Colt bumps my shoulder as we glide into position for the opening draw. “First shift, I’m flattening him.”
“Try not to get arrested,” I mutter.
The ref drops the puck, and it’s immediate chaos. Sloppy clears and overcommitted hits, and half the guys playing like it’s the Stanley Cup, the other half remembering we have real jobs in the morning.
Colt absolutely levels one of the PD rookies in the second minute and throws his hands up like he’s innocent.
“That’s assault!” Tucker yells.
“It was physics!” Colt fires back.
Herb’s voice carries from the stands. “Atta boy, Lawson! Show ’em how it’s done!”
Leah sits beside him with a thermos and a blanket tucked around her legs, cheering like she’s at a playoff game. Penny’s a few rows down in a red beanie, cheeks flushed from the cold, yelling something that sounds like a joke about police and donuts.
Elle’s wedged between Penny and Remi, face painted with a crooked red stripe that Fletch did in the locker room. She leans against Penny’s side automatically while gleefully yelling down at the ice, and I grin, winking back.
Stacey’s here, too—a few rows further back. Alone, and with her coat buttoned all the way to her chin. I don’t look at her.
Midway through the second period, we’re tied. Tucker tries to thread a pass across the blue line that’s a little too clean not to read, and I step in with my stick down. The puck knocks loose and slides into open ice, and Colt’s already moving.
I shovel it forward to him, then cut wide. He returns it without looking, and I take the shot from the top of the circle.
It’s messy, but it goes in, and the FD stands erupt. Fletch nearly jumps the boards before the whistle, and Colt grabs my helmet and shakes it.
“Yeah, baby! That’s how you do it!” he shouts, smacking my helmet.
By the third period, we’re up by one. The PD push hard, and it gets scrappy with a few chirps that hold too much truth. Fletch drops gloves at least twice, and judging by the way he grins like a psycho toward the stands afterward, Frankie admitting she likes this shit has only encouraged him. It’s half for spectacle, half real. Entertaining all the same, so long as no one gets seriously hurt.
I clear one off the line in the final thirty seconds, dropping to a knee and taking it off the shin pad hard enough that I’ll definitely feel it tomorrow.
The buzzer sounds, and red supporters spill onto the ice. Ghost wraps an arm around my shoulders, and Fletch tackles us both. Someone, probably Colt, dumps half a water bottle down my back.
We skate to center ice and shake hands with the PD. Tucker leans in close enough that only I hear him.
“Enjoy it,” he says through fast breaths. “We’re taking it back next year.”
“Sure you are.”
After the ceremony with a very scratched-up-looking trophy, I climb over the boards, and Elle launches herself at me.
“You scored the winner!” she yells.
“I did.”
“You said you wouldn’t fall over!”
I laugh. “I didn’t.”
Penny’s smiling when I look up at her, and I let my eyes rest on hers for a moment. Behind her, Stacey hesitates at the end of the row. She lifts a hand slightly as though she’s about to step forward, then lowers it when Colt barrels in to clap me on the back again.
She doesn’t belong to this group, and she’s nervous to interrupt, that much is obvious.
We end up gathering in a loose knot near the stands. Leah passes out cups from her thermos, and Herb insists on retelling my goal as if it were a choreographed NHL play.
I step aside to grab a towel from my bag and catch Penny’s voice behind me.
“And you were sure about selling it?” Leah asks.
