Page 27 of Home Ice

"And you must be Michael?" I ask. "I wish I could say I know all about you, but Lily has been pretty secretive about this."

"Then I'll have to give you the full tour and tell you all about us." He looks at Lily, raises an eyebrow, and I swear it looks like he mouths he's gorgeous. I smile and watch for her reaction, but if she has one, I can't see it from the side.

Michael leads us in. Lily goes first, and I follow close behind her. We walk into a small room lined with teenagers. I take a second to look around. They all have the wide, shell-shocked smiles everyone gets the first time they meet someone famous. All of them except one. "Chloe?" I ask the girl standing at the back of the line. Her blonde hair is pulled up into a bun, and she's wearing a dress that goes all the way down to her pink chucks.

"Hey Brant, good to see you again." She tries to make her voice as cool as possible, and it works. Most of the other kids turn to gape at her. I hear a couple of them say, "You really do know him," and I can't help but laugh. I would have done the same when I was her age.

Michael, though, seems unimpressed. He clears his throat and stares at her. When she doesn't acknowledge him, he says, "Chloe? Is that how we speak to our guests?" The girl glances up at him and then back at me. I try to wave him off—it really isn't a problem at all—but he shakes his head and then grins quickly at me when he sees she's not looking.

"Sorry. But it is good to see you again, because I have seen you before, and you'll tell everyone here that I wasn't lying about that, right?"

I look around at the other kids. "Right. Chloe and I go way back. We're old friends."

A few of them get wide-eyed when I say this, but one boy standing off to the side by himself asks, "if you two are so close, why is she here instead of living with you?"

"Roman, that is enough." Michael snaps the words at him. "So, Brant, do you have any questions or would you like me to just show you around?"

Lily tries to smile at me, but I can tell her nerves are getting to her now. I brush my fingers across her arm to tell her that whatever it is, it's fine. "I'm full of questions." Like, what is this place? Why was there a group of kids waiting for us when we walked in? And how does anyone get a dozen teenagers to stay this well-behaved for more than thirty seconds? "Why don't you lead the tour, and at the end, I'll ask any questions I still have."

Michael nods. "Before we get to the tour, let me introduce you to our friends." He goes around the room, giving me the name of each teen gathered around us and telling me something about them. By the time he gets to the sixth one, I'm amazed. He knows almost as much about them as I know about my teammates. When he's finished, he ushers them all out of the small front room. When the last one passes through the door, Michael motions for us to follow him.

There really isn't much to the house. Other than the kitchen and a small common room, everything is used for sleeping areas. Michael tells me about their mission and their history as he guides me through, but I can't get over the fact that I've lived in Salt Lake City for almost five years and never knew there's a shelter like this for LGBTQ teens. During the tour, Chloe sticks to my side, and I can't help but look at her several times and wonder how she ended up here. How did any of them? As much as my heart breaks when I think about the animals at the shelter I usually play for, it hurts even more for these kids. But none of them seem broken the way I would in their situation. I guess that's part of what Michael is doing here. He's creating a new family to replace the ones they've lost.

We wrap the tour in the dining room. I sit at the end of the table, and Michael tells all the teens they can bring one item for me to autograph. All of them except Chloe scurry to their rooms. She pulls Lily aside, just out of earshot. Whatever they're talking about seems serious. Lily's eyes go wide at one point, and she shakes her head. I read the word no on her lips several times. But they end with a hug, and Chloe walks away. By this time, the other kids are rolling back in, so I don't have a chance to make sure everything is alright.

When everything is signed and we've said our goodbyes to Michael, Lily and I walk back out to my car. There's something different about her now. Her bouncy nervousness is gone. She seems flat. This time I don't hesitate. As soon as we're on the walkway out front, I take her hand. She jumps like she's been bitten and stops to turn toward me. Her lips part just a little. Just enough to make my breaths turn shallow. But then she looks down.

"Hey." I want to tuck my finger under her chin and tilt her head up so she's looking at me, but it's too intimate a gesture. So I wait for her instead. When she doesn't move, I go on anyway. "Thank you for bringing me here. For showing me this. I never knew... Shit, I never knew any of this. They're just kids. This is our charity. How could we not choose them?"

She finally looks up. There's something in the way she looks at me. Some question she's asking, but I don't know how to answer it. "Their lives are filled with people who don't choose them."

"That won't be us." I tighten my grip, and our eyes drop to our joined hands. I stare at her tattoo. "Did I ever tell you I was scared of snakes as a boy? Barrie begged Mom and Dad to get her one for years, but I would throw the biggest fit whenever she brought it up. They finally gave in and got her a corn snake for Christmas one year. Barrie insisted that I hold it, and I was so scared I was shaking. I must have squeezed it too tight because it snapped at me. Bit me right here." I point to a spot on my forearm. The wound was tiny even then, and any trace of it is long gone now. But I still remember exactly where it was. "I howled, and then I insisted Mom and Dad take the snake out back and kill it. Do you know what Dad did?"

Lily shakes her head and a strand of hair falls in her eye. Without thinking, I flick my hand up and brush it away for her.

"The next day, he took me to the library. Wouldn't let me use the internet. He made me hunt for books to learn everything I could about corn snakes. Then about other species of snakes too. Until I wasn't so afraid of them anymore. 'This is what you do, Bran,' he told me. 'We made a commitment to your sister when we brought that animal into our house, and even though it doesn't understand, we also made a commitment to that animal. When you're committed to something, that's it. You don't look for the easy way out anymore. You do the work to make it work.' I was only twelve, but I did kinda get it. We'll do the work for these kids, yeah? You and me."

She nods again but her eyes stay locked on our hands. "Thank you." Her voice is so small I want to hug her, but I can't let myself.

"Are you hungry?" I ask. "We could get dinner." Dinner is safe. Dinner doesn't set expectations. Kayden and I go out for dinner all the time, and I've never yet wanted to fuck him.

But she shakes her head. "I'd like to go home."

CHAPTER 22

I NEED TO TRY

LILY

Michael is alone in the office with Chloe today when I show up after work. He's sitting on the front of his desk. She's on a dark green easy chair that looks like it came back to haunt us from the 70s. I kind of like it. Her hair is pulled up in a bun, and she's wearing jeans and a light blue t-shirt. I see the outline of a bra underneath. Silver is curled at her feet, gnawing on a new pink toy. Michael and Silver both look at me as I walk into the room, but once Silver sees it's me, he goes back to his toy.

"Are you sure about this?" I ask Chloe. It's been almost twenty-four hours since Brant and I visited the shelter. Twenty-four hours since Chloe told me what she was planning. I hope the time has made her reconsider.

When she still doesn't look up at me, though, I know she hasn't changed her mind. "They're my parents."

"That doesn't mean you have to do this," I say

"It's your choice, Chloe," Michael tells her, "but you don't have to go anywhere you don't want to. You know you can stay here."

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