I stop in front of her, take my helmet off, and press my hand flat against the plexiglass.
She presses hers to the other side.
Palm to palm with an inch of glass between us.
A broadcast camera swings past the rinkside lane, but I don’t move my hand.
Dante skates up behind me. His hand lands on my shoulder, solid and warm through the gear. He looks up at Maya through the glass. She looks down at both of us, and her face shifts. The composure loosens. The smile wins. She looks at us like we arehers, two men standing on Frozen Four ice with our helmets off and our faces wrecked and our hands reaching for her.
She mouths something. I read her lips.
Come home.
The locker room is bedlam.
Music. Shouting. Towels whipping through the air. Someone opens the doors for family and inner circle, and the room swells. Declan stands on a bench in his pads with no shirt, conducting some kind of organized chant. Gio sits in his stall with his head in his hands, grinning so hard his face might split, while Zoë takes photos on her phone. Adrian has his arm around Clara. Genny hugs anyone who holds still long enough.
Addison stands at the edge of it, watching. His eyes are bright. His mouth is set. One breath at a time, his jaw loosens. The lines around his eyes deepen. Genny’s gaze catches him across the room, holds for a beat, then moves on. She goes back to hugging Talia.
A moment later, Talia appears beside her father. She hands him a water bottle. He takes it and looks at his daughter. She looks back. No words. Talia puts her arm through his. He pulls her close for one second. Two. Then he lets go, and she disappears back into the chaos while Addison straightens his shoulders and goes to shake hands with the athletic director.
I shower and dress on autopilot. My body knows what to do while the horn keeps ringing in my ears and sixteen thousand people still vibrate through my bones.
Dante finds me in the hallway outside the locker room. He is in a suit. It is the one concession to his upbringing that I do not tease him about because the suits fit him like they were madefor his body and they probably were. His hair is damp from the shower. The tie hangs loose at his throat.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
We stand in the hallway while the arena empties around us, ushers and cleaning crews moving through rows that were shaking twenty minutes ago. The corridor is concrete and fluorescent and smells like Zamboni exhaust.
“Hell of a pass to Gio,” Dante says.
“Hell of a goal.”
“He found the soft ice.”
“You told him where to look.”
The corridor goes quiet around us. The championship game is Saturday. Two days. That is Saturday’s problem. Right now, Dante is close enough that our shoulders almost touch, and the win is still sitting in my chest.
“I love you,” Dante says.
He says it without checking the hallway first.
“I love you too,” I say. “Now let’s go find our girl.”
Maya is waiting in the concourse, leaning against a pillar near the exit with her coat on, her bag over her shoulder, and her press credential still around her neck. She is talking to another reporter, probably comparing notes about Michigan’s power play that she will fold into whatever piece she files tomorrow.
Mid-sentence, she sees us. Her eyes track sideways and find us crossing the concourse. She finishes what she’s saying, nods once, closes the conversation cleanly, then turns.
“Congratulations,” she says, dry as hell. The smile is already pulling at her mouth. “That was moderately entertaining.”
“Moderately,” Dante repeats.
“The Gio goal was acceptable.”
“Acceptable,” I say. “He put it top corner in a Frozen Four semifinal. Acceptable.”
