Page 79 of Payback On The Ice

I don't say anything else. I just look at him. And he looks back at me from the end boards, with the puck on his stick, and his face goes red. Slowly, from his neck up, all the way to his hairline. He opens his mouth. He shuts it.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he says.

"Okay."

"I just missed."

"Okay."

"I miss sometimes. I'm human. It happens."

"Six times," I say. "Since September. On a breakaway."

He stares at me.

"You counted?"

"I write them down."

"You write—" He laughs, but it doesn't sound right. "Of course you write them down. Of course you do. You've got a little notebook. Do you have a little notebook, Dane?"

I don't say anything.

"Oh my God. You do."

"Tomorrow," I say. "Six."

He looks at me. He's breathing hard. There's something in his face I've never seen before. He looks scared and hopeful at the same time, like a kid standing at the top of a big hill on a sled, who doesn't know yet if he's going to do it.

"Yes," he says.

He drops the puck in the bucket, and goes, and doesn't look back.

I don't tell him I know. Not that night, or the next one.

I don't know how. If I say it out loud, it's a real thing. He's missing on purpose because he wants to stay. Then I have to say the next thing: I want him to. And I don't know what happens after that. I don't know what we are when there's no wager. When there's no reason for him to be on the ice at six except that he wants to be. When there's no order to give.

I've never done this without a reason.

So I don't say anything.

But that night, I go to his room. I knock on the door, three times, soft, and he opens it in his T-shirt with his hair sticking up, and he looks at me.

I don't say equipment room. I don't say upstairs. I don't say anything.

I just come in, and close the door behind me, and put my arms around him.

He goes stiff. Then he goes soft, all at once, the way he goes when I say yes. He puts his face in my neck.

We stand there in the middle of Nico's old room, under the four white squares of tape. I don't know how long.

"What's this for?" he says, eventually, muffled, into my shirt.

"Nothing."

"Truth."

I close my eyes.