Page 4 of Her Rival

Made coffee.

Drank it standing at the counter, looking out at Brooklyn in the dark.

I thought about Vegas. About the man on the ice and the championship and the eight months of telling myself never.

I thought about my father. The handwriting. The Ashley. The line about she doesn't have much time, which was either a manipulation or the truth, and I wasn't going to know which without calling someone in that town, and there was no one in that town I could call and trust the answer.

I thought about Brynn.

I picked up the phone.

Almost six. Brynn would be up. Brynn was always up before six, some bartender thing about her body clock she'd explained to me once over wine, none of which I retained.

She answered on the second ring.

"Dani."

"Hey."

"Hold on." Sound of her moving. A door closing. A muffled apology to somebody, probably Colton. "Okay. Talk to me."

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

The silence ran long enough that she caught it. Her voice changed, the alert dropping over it, the one I'd been hearing on the phone for eight years whenever something was actually wrong with me.

"Dani."

"Yeah."

"What's going on."

I looked at the clipping. The blue circle around my face.

"I lost my job," I said.

Silence.

"That's not why you sound like that."

"No."

"What else, Dani."

I closed my eyes.

"I think I have to come stay with you for a while," I said.

Brynn didn't ask why. Didn't ask how long. Didn't ask anything.

She said, "When can you be on a plane."

2

JETT

There's a thing that happens about forty minutes into a hard practice. Your legs stop being your legs. They turn into somebody else's, somebody who owes you money and resents you for it. You skate on top of them anyway and trust they'll hold.