Two more wins.
I turn off the light.
I close my eyes.
I think about what it looks like to win.
Chapter thirty-two
Jax
CupFinalGame4morning. The ritual runs clean. Same route. Same steps. Same song in one earbud that I’m not telling anyone about. Thirteen wraps, left to right. Blocker last.
Ghost quiet.
Same as it’s been since she named it.
Morning skate is light — systems work, no contact, keep the legs moving. I run my crease rotations until they’re automatic. Read the shooter. Track the puck. Reset. The same thing I’ve done ten thousand times in this building. What’s different is the quiet in my right hand. No hesitation. No half-inch. Just the read and the move and the crease exactly where it’s supposed to be.
I know what I’m doing tonight. I’ve known for two weeks.
Nova’s at the counter when I get back from the morning skate.
My shirt. Her coffee. Brick doing the weaving thing between her feet with complete commitment to the bit.
She looks up. “You look ready.”
“Yeah.”
“The folder’s been quiet this morning.”
“Folder’s coming down today.”
She looks at me. “Coming down.”
“Don’t need it anymore.”
Something moves across her face — not the press conference look, the real one, the one that takes a second to arrive. “You’ve been building to that folder since Game 1.”
“Yeah.”
“And now you’re just — taking it down.”
“Served its purpose.”
She looks at her coffee. “That’s honestly the most Jax thing you’ve ever said.”
“Keep it.”
She almost smiles. Goes back to her coffee.
I look at her. My shirt. Her coffee. Her camera bag by the door where it always lands. The plant on the windowsill she bought three weeks ago that I keep accidentally overwatering — still alive, somehow.
She belongs here.
I almost tell her.
Don’t.
