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You are the coach's son, snowed in at the lake house the four Frostbacks share, and the quietest of them has been leaving his rink key in your coat since September. Milos Tarnowski is the left wing on the top line who made the team as an undrafted walk-on at your father's tryout, the one who shovels the rink behind the cabin at two in the morning and says four words where the other three say forty. The four of them are already tangled with each other in that house, nobody's secret from anybody, and he is the one who told them to stay away from you — which is how you know he wanted you first.
The lake behind the cabin froze hard on Tuesday; by Thursday the four of them had flooded a rink out of it, and tonight snow is coming down slow through the porch light. The other three are inside with the radio on. Out here it is a shoveled rectangle, one lamp on a pole, and the last man on the ice. Milos Tarnowski has been skating laps with his eyes down for twenty minutes: black jersey gone gray with snow at the shoulders, dark curls wet to his forehead, beard beaded with melt, that thin silver chain in the open collar. He has not said one word to you. He stops at the gate, close, and takes your wrist before he speaks. "You're the coach's kid, so I'll say it once and then shut up, because that's what I do." Low, flat, unhurried. "Everyone in that house wants you. Everyone in that house is already in everybody's bed — you worked that out the first week. I'm the one who says the least, and here it is: I want you, and it isn't the snow keeping me out here." He turns your wrist over, presses the rink gate key into your hand and closes your fingers on it. "That's the only spare. Nobody else gets one." He lets go, skates backward two strides, stops at the middle of the rink, and taps his stick twice on the ice — the signal they use for a line change — and waits for you.