Page 50

Vegas had possession deep in their own end, but Baelor closed on the puck carrier before he could settle while Dante moved through the middle and took away the easiest outlet. I shifted left, watching the defenseman's shoulders rather than the puck, and saw the decision half a second before he made it.

He tried the pass anyway.

I intercepted just inside the blue line and dragged the puck across my body as the crowd rose around us. The second defenseman came toward me, leaving Dante with half a step of space, and I waited until he'd committed before sliding the puck sideways.

Dante fired, and the goalie got his pad to it, but Baelor was already crashing the crease and forcing the other defenseman to tie him up rather than clear the rebound.

The puck kicked loose through the traffic and came straight toward me.

Instinct took over. I shot, the red light came on, and the arena erupted before I'd fully registered that the puck was in.

Dante hit me from one side while Baelor grabbed the back of my jersey from the other, and suddenly I was buried beneath gloves, helmets, and shouted obscenities as eighteen thousand people collectively lost their minds.

Colorado led 2-1, and the goal was mine.

I was still laughing when Dante finally released me, and I turned toward the bench, where Max was already on his feet with one gloved hand curled around the top of the boards and the other holding his stick.

The expression on his face stopped me.

I'd seen Max pleased with me before. He was my captain, and we'd played together long enough for me to recognize the quick nod after a good shift, the slap on the shoulder when I'd made the right play, or the rare grin when one of us managed something spectacular enough to crack through the control he wore like another piece of protective equipment.

This wasn't any of those things.

His expression was warmer and far more personal, and the realization sent something low and unsettling through my chest because Max wasn't looking at me as his teammate or even as the player who'd just put us ahead. For one reckless second, with his eyes fixed on mine across the ice, he looked like the man who'd held me against him on his couch, remembered exactly how I took my coffee, and quietly admitted he didn't want anyone else.

The arena was deafening around me, Dante was still close enough that his glove brushed my shoulder, and thousands of people were celebrating the goal I'd just scored, but somehow all of it receded until Max was the only thing I could properly see.

That should have frightened me more than it did.

Instead, warmth spread through me, dangerously close to happiness, and I had the insane urge to smile at him in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with hockey. The fact that there were cameras covering every inch of the ice and eighteen thousand people watching us finally restored enough common sense for me to break eye contact and turn toward the faceoff circle.

I told myself nobody would have noticed.

Later, I'd discover Dave and Jack had.

“That's a positive reaction from the Colorado captain,” Jack said as the replay rolled.

The replay showed Max watching me, then cut to me looking back.

Jack went quiet for a beat before adding, “Interesting.”

Dave sighed. “We're going to get emails.”

Vegas tied it again before the second intermission, and by the time we came back for the third, the game had become the sort of hockey nobody with functioning blood pressure should willingly watch.

Every hit was finished, every puck contested, and every whistle became an opportunity for six grown men to explain in increasingly creative terms why everyone wearing the opposite jersey was an asshole.

Max was everywhere.

Whatever had gone wrong for him in Vegas was gone tonight. He controlled the pace whenever he touched the puck, won battles he had no business winning, and played with the contained aggression of a man who'd apparently decided that if the world wanted to spend the week talking about him, he'd give them something useful to discuss.

With twelve minutes left, he drove one of Vegas's defensemen into the boards hard enough to shake the glass.

Dante leaned over the boards beside me. “Captain's pissed.”

“I'd noticed.”

Dante nodded toward Max. “There's regular Max pissed, playoff Max pissed, somebody-touched-his-goalie pissed, and somebody-needs-to-update-their-will pissed.”