17. Good Deeds, Bad Thoughts
Chapter seventeen
Good Deeds, Bad Thoughts
Atticus POV
The rink smells like cold rubber and Zamboni exhaust.
Delia's itinerary has us here for two hours.
Youth hockey clinic. Community service line item.
Twelve kids between six and fourteen, a junior coach who won't stop apologizing for how small the facility is, and Sienna Hart standing just inside the boards in a Tridents hoodie she borrowed from the equipment room, hands in her pockets, watching me like she's waiting to see how badly I handle this.
I step onto the ice.
The kids don't care who I am for exactly four seconds. Then the tallest one, maybe twelve, missing both front teeth, points and says, "You're the guy who got in a fight."
"I am," I say.
"Was it worth it?"
I think about Jonah Pike. About the angle of Razor's elbow. About thirty seconds I'd make again without hesitation.
"Yes."
He seems satisfied with that. The others close in.
I'm not built for unstructured spaces.
Give me a play to run, a line to hold, a specific problem that needs a specific solution and I function without friction. Give me a room of twelve kids with no agenda and my first instinct is to create one. Stations. Drills. Measurable outcomes.
The six-year-old on my left doesn't care about measurable outcomes.
She wants to know if I can skate backward with my eyes closed.
I tell her I can.
She crosses her arms. Prove it.
So I do. Ten feet, clean stop, eyes shut the whole time. When I open them she's got both fists raised above her head like she personally achieved something.
I look away before I do something about it.
I run passing drills. I correct grip. I let a kid crash into me going full speed and I stay upright and he bounces off and laughs so hard he sits down on the ice. Normal stuff. Easy stuff. The kind of thing that doesn't require language, presence is enough, and presence I can do.
What I cannot do is stop watching Sienna.
She's off-ice, sitting in the bleachers with two of the younger kids who didn't want to skate.
One of them is maybe seven, bundled in a coat two sizes too big, and Sienna has her elbows on her knees and she's talking to her at eye level like this girl's question is the most important thing happening in the building.
I miss a beat on a passing drill.
One of my kids notices. Smirks at me.
I redirect.
But then Sienna laughs, full face, head tilting back, completely unguarded, and the seven-year-old laughs too, delighted at having caused it, and I have to physically look at the ice under my skates and run a count in my head before I'm functional again.
Back to the drill.
It's the teenager who gets me.
She's fourteen, maybe fifteen. Has the footage pulled up on her phone before Sienna finishes crossing the lobby. She holds it out and says, voice cracking slightly on the word: "You were really brave. On the video. When you got between the guy and the door."
Sienna stops.
Not frozen. She just stops. The way she gets when something lands harder than she expected and she's deciding in real time how much of that to show.
She takes the phone. Watches the clip. I've seen it. I know what she looks like in it, competent and sharp and completely unafraid on the surface, the kind of calm that only comes from training yourself not to panic in public.
She hands the phone back.
"Thank you," she says. Quiet. Genuine.
The teenager nods fast, embarrassed by her own sincerity, and skates away before it gets more complicated.
Sienna tips her chin up like she's steadying herself from the inside out.
I look away.
I give myself three seconds.
I go back to my kids.
The clinic wraps at one. Junior coach takes a team photo. Delia's assistant documents every second of it for the foundation social accounts, which is the point, which I understand, which doesn't make any of it feel less real.
The kids pile out. The tall one with no front teeth stops on his way past and tells me he's going to be a captain someday.
"Good," I say. "Take care of your rookies."
He gives me a serious nod and runs to catch up with his group.
The rink empties.
The back office is narrow, fluorescent-lit, and smells like dry-erase markers. There's a folding table, two chairs, and a mirror bolted slightly crooked to the wall that Delia's assistant wants for the press photo.
Sienna leans against the table while I button my jacket. She's traded the hoodie for her actual shirt but her hair is still loose from the rink and her cheeks are still faintly pink from the cold and she looks...
I stop that thought cleanly.
"That was good today," she says.
"It's community service."
"Atticus."
I look at her.
"It was good," she says again. No qualifier. No irony. Direct, the way she is when she strips off the sarcasm and means something all the way through.
It lands differently than I'm prepared for.
"The kid who crashed into me," I say. "I should've moved."
"You didn't move because you knew he'd think it was funny." She tilts her head. "You were right."
"Don't make it something it isn't."
"I'm not." A small pause. "I think you're better at this than you want credit for."
I have nothing for that. No redirect, no deflection that wouldn't be obvious.
She laughs, small, self-aware, and shakes her head like she knows she went somewhere I didn't invite her. Like she's covering her own tracks.
"Forget it," she says lightly. "Stand still. Your tie is crooked."
She steps forward before I can decide anything about it.
Her fingers find the tie. The same competence she runs a bar with. No hesitation, no self-consciousness. She's not thinking about this. It's a task.
I tell myself that.
She straightens the knot. Smooths the fabric once against my chest. Her eyes are down, tracking her own work, and I stand without moving and look at the top of her head and feel the warmth of her fingers through three layers of clothing like it's direct contact.
Don't.
She reaches up to center the tie at my collar.
Her knuckles graze my throat.
She freezes.
Half a second. That's all. Her fingers go still against my neck and neither of us moves and the fluorescent light hums overhead and outside the door I can hear Delia's assistant talking on his phone and none of that touches us.
Sienna's eyes come up slowly.
They find mine.
And there it is, the thing she hides behind quick wit and sharper exits. The thing I've been watching surface and disappear for weeks now. It's right there in her face, in the slight parting of her lips, in the way her breathing has gone careful.
She feels this.
She feels exactly what I feel.
I don't step back.
My hand lifts. Closes around her wrist, not stopping her, not holding her, my fingers wrapped around the fine bones there like if I let go the moment dissolves. Like I'm asking a question I don't have the words for yet.
Her pulse beats against my thumb.
Fast.
She doesn't pull away.
She doesn't say anything.
Her eyes stay on mine and her wrist stays in my hand and the world outside the door keeps moving and in here we are completely, dangerously still.
Don't, I think again.
My thumb moves. One slow press against her pulse point.
Her breath catches.
The door opens.
Delia's assistant leans in with his camera already raised. "Ready for the photo?"
Sienna steps back. Clean, smooth, like she'd been planning the exit.
She picks up her jacket from the chair.
"Ready," she says. Her voice is perfect.
I look at my hand. Still warm where she was.
I turn toward the camera.
And I don't think about the way her pulse felt beneath my thumb, or the look on her face before the door opened, or the fact that off-limits has started to sound less like a rule and more like a dare I've been losing to for months.
I don't think about any of it.
Three. Two. One.
The camera flashes.