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“ASH THORNE!” Dave was shouting somewhere beyond the chaos. “THORNE TIES GAME SEVEN WITH TWENTY-ONE SECONDS LEFT!”

I went into the glass under what felt like half the team, laughing so hard I could barely breathe because the scoreboard now showed 3-3 when less than half a minute ago I’d thought our season was over.

Max’s face appeared between helmets before his hand twisted into the front of my jersey.

“Mon cœur.”

I had no idea whether I was laughing or crying anymore, and I didn’t particularly care.

“We’re not done.”

His forehead hit mine as his smile widened. “Not even close.”

Regulation ended without another goal, which meant one of us was going to the Western Conference Final on the next puck that crossed a goal line.

The locker room during intermission was quieter than I’d ever known it. Cinder checked the bruise spreading across my thigh and pronounced me medically capable of continuing to make bad decisions, while Taz drank half a bottle of water and stared at the floor as if he could already see the shots Vegas might take when we went back out.

Dante sat with his head against the wall and his eyes closed. Baelor was beside him, slowly retaping his stick, while across the room Max listened to Theron and worked on the tape around the top of his own.

When he glanced up and caught me watching, he held my gaze for a moment before touching his fist against his chest.

I knew what he meant.

He was here.

So was I.

I tapped my fist against my own chest, and something in his expression softened before Theron stepped into the center of the room.

“The next goal ends it,” he said. “Make sure it’s ours.”

We went back onto the ice.

The first seventeen minutes of overtime felt longer than the entire game that had come before them, because there was no longer any such thing as an ordinary shot on goal. Every turnover could end the season, every blocked puck could become a breakaway, and every time Vegas entered our zone, twenty thousand people seemed to inhale at once.

Four minutes in, Taz saved our season.

Vegas caught us on a two-on-one after a turnover near center ice, and Tyson went down to block the passing lane only for the puck to get across anyway. Their winger had half the net open when he took the shot, and I was already bracing myself for the red light when Taz somehow launched himself across the crease.

His pad caught the puck and knocked it wide.

The building erupted.

“REES!” Dave shouted. “That is the save of the series.”

“I don’t know how he got there,” Jack said. “Tyson did everything he could to take away that pass, it still got through, and Rees just stole a goal.”

Eight minutes into overtime, Max nearly ended it at the other end when he stripped the puck near neutral ice and drove wide before cutting inside the defenseman. His shot beat the goalie cleanly, and for one glorious fraction of a second, I thought it was over.

The puck hit the post.

The metallic crack carried across the rink, and Max tipped his head back while the Vegas players scrambled to clear.

“That was close,” Dave said.

“I think everyone in Colorado just stopped breathing.”

“I think Renaud did too.”