated him. The blackmail—Danny went very quiet at that part. The specific reason he’d waited to tell me, the fear that I’d make a decision about Nicolás Briggs before I’d had a chance to know Nico.

“He said he was afraid of losing you before you’d built something that could survive the telling,” Danny said when I finished.

“Yes.”

“And you told him about Ryan.”