Page 40 of Fractured Ice

About him getting hit in the ribs to keep someone away from me and then shrugging it off like it barely registered.

The image of Ethan Walker I've been carrying around, the one I built over years, the charming disaster, the guy who runs through girls like they're disposable, the person I've always been slightly braced against… it's not sitting still the way it used to. There are things underneath it that don't fit.

A whistle blows.

And then someone hits Ethan, hard, from the side, and he goes down and doesn't get up immediately.

I don't decide to stand up. I don't make a choice about it. I'm just moving, my notebook sliding off my lap, already looking for the way down to the ice before I've thought about what I'm going to do when I get there.

Ethan pushes himself up onto one knee.

He looks toward the stands.

He finds me almost immediately, like he knows exactly where I was sitting, and our eyes meet for a second before I remember that I'm standing in the middle of an away arena having absolutely lost my professional composure, and his expression does the complicated thing it does sometimes and then he holds up one hand, signals fine, and gets to his feet.

Rory's hand closes gently around my arm.

"If he was really hurt, the trainers would already be on the ice," she says.

We both walk back to our seats.

My notebook is on the floor three rows down from where I’d been sitting. I pick it up. The page I was writing on is blank because I haven't written anything in ten minutes, the ten minutes before that were character observations, and I'm staring at the ice and trying to look like someone who is completely fine.

Rory doesn't say anything.

She doesn't have to.

"I'm concerned because he's my assignment," I say, before she can.

"Of course."

"If something happened to him mid-semester it would be a problem for the project."

"Absolutely."

"That's the only reason I stood up."

"Makes total sense." She takes a sip of her drink. "You care about the assignment."

"I do."

"Very professional."

"Rory."

"I didn't say anything." She smiles into her cup. "I'm just sitting here."

I watch the rest of the game and take notes that are somewhat more balanced between character observations and actual hockey, and Ridgehaven wins, and the arena does the thing arenas do when the visiting team wins, which is get very quiet very fast, and Rory and I make our way down to the team entrance to wait.

Jace comes through the side doors and finds Rory with the accuracy of someone who installed a tracking system, and she goes onto her toes to meet him. He says something to her that I don't catch and she laughs, and then they're moving toward the hotel and Rory waves back at me over her shoulder with a look that tells me this conversation isn't over.

I wave back and stay where I am.

Declan and Luca come through a few minutes later, mid-argument about something, and they both stop when they see me.

"Hey," Declan says, with the slight recalibration of someone who wasn't expecting to find a person waiting. "You here for Ethan?"

"I'm here for the project. He’s my assigned athlete for my journalism project."