Page 106 of Lovefool

“Fuck, I can’t watch,” I murmur, a thin, gossamer strand of a breath snaking out between my lips. My pulse is tapping in rhythm to the knock of their stick blades and the discordant scree of skates on tempered ice.

“They’ve got this,” Staten says with a pixelated timbre, her tone sporting enough hope to keep me from serrating the edge of my thumbnail with my teeth.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a barn burner without my thoughts booking a stopover in hyperactive imagination central. Population: all the nerves in my goddamn body.

Two minutes left on the menacingly red clock. The fumble of the disc into the Raptors’ very own talons rings the alarm bells in my head, and I jump to my feet on a whim, boosting my friends higher up into the air.

I chance a look at Sutton—not hard, seeing as he’s the biggest person on the ice—and track his every dizzying movement. Safe, calculated. His approach is usually born from intimidation, but he’s taking a different strategy this time. He’s holding up the rear in case the puck backpedals, exerting just enough energy to stay vigilant but appear harmless. When players usually see him careering toward them, they panic and relinquish ownership, which could squeeze them for time.

I don’t even register that the Rhode Island Raptors employ a fake-out trick to reclaim the puck, using the Mustangs’ lapse in defense to level the score. My section immediately spews disapproval and vitriol like a champagne cork popping under the jurisdiction of clumsy hands, and the apprehension slumbering in my stomach awakes with a nausea-inducing jolt.

Come on.

Fifty-eight seconds. I know Sutton. I know what he’s capable of. I know how badly he wants this, and I want it for him.

When my section quiets to a dissatisfied grumble, I scream so loud that my vocal cords strain. I doubt it was shrill enough for Sutton to hear, but I like to think that he did—that I was able to penetrate through every other force competing for his attention and give him that extra bump of assurance to carry him over the finish line.

Everything changes within a millisecond. The Raptors’ complacency is their downfall.

Sutton does the unthinkable: he swoops up the discarded puck from a rushed face-off, then bolts straight for the opposite side of the rink, surprising even his teammates until they kick into high gear. The tension suffers a seismic shift; people slowly begin rising to their feet; my friends are losing it over the line.

“Come on, Sutton!” I shout despite the arena being muffled like I’ve been submerged under water.

Thirty seconds.

A dodge of an incoming stick. A reroute that threads the puck between the legs of an unsuspecting Raptor. The quick handling of a professional who’s determined to extinguish any talk of inadequacy surrounding his performance.

Ten seconds.

Sutton—with feet still to clear and not enough time—takes a risk and slaps the puck with the full drawback of his arm, and I would’ve missed the winning shot if I had blinked. The clock stalls at one second. The velocity and force behind the disc were enough to blow a hole right through the nylon.

He did it. He could’ve played it safe, but he took a risk, knowing full well that the blame would’ve fallen on him if he hadn’t made the shot. I’ve never been prouder.

The arena lights up in cheers from all around—hockey players dogpiling on top of one another in victory—and I’m a shrieking, clapping, crying mess of a girlfriend, my heart attempting to jailbreak out of the bars of my ribs and crawl to him.

Him.

The only person who’s ever made me feel alive when I was on the verge of death; the only person who reminded me that even the darkest places are still capable of growing flowers.

When we return home, it’s as if the natural order of things didn’t even miss our absence. All the heartache was left in that hotel room in St. Paul, hundreds of miles away from us.

But the gossip is a different story.

Once the Mustangs stepped back on campus, they were greeted with celebratory cheers. Snowfalls of whispers had a not-so-soft landing in the beginning, further exacerbated by Buford’s apparent absence from all things Mustang related. He was rightfully kicked off the hockey team, kicked out of school, and the investigation is still ongoing.

I know all this talk will blow over eventually. I know it’s not strong enough to dismantle the Mustangs like I originally thought. They’re seal-tight, and there’s no weight on their conscience because none of them had a clue what Buford was up to behind their backs. I think winning the Frozen Four definitely cushioned the nuclear blast of the truth bomb.

Despite the harder-to-swallow information about a certain player’s gambling, there were a lot of positive things to write about too. The article detailed the familial bond between every guy on the team, the strenuous hours of hard work they put in for practices and games, and the sense of community that they’ve grown despite their own individual hardships.

Not all hockey players are liars or cheats or sex fiends like I’d initially thought, and it was wrong of me to make that generalization. The right hockey player is kind, considerate, understanding. And if you’re a part of their pack, they’ll stop at nothing to protect you.

I’m relieved I had time to make things right with Sutton before the championship game. Instead of dwelling on the past, my brain fashions snippets from our most recent conversation into a franken-creature of unforgettable memories, and the knife-tenderness of his words are on frequent replay, having succeeded one too many times in drawing tributaries from my lacrimal glands.

“I can’t believe my boyfriend went all mob boss on a twenty-two-year-old and I wasn’t there to witness it,” Merit says, fluffing up the plaits in her braid as Irelyn sips on a green smoothie and Staten rotates through a few of her study flashcards.

“God, I don’t want to know what happened in that hotel room,” I grouse, my voice wrecked from the push-and-pull of exhaustion. The slow drip of heat is an unwelcome guest, especially now that summer is just around the corner.

“Oh, you should’ve seen Lake in action. Girl was fully convinced Buford was guilty before the evidence was found,” Ellaria adds.