Page 116 of Her Player

With four minutes left in the second period it was three-all and both teams were showing it. The hits were harder. The whistles came faster. The crowd on both sides had reached a sustained roar that didn't peak and fall anymore. It just stayed. Constant. Crushing.

I watched Sokolov line up against Rhett for the face-off and something shifted in my gut.

I couldn't name it. I'd spent enough years in this building to know when something was about to happen before it happened. The air changed.

I uncrossed my arms and pressed my hand flat against the glass.

The puck dropped.

Rhett won it cleanly, flicking it laterally to Jett before driving forward. He was moving at full speed, cutting toward the Dynamites' zone, when Sokolov changed his angle. Subtle. The kind of subtle that looked accidental the first time you saw it and deliberate the second. He drifted wide of the play, wider than he needed to, positioning himself not where the puck was going but where Rhett was going.

No.

Brynn looked at me. "Mom?"

I watched Sokolov accelerate.

The officials were tracking the puck. The crowd was tracking the puck. Coach was tracking the puck. Everyone in that arena was watching Jett collect a pass on the far side of the ice and wind up for a shot.

Nobody was watching Sokolov.

Nobody except me.

"No," I said again, louder this time, completely goddamn useless.

He hit Rhett from behind.

Not a check. Not a bodycheck within the rules of the game where you take your hit and get back up. This was targeted and deliberate and vicious, all of Sokolov's two hundred and sixty pounds driving into the back of Rhett's left shoulder at full speed, launching him forward and down with a violence that sent him flipping across the ice. His helmet caught the boards. His neck snapped sideways. He slid six feet and came to a stop face down on the ice and he did not get up.

The arena went silent.

That silence. The one I recognized. The one that preceded something terrible.

"RHETT!" Jett's voice tore across the ice.

I watched Moose leave his goal (Moose, who never left his goal) and skate the full length of the ice with murder written plainly across his damn face.

I was already moving.

I didn't make a conscious decision to leave the owner's box. My body just went. Down the corridor, down the stairs, past the security checkpoint where a man in a yellow vest said something I didn't hear, through the tunnel and out into the rink side air where the noise of the arena crashed over me like a wave.

Brynn was right behind me.

I didn't go onto the ice. I gripped the boards with both hands and I looked at Rhett on the ice and I made myself breathe. The medical team was already there, kneeling around him. An official was attempting to restore order to the brawl consuming the far end of the rink. Sokolov had vanished into a pile of bodies and I found I didn't care where he was.

All I cared about was the man on the ice who still hadn't moved.

"He's conscious," one of the medics called out. "Sir, can you hear me? Don't move your head."

I heard Rhett's voice. Low and muffled and slightly slurred but present. Actually present. Something in me that had seized up completely released all at once and I gripped the boards harder just to stay upright.

Thank God. Thank fucking God.

"Mom." Brynn's hand found my arm. "Mom, he's talking. He's okay."

"I know," I said. My voice came out steadier than I had any damn right to expect.

"They're going to take him off."