Page 100 of Puck You Both

Cameras hunt everything in moments like this, so I pull him in like I'm shouting about the game and put my words against his ear, under all the noise, for him and nobody else. "You like me this way."

His grin goes private for half a second, arena be damned. "Tragically."

The crowd chants my first name. This city made a practical decision about my surname years ago.

The campaign handshake line forms at center. Becker reaches me first. "That was absolutely disgusting."

I accept the compliment with a nod.

Ace takes my hand and looks at my glove like it owes him an explanation.

Then comes Wall.

His composure is fully reinstalled, but his jaw is working overtime underneath it. His hand closes around mine and stays one second past regulation. "That was the best save I've ever seen in person."

The chanting, the cameras, all of it goes distant. He watched that save the way only one man in this building could watch it, knowing the geometry, the edge I had left, exactly what it cost. Highlights will run and re-run it all week and none of them will give me what those four words just did.

I hold his eyes. "I know."

One corner of his mouth curls up. Then my hand is empty and he's following his team off the ice.

The locker room is in that intoxicating, post-win way, and it holds me for about four minutes before I find the tablet and pull up their goal. Kane's release. Groover's stick, arriving.

Damn, Groover.

A towel drops over the screen, and Theo's hand lands flat on top of it. "No autopsies on game night."

I hook two fingers under the towel. "Move."

He presses down. "Cause of death: tip. Time of death: second period. Next of kin notified. Let the puck rest."

I pull the towel aside far enough to expose the frozen frame. "It changed direction off Groover."

Theo looks up at Lindqvist passing behind us. "Cap, he's disturbing the body."

Lindqvist yanks the tablet out of my hands without breaking stride. "Media."

I hold out my hand. "I need that."

He looks at my bare legs, then at my half-fastened shirt. "You need trousers."

Theo puts a hand over his heart. "Leadership."

I put on trousers.

Media wants the save and the standings, in that order, and I hand out angles and seam coverage until one reporter leans into his microphone, producing feedback. "Best save you've made this season?"

Wall's hand is still warm in mine. That's the problem. Those four words are for me, and for me only, and this microphone is getting none of them. "Best save I made tonight."

***

WALL'S BAG IS the first thing I see when I enter my place.

Compact, black, parked next to the coat rack like it belongs. At some point in the recent past that stopped being a thing anyone announces, and I couldn't tell you when exactly. It just kind of happened.

Media made me the last man home to my own apartment. Theo used his key. Wall brought his bag. The two facts hang there by the shoe rack, waiting to see what I do with them.

Voices reach me from the kitchen. Theo's, running its usual marathon, Wall's underneath, low, dropping in a word here and there.