Page 200 of Slashed Bonds

Half a beat. The thing I’ve been drilling for two weeks with a bucket of pucks and a goalie who won’t say the words.

There’s a sign on the display, hand-lettered in Meg’s handwriting. BUY TWO GET TWO. Gloves or sticks.

I look at the price.

I look at it again.

That’s a steal. At what they cost, that’s a fucking crime, and she’s the one committing it.

I bite my bottom lip.

Four pairs of gloves. Four sticks. I’d keep one of each and there’d be three left, and I know three men who need gloves, because the chewing spree wasn’t selective, Knox went through Killian’s bag and Nikolai’s spare pair and came out of Cassian’s room with something in his mouth that didn’t survive.

And the sticks. Killian’s a defenseman with a wrist shot he’s only now learned he has. Nikolai doesn’t shoot. Cassian would try anything that bought him a half beat on the dot.

Matching gloves. Four of them, in a pack. Is that weird? Would that be weird. That’s a thing couples do with jackets.

I pull out my phone.

And stop, with my thumb over the screen, because a thought arrives late.

Did I ever get their numbers?

I think about it. Two and a half weeks. We’ve shared a bed and a shower and a bathroom floor and a boxing ring and I don’t think a single one of them has said here’s my number. Why would they? We live in the same house. Communication happens through a wall or a note or a hand on the back of my neck.

I pout. At the phone.

I’m about to give up on the idea, to buy my own pair and let the deal go, when I open my contacts to be sure.

And there, in the C’s, between a clinic and a cab company I haven’t used in a year.

Cassian.

One word. No surname. And a number.

I gawk at it. I’m standing in a hockey store with my arms full of shin guards gawking at my own phone like it’s spoken, because I didn’t put that there. I’d remember. I’d have agonized over the contact name for ten minutes.

Fuck it.

I press it. I put the phone to my ear.

It rings once.

“Yes, Malice.”

He picked up on the first ring. In the middle of whatever he’s in the middle of. First ring.

I like how he says it. I’ve noticed, these two weeks, that it’s a public name. When we’re alone, in the dark or over a plate, he calls me Mori. Malice is for rooms with other people in them, for the ice, for the phone. The way Killian and Nikolai move between Monarch and Mori depending on who’s listening, and Nikolai keeps Mommy for when nobody is.

“Um. Hi. Uh…”

I don’t know what to say. I knew a second ago. Now I’m standing here with a phone and a man breathing on the other end of it, and the knowing’s gone, and the silence stretches out and the nerves come up through the gap.

“How are you?”

Calm. A prompt, held out like a hand.

I can answer that. I know the answer to that.