Page 150 of Offside Angle

Only for a moment.

Then he opens them again, turns toward the bench, and starts skating with the rest of his team.

No Cup tonight.

No ending in Vancouver.

Just one more flight home and one more game waiting for them.

Game 7.

The locker room is too quiet for a Game 7. Nobody has music playing. Cole isn’t running his mouth to make the rookies laugh, Shane hasn’t threatened anyone’s bloodline, and even the usual scrape of gear and rip of tape sounds too loud in the silence. We’re all sitting in our stalls at various stages of getting dressed, pretending our routines are exactly the same as they were yesterday. Mine almost is.

My hands stay steady while I finish wrapping my stick, but there’s a low current running beneath my skin that refuses to settle. Not panic, exactly. More like my entire body knows something important is coming and has decided subtlety is unnecessary.

Damian doesn’t give us one of his speeches. That might be worse. He stands in the middle of the room with one hand resting on his cane and takes his time looking at every one of us. Nobody fidgets while he does it. Nobody looks away.

“You know what this is,” he says eventually, his voice calm enough that everyone has to listen harder. “You know what it costs. So decide now what kind of team walks out that door.”

Then he stops. Apparently psychological warfare is part of coaching now.

Two stalls down, Elias sits forward with his forearms resting on his thighs. I’ve been watching him without trying to make it obvious, waiting for some sign that Vancouver followed him home, but he looks steadier than I expected. Not magically fixed and definitely not relaxed, but present. His knee isn’t bouncing and his hands aren’t shaking.

When he looks up and catches me checking, I give him a small nod.

He gives me one back.

Good enough.

Across the room, Cole is channeling all of his nervous energy into rolling his shoulders every twenty seconds like he might eventually loosen them straight off his body. Viktor sits beside him staring at the floor between his skates with the same unreadable expression he wears before every important game, while Shane is already buried in most of his gear, muttering something under his breath in Irish.

With Shane, it could be a prayer.

It could also be a threat against the entire province of British Columbia.

Probably both.

The rookies are handling things less gracefully. Nico has gone pale enough that I’m starting to wonder whether somebody should check his blood pressure, and Jace keeps opening and closing his gloves like he’s forgotten what hands are for.

Excellent.

Very reassuring group.

I finish the last strip of tape, test the grip once, then push myself to my feet.

That’s when I see Santi.

He’s waiting just beyond the locker-room doorway near the tunnel, camera already in his hands. There are people moving around him, staff slipping past with equipment and arena noise beginning to spill in from somewhere beyond the concrete walls, but somehow he looks completely still in the middle of it.

Our eyes meet.

Usually there would be something—a smirk, a lifted eyebrow, some tiny expression designed specifically to fuck with me when I’m trying to concentrate. Not tonight. He just looks at me like he knows I don’t need anything else.

For some reason, that settles more of the noise in my head than Damian’s entire speech.

I roll my shoulders once, tighten my grip around my stick, and fall into line with the rest of the team as we head toward the ice.

The tunnel feels narrower than it usually does, our skates biting against the rubber while the roar of the arena grows louder with every step.