Not her editor. Not legal. Not the room full of people who would have known how to package it.
Me.
That matters too.
And she didn’t come here as V. North. She came here as Nova Shaw and tried, every day, to be better.
I know the difference.
I’ve spent my whole career getting judged by the worst few seconds of a game. One bad read. One bad angle. One shot I should have had.
People love reducing you to the moment you missed.
I hate that.
So I can’t do it to her and pretend I’m being fair.
She was trying to make it right.
Not just fix it.
I can count all of that.
But I can count the other shit too.
She shut me out.
She let me stand there with my hands open while she decided, over and over, not to put the truth in them.
And I’m still pissed.
Game 3.
The ritual runs — same route, same steps, same tape — and the ghost doesn’t rise in warmups. What’s different is the building.
Twenty thousand people who’ve spent the last eighteen hours reading my girlfriend’s pen name and my save percentage in the same breath.
They roar when I come out. Loud.
But there’s a hitch in it.
A half-second where the building decides whether it still believes me. I hear it. I hear it from the tunnel and I hear it during anthem and I hear it on the opening faceoff and I’m a goalie. I hear everything.
Second period. Power play. Their top line. The center gets a clean look at the top of the circle — I’ve seen this shot a hundred times, I know this shot, I know exactly where it’s going. I move.
A fraction late.
The ghost is back.
Not a whisper. Not a half-inch of hesitation. Loud — louder than it’s been since before she named it, like it was saving up, like it knew the door was open again and came home.
The puck crosses the line.
4–1 final.
I let in three.
The locker room empties.
