Page 47 of Fractured Ice

"Dylan Reed⁠—"

"Has been perfectly respectful every time I've interacted with him."

"That's because you haven't given him a reason not to be." He looks at me like he's trying to be careful and starting to fail. "I know him. He runs through⁠—"

"You and Jace both have reputations significantly worse than Dylan's, so I'd appreciate it if neither of you tried to warn me about him." I hold Ethan's gaze until he looks away first. "It's one dinner."

Jace, across the booth, doesn't say anything. His expression says he has thoughts. He keeps them to himself.

Ethan picks up his glass. I pick up my notebook. The conversation continues awkwardly.

The restaurant empties gradually, and eventually the team starts making its way back to the hotel in the messy, noisy way teams do after a win, breaking into smaller groups and talking over each other and re-running plays with their hands in the air. Jace and Rory end up a few steps ahead of us, their voices low, Rory tucked under his arm.

I walk beside Ethan.

The air outside is colder than I'd expected after the warmth of the restaurant, and I rub my arms once without thinking about it.

Ethan shrugs out of his jacket.

"I don't need⁠—"

He's already draping it over my shoulders. He keeps walking.

"Ethan."

"You're cold."

"I can handle being cold."

"I know you can." He glances at me briefly. "You're still cold."

I stop arguing. The jacket is warm in a way that's immediate and disarming, and it smells like him, something clean and winter-cold and annoyingly comfortable, and I pull it closed and don't say anything about it.

“So, how’s life?” I ask, feeling awkward.

“Life?” he raises a brow. “Just… generally?”

Silently, I curse myself.

"Tell me about your sister," I say, trying again.

He looks at me. The shift in his face is so immediate it almost catches me off guard.

"Lily?"

"She's a senior, right?"

"Yeah, she's—" He's already smiling, the real version, the one that shows up without any effort. "She's halfway through twelfth grade. I try to get home a couple times a month when my schedule lets me. The drive’s only an hour, but you know how that goes sometimes."

"I know." We're from the same town. He knows I know.

"She's doing great this year. She's in theater, has been since freshman year. She was in the fall production, she sent me a hundred pictures of the costume she made." He shakes his head. "She made it herself. I don't know where she learned to sew. Not from anyone in our family."

"Is she good?"

"She's incredible." He says it with pride. "She sent me a clip from the last show and I watched it three times. She just—she's completely different on stage. You'd think she'd been doing it her whole life." He pauses. "I went home for the show. Drove down after practice."

"You drove an hour after practice to see a school play."