Page 145 of Offside Angle

“Even when you’re on your knees begging?”

My head snaps toward him so fast I nearly give myself whiplash.

The emotional moment dies instantly.

“You motherfucking tease.”

Santi’s grin widens, completely unrepentant, and something about the pure satisfaction on his face makes the last of my embarrassment turn into something much easier to deal with.

Murder.

I move before he does.

Santi catches the change in my expression and his eyes light up with immediate delight before he bolts out of the kitchen, laughing hard enough that I hear it even after he disappears around the corner.

“Oh, no you fucking don’t.”

I go after him, nearly losing my footing on the kitchen tile because apparently chasing your boyfriend through your own house in socks is a sport with poor traction. Santi is already halfway down the hall by the time I recover, moving much faster than somebody who spends most of his professional life standing behind a camera has any right to.

“Santiago!”

His laughter gets louder.

That only makes me run faster.

I catch up just as he reaches the living room, where all four parents look up at once. My dad stops halfway through whatever story he was telling, Lucía pauses with her glass near her mouth, and my mother’s expression shifts into immediate amusement, clearly delighted that we’ve started behaving like teenagers again.

Santi skids to a stop near the edge of the room and turns to face me, his hands lifting slightly as if there’s any chance negotiation is going to save him now.

I stop a few feet away, breathing hard enough to be annoyed about it, and point directly at him. “You’re dead.”

Santi looks at me, then at the flower, and completely loses whatever composure he had left. He laughs so hard he has to bend forward.

Behind him, Alejandro starts laughing too, which sets my father off, and within seconds the entire room has apparently decided this is the funniest thing they’ve seen all night.

I keep glaring at Santi.

He keeps laughing.

And somewhere under the humiliation, I realize this is probably exactly what Lucía meant.

Ten years disappeared, and somehow we came right back to this.

Vancouver feels different this time. The arena had been loud for Games 3 and 4, but tonight there’s something uglier underneath it. Every Reapers hit gets booed like a personal offense, every Vanguard save brings the crowd to its feet, and anytime one of their players gets within twenty feet of Shane, the noise starts building before there’s even a shot. Desperation makes people unpleasant. Apparently it also makes them very loud.

I keep my camera raised through warmups and into the first period, but Matteo keeps pulling my attention whenever he comes through the frame. He looks looser tonight, without that tightness he carried through the beginning of the series when half his energy seemed to be going toward fighting himself instead of the other team. Now he’s reading plays early, closing gaps before Vanguard can use them and finishing checks without wasting anything afterward. There’s a faint stiffness in his stride if I know where to look. I do.

I also know exactly where it came from, which is professionally irrelevant and therefore something I absolutely should not be thinking about while photographing a playoff game. Probably.

The bruises are harder to ignore. There always seem to be new ones now, dark marks showing beneath the edge of a sleeve or creeping above his collar, with older ones fading underneath. Hockey has been steadily trying to destroy him for weeks, and I’ve developed the deeply inconvenient habit of wanting to photograph every second of it while simultaneously wanting everyone on the opposing team to stop touching him. It’s a complicated profession.

Elias looks better too. Not happier, exactly, but steadier. Whatever came apart in Game 3 has settled into something useful again, and tonight he’s spending less time shouting and more time making Vanguard miserable along the boards. Damian seems satisfied enough to have entered his most terrifying state: complete calm. He stands behind the bench with one hand resting on his cane, barely moving unless he needs to call a change, and somehow that is considerably more threatening than when he’s yelling.

The first period turns into a fight almost immediately. Vanguard comes hard through the neutral zone and sends two forecheckers deep every chance they get, feeding off the crowd while the Reapers answer with just as much physicality. Nobody gets much room. Hits rattle the glass in front of me, loose pucks disappear beneath clusters of skates, and every clean zone entry seems to require surviving at least one attempted murder.

Halfway through the period, Matteo gets pinned along the boards fighting for a puck. He comes out with it anyway, but when he turns up ice there’s blood at the corner of his mouth.

I lower the camera just enough to see him spit pink onto the ice before he keeps skating.