"Oh God."
"That's usually the reaction." Still talking, she guided him toward the door.
Kieran glanced back once before disappearing into the hallway.
The nervousness was still there. I could see it. But so was something else.
Trust.
And that meant more than I could explain.
Across the room, most of the guys had already gone back to getting ready for the game. A couple was still watching the doorway. One looked away, the second our eyes met. Another's expression was impossible to read.
Maybe I was imagining it. Maybe I wasn't.
Whatever.
Nobody had to like my relationship. Nobody had to understand it.
Respect was enough.
The first time I spotted him after warmups, he was sitting beside Jazz in one of the family sections overlooking the ice.
From a distance, I couldn't hear what she was saying. I could see Kieran laughing, though. Seeing him fit in so easily made me absurdly happy. The sight stayed with me as I skated toward the bench.
The game itself wasn't pretty.
After two straight losses, nobody expected pretty. We expected work.
The first period ended tied. The second period felt like a fight for every inch of ice. By the middle of the third, the building was louder than it had been in weeks.
Tannen wasn't suddenly carrying the team. But he looked more like himself than he had in a long time. He was winning battles along the boards. Making smart plays with the puck. Doing all the little things that didn't always show up on a score sheet.
When he stripped the puck from an opposing forward and fed Briggs in the slot, the entire play seemed to unfold in slow motion.
Briggs buried it. The crowd nearly blew the roof off the arena. I crashed into both of them a second later as the crowd erupted around us. Tannen grinned like he'd forgotten how much fun hockey could be.
By the time the final horn sounded, we'd scraped out a 4–3 win.
Hard-earned.
Exactly what we needed.
As we lined up to salute the crowd, my eyes drifted toward the family section again. Kieran was already on his feet. And somehow seeing him there felt every bit as good as seeing the final score.
As we headed off the ice, the energy in the building still felt different. Not because we'd won. Although that helped. After two losses, everybody needed this one.
The locker room buzzed with the kind of relief that only comes after a hard-fought win. Guys were laughing again. Music was playing. Equipment hit the floor. Somebody was already arguing that his goal had been the turning point of the game.
It hadn't been. It was definitely Briggs's.
By the time I finished changing and made my way into the media room, the mood felt lighter than it had in days.
The first questions were exactly what I expected.
The road trip.
The losing streak.
