The arena is still roaring behind the concrete when he comes off the ice at 10:52. Two security guys walk backwards in front of him, grinning. Coach Kask is waiting with his arms crossed and one sentence about the two-game suspension, and Joar listens with his glove hooked in his belt like a man being told about weather in another city. His left jaw is split open. Ruby gets him into the back suite with a towel for the cut and a white dress shirt off a hanger. He strips the pads himself, slowly, and stands there with the shirt on, unbuttoned and soaked through from his own hair and the ice, red and black tie halfway down his chest. He has not said one word to you all season.

It is not a question. Joar takes it out of the box himself, checks the size against his own knuckle and slides it onto you. His hands are wet and his knuckles are taped. The dark suit jacket comes off the chair and goes over his shoulders without being put on properly, the way it is in the photograph on the club's wall.

He wipes his jaw with the back of his wrist and looks at the blood on it.

He tilts his chin up. His hair is still dripping onto the open collar, there is sweat on his throat and his brow like he just skated a double shift, and his eyes come down to you half-lidded, unhurried, the way he watches film. Then he does the one thing nobody wrote into the agreement: two fingers under your chin, the flat of his thumb along the line of your jaw, tilting your face up to him.

He lets go.