I tried not to think about the way his hand had felt on my face yesterday morning. Tried not to think about waking up curled against his side, or the specific sound of his voice when he’d said “morning” in that rough, early tone. Tried not to catalogue the distance between where he was standing and where I was standing, or the fact that I wanted to close that distance in ways that had nothing to do with hockey.
I was failing spectacularly at all of those things.
“You okay?” Nicky asked, suddenly beside me.
I blinked. “Yeah. Why?”
“You’ve been staring at the bench for like five minutes.”
“I’m watching the game.”
“The game’s on the ice. You’re watching the bench.” He studied me with that older-brother way that suggested he knew something I didn’t want him to know. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.” I glanced over uncomfortably at Nicky’s boss because Nicky wasn’t being quiet. Luckily Anthony chosethat moment to spill his soda and Lucia needed help, and the conversation mercifully ended.
The third period started with Chicago pressing hard. They knew they needed this game. They knew if we tied the series, the momentum shifted. They were throwing everything at us—hits, shots, desperation plays that worked about half the time and looked spectacular when they did.
Antoine got the puck at center ice ten minutes into the third. I watched him the way I’d been watching him all game—cataloging his movements, his positioning, the ease he brought to the ice that I’d once admired and now recognized as something else entirely. He crossed the blue line with two defenders draped on him, and for a second, I thought they had him contained.
Then he did something with his stick—subtle, deliberate, a quick lift of Keegan’s blade that looked like nothing from the stands but was absolutely intentional. The ref’s angle was wrong. He didn’t see it. Keegan’s stick came up and caught Antoine in the face, completely accidental, a direct result of Antoine’s manipulation.
Antoine went down like he’d been shot.
The whistle blew. The crowd erupted. And the ref’s arm went up, pointing at Keegan with the certainty of someone who’d only seen half the play and had decided that was enough.
Four minutes. They gave Keegan four minutes for something that had been engineered by Antoine with the precision of a man who’d spent a career learning exactly how to make things look like someone else’s fault.
It was easy to see now I was at a distance.
Chicago scored thirty seconds into the power play. A one-timer from the point that deflected off someone’s skate and somehow found its way through three bodies and past Taz’s outstretched pad. The building lost its mind. The Chicago benchwas on its feet. And Antoine was at center ice, not celebrating, just skating back to the bench with a look of satisfaction that made my hands curl into fists.
He’d done it on purpose. All of it. The stick lift, the fall, the way he’d sold it to the ref. He’d manufactured a power play goal with the same cold calculation he’d used to manufacture my file, my reputation, the version of me that had shown up in Denver bruised and accused.
And there was nothing I could do about it from a suite in a suit with my family watching.
The final score was 3-1. Chicago. We were down 2-0 in the series.
The suite was quiet after the final horn. My mom’s hand found mine and squeezed. Marco said something about the refs that I didn’t quite catch. Anthony was asking why we lost in that seven-year-old way that suggested he’d been promised we’d win and was now dealing with the betrayal of unmet expectations.
I stood at the glass and watched the team skate off. Watched Kincaid’s back disappear down the tunnel, the set of his shoulders carrying the weight of a loss that put us two games from elimination. Watched Max tap his stick against the boards once, twice, the way he did when he was containing something.
“Come on,” I said finally. “I told them we’d meet them in the locker room.”
“Are you sure that’s—” my mom started.
“They’ll want to meet you again,” I said, more certainly than I felt. “Max insisted.”
We made our way down through the arena corridors, following the directions I’d memorized from two years of walking these halls. Anthony was bouncing again, the loss apparently forgotten in the face of meeting actual NHL players. Lucia kept smoothing her hair. Marco had his arm around Nicky’s shoulders in that big-brother way that suggested he wastrying to keep Nicky from thinking too hard about his recent breakup.
And Odin Clark walked slightly behind all of them, taking everything in with that easy, friendly interest that still made my instincts twitch for reasons I couldn’t name.
The security guard at the locker room entrance checked my credentials, nodded at my face in recognition of the bruising, and waved us through. “Give them ten minutes,” he said. “They’re still in there with coach.”
We waited in the corridor. I could hear Kincaid’s voice through the door—not the words, just the cadence of it, that flat echo that meant he was delivering something important and expected it to be heard. Then silence. Then the sound of movement, equipment being stripped, the rhythm of a locker room after a loss.
The door opened. Max came out first, still in his gear from the waist up, and his eyes found mine immediately.
“The rest of your family?” he asked.
