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Yeah, he said. Before I finished asking.

I stop the smile. I press my lips together. I look at the red light. I think about the corkboard — the week in color, the margins where his schedule lives without being invited. I think about a character who keeps a wanting because saying it makes it real, and real things can be lost.

The light goes green.

I start smiling again. I can’t help it. I’ve tried.

I drive home with the whole muddy, complicated, unnamed thing sitting in my chest. For once, I don’t schedule it. Don’t pin it. Don’t give it a color. I just let it be there.

It’s terrifying.

It’s also — and this is the part I’m least prepared for — really, really good.

Chapter 12

Theo

Thursday practice runs hard.

Coach has us doing defensive zone coverage for forty minutes — full lines, full contact, the kind of drill that strips everything down to instinct and makes you grateful your instincts are good. This is the work nobody sees. No crowd, no scout, no occasion. Just the ice and the gap and the body work of repeating the right thing until it stops being a decision and becomes a reflex. I live here. Always have. The guys who play defense either love this part or they wash out, and I’ve never once had to think about which kind I am.

I’m in my head in the right way. The way where the draft drops off. Where the spreadsheet drops off. Where everything Lucas is and isn’t drops off, and there’s just the positioning, the read, the instinct that six years of this life have carved into me. I take a hit along the boards in the third line rush and give one back that feels cleaner, step up at the blue line and make the right call — poke check, tight gap, no gamble — and Coach doesn’t say anything, which is how I know it was right. Coach says things when it’s wrong.

I’m coming off the ice after the first line rotation when I see her.

Section four. Rinkside. The emerald peacoat is visible from three zones away — that specific green, the kind that shouldn’t work against arena gray and somehow works entirely. She’s got her knees together, a coffee in both hands, her blonde hair up in a high ponytail. Skinny jeans and UGG boots and a black sweater under the coat. Dressed for the world outside, not for a rink. Which means she came straight here from somewhere and didn’t stop.

She’s watching the ice like she’s watching game tape. Serious. Specific. Taking stock.

I’m back on the ice before she sees me looking.

“Mercer.”

Cash, at the boards during the next rotation. Helmet up, mouthguard out, the expression of a man who has just noticed something that confirms a theory he’s been quietly running for a while.

“What?” I ask

“Margo Ashby.” He nods toward section four. Not subtle about it. “Is sitting in the stands of our practice rink on a Thursday afternoon.” A beat. “Watching you specifically.”

“She’s watching the drill.”

“She’s watching you.” He tilts his head. “She come to a lot of your practices?”

“No.”

“Huh.” He thinks about this. “So she just decided to come to this one.”

“We have a class thing.”

Cash looks at section four. He looks at me. The golden retriever expression is fully deployed now — the one he gets when he’s already figured it out and is just enjoying the part where I pretend he hasn’t.

“Right,” he says. “The class thing.”

I put my mouthguard in. I look at Coach. I get back on the ice.

“Mercer,” Cash calls after me. Delighted. “She came to your practice.”

I skate away. He laughs at his own delivery, because Cash always does, which is one of his most consistent qualities. Wyatt, coming off the boards behind him, doesn’t say a word. He just gives me the look — the mild, knowing, I-see-everything-and-will-not-be-a-problem-about-it look — and keeps moving, which is somehow worse.