Page 89 of Payback On The Ice

Because if I say my old teammates, it's Cole. It's Mikey. It's Reese, who already lost his money for missing a lift. Marrack reads it, and it's Cole and Mikey in the video room with the doors shut. He'll know. He'll know exactly who's been talking to me.

I write it eleven times. Eleven drafts. Some of them are two lines. One of them is three pages and ends in the middle of a sentence because I started crying and couldn't see the screen.

I delete them all.

Then I un-delete the first one. Just the first line. My name is Theo Lindqvist. And I save it, and I leave it there, a single line in a Notes app at two in the morning, the beginning of something I don't know how to finish.

My mom calls at two-thirty.

She never calls at two-thirty. She's still at the offices; I can hear the floor buffer going in the background.

"I saw the coach on TV," she says.

"Mom—"

"I saw him, baby. Linda at work showed me on her phone. That man." She says that man the way she says the name of my dad. "That man sat in my kitchen two years ago and ate my pot roast and told me he'd take care of you."

"I know, Mom."

"Are you okay?"

I think about lying. I always lie to her about this. She works two jobs and she's tired all the time and my sister needs braces, and she doesn't need to know.

"No," I say.

The buffer stops.

"I want to say something," I tell her. "I want to tell people. What he said to me. In the room. But if I do it now, he'll go after Cole and Mikey. He already threatened them. They're on money, Mom. Mikey's mom just lost her job."

She's quiet for a long time. I can hear her breathing. I can hear the hum of fluorescent lights in some office building in Ashby.

"When I was your age," she says finally, "I told the truth about something at the wrong time, and it cost somebody else. Somebody who didn't deserve it. I've never stopped feeling bad about it."

"What was it?"

"Doesn't matter. Old story." She sniffs. "The truth's not going anywhere, baby. It'll still be true in two weeks. In two months. You tell it when it won't cost those boys. Not before. Okay?"

"Okay."

"And you tell me first."

"I'll tell you first, Mom."

"Okay." The buffer starts up again. "Ice that ankle. I saw that block. You're a lunatic."

"Cole said the same thing."

"Cole's a good boy. Tell him I said hi."

She hangs up. I lie there in the dark.

After the series. That's what I'll do. I'll wait until the series is done and Marrack's season is over and everybody's money is locked in for next year. Then I'll tell it. All of it. The room, the stall, the hand on my knee. Mom first. Then Nico. Then Dane.

I won't tell Dane until then.

I know what he'd do. I saw his face on Wednesday when I said it's mine. I saw his face tonight in the handshake line when he skated past Marrack's hand like it wasn't there. He'd want to fix it. He'd go to Halvorsen, or the paper, or Ashby itself, and he'd do it because he loves me⁠—

I stop.