Page 139 of Slapshot Bride

Between periods, Theo sits down beside me.

“You good?”

“I’m fine.”

He gives me a once-over.

“You’re slow today…”

He wants to say more, but when I give him nothing, he doesn’t push. He just sits there and stares around. Then, he gets up, pats my shoulder, and goes back to his stall, and somehow that’s worse than a lecture.

Coach catches me in the corridor before the second.

He gives me the look. The one that says to be on my A game.

He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes hard.

“Whatever it is, it stays out here.”

I nod.

“The ice is the one place it can’t follow you, son. Chin up, go for the win.”

“Yes, Coach,” I manage.

He walks back in.

I stand there for thirty seconds with the noise of the building over my head, and I think about her. I think about the last time she was at the game. The joy on her face. The way my heart had skipped when I saw her at the stands, camera in hand, taking multiple photographs of me, of the team, of everyone. And when I pointed at her…

My vision blurs with the image, but I quickly blink it away, realizing I’m falling behind again. The game is about to resume.

Somehow, I find my way back to the ice and remember what I’d told her.

To put on my jersey while she watches from home.

Is she doing that right now?

That possibility has warmth flooding me, and I suddenly find the motivation to focus and get this game over with.

The second starts ugly.

Chicago comes at us hard off the drop, and we spend the first ninety seconds hemmed in our own end, chasing. I’m on for forty of it. I block a point shot with my shin and feel nothing, which is either adrenaline or a bruise I’ll find in the shower, and Kai finally chips it out along the boards, and we get a change.

I come back over the boards, and something’s different.

My first touch is clean.

Theo makes a read at our blue line and steps into a winger cutting across the middle, and the puck comes loose into the neutral zone. I’m there first. Ahead of the play, instead of chasing it, for the first time all night.

I take it in with speed. Wyatt is flying up the left wing.

I hold it a half second longer, drag the D-man one step wider than he wants to go, and then put it on Wyatt’s tape.

He walks in alone and rings it off the crossbar.

The sound is like a gunshot. Eleven thousand people gasp. Wyatt throws his head back at the ceiling and says something at the roof I can read from thirty feet away, and I’m laughing behind my visor, actually laughing, for the first time since the airport.

“That’s more like it!” Kai fist bumps on the bench.