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They set up quickly in the offensive zone, Henri painfully aware of the time ticking by like a bomb about to go off. With untold seconds left, Henri got the puck in the high slot. The whole rink was frozen, the weight of possibility suffocating.

Henri had so many options. Knox was at the point. Duffy was down low with Novak. And Dylan. Dylan was in his usual spot, open for a shot. Henri could shoot. He should shoot.

But no. Anders Nilsson had sensed his hesitation and was barreling down on him. His chance was gone. But Nilsson had abandoned his coverage of Dylan to do it. Henri waited as long as he dared before he sent Dylan the puck and twirled out of Nilsson’s way.

The pass was perfect. Dylan hit the puck with such force that his follow-through took him to his knees. The roar of the arena was a constant, aching thrum that masked nearly all other sounds, yet Henri still heard Dylan’s sharp cry when he swung. Then he heard nothing but cheers, so loud his ears rang.

Dylan’s shot was on target, but the goalie stopped it. No doubt cheating to Dylan’s side of the net, just in case. Russell grabbed the puck before Novak could and sent it in an arc through the air, over all of their heads and down the ice to safety, far too high for them to stop it and too weak for it to be icing.

Heedless of the clock—surely there was enough time—Henri put his head down and raced to go grab it. They could go for one more zone entry. One more desperate push.

The buzzer blared. The fans were going wild. Still, Henri got the puck. He didn’t know what else to do but send it gently to the nearest ref. There would be no more face-offs this season, though.

Dylan was still kneeling on the ice, staring at the now empty net while the Otters piled on top of each other not twenty feet away. The other Turkeys were similarly frozen, shoulders slumped in defeat as they stared at the end of the road. All the blood, sweat, and tears meaningless.

Slowly, the Turkeys congregated on their side of the ice. One more ritual in humiliation: they’d have to wait long enough for the Otters to stop celebrating to do the handshake line before they could skulk off the ice to mourn in peace.

Henri went through the motions of shaking everyone’s hands. He hopefully said congrats and good job or something to that effect, but whatever they said to him washed right over him. Once again, Luc-Henri Baptiste wasn’t good enough. Dragged his team down. That was all he could hear.

Someone closed the locker room doors after they’d all crowded inside. It did little to muffle the applause, the cheers, the happiness. Henri could hear the exact moment the Stanley Cup was brought out, no matter how hard he tried not to.

“We gave it everything,” Dylan said quietly. His words echoed in the silent locker room. No competition inside except the pounding of their hearts. “No one can say we didn’t give it fucking everything. This isn’t because we aren’t good enough. We didn’t fall short. We pushed ourselves to the fucking limit. No one else could’ve done what we did. I’m proud of you. All of you.”

“This team is special,” Novak agreed. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and sniffed, but just once. “Knew it from training camp. Remember when they called up Sandy, and he got his first point?” He threw his gloves one by one into the gear basket at the center of the room, then clapped. “Good job, rookie.”

“You remember when Big Rigg got back-to-back shutouts?” Knox added. “Beautiful.”

“My favorite was probably when Evers threw Soks around the ice like a rag doll,” Duffy said.

“Which time?” Novak asked.

“Every time.”

They all laughed. It wasn’t quite as pained as it might have been.

“I don’t know that anything beats the high of beating Edmonton in fucking Edmonton,” Hernandez said. “Don’t think I’ll ever forget that.”

A few people sighed wistfully. Henri thought that’d be the end of it, but they continued. Everyone took a turn to say a happy memory from the season. It was almost enough to drown out the miserably happy sounds from above.

Henri appreciated what they were doing, but he couldn’t take it. He got rid of his helmet, gloves, and neck guard. Stood up to drop off his jersey for the equipment staff and kept walking. Away from the tunnel to the ice, past the showers, out to the corridor where they’d played sewer ball before the game. There was a bench with a great view of the access tunnels beneath the arena, empty and lonely. Perfect.

He sat down and let the full weight of failure hit him. He understood now that his body, conditioned for an 82-game season, had never actually gotten all 82-games before. Illness or healthy scratches, the one injury he couldn’t quite hide that the Ice Owls used to keep him off a road trip. And he’d never played the minutes he’d done this year with the Turkeys. He’d thought he was physically ready for a playoff run. In hindsight, he was lucky to have done this well.

They’d depended on him. They’d needed him to win face-offs and kill penalties. They trusted him to do that for them, and he’d failed enough times that they’d needed all twenty-eight of these playoff games. If he’d been prepared and capable, they’d have won those other series sooner. They’d have been ready for the Otters.

Henri had been given every opportunity to prove himself, and he’d squandered them all.

The tears were hot as they fell. A trickle at first, then a downpour. He leaned his head back against the cool concrete and let himself cry. When it was done, he’d go back. If he ever stopped.

Henri felt empty. Like all his insides had been scooped out. Hollow and fragile. Was this what it was like to be flayed alive? Left so raw that everything had the power to hurt.

He heard footsteps long before he saw who they belonged to. Assumed it was someone who worked at the rink until he heard the slight wobble in the stride. Someone on skates, then. Much worse.

It took a monumental amount of energy to push away from the wall and start rubbing frantically at his face. No one on the Turkeys would judge him for it, but still. It was embarrassing.

“Henri?” Dylan’s voice, of course. Both a best and worst-case scenario. Dylan, who’d be gentlest; Dylan, who he wanted to be the strongest for.

“Yeah?” he croaked, a beacon so Dylan could find him. When he rounded the corner, he’d dressed down to his Under Armour shirt but still in the bottom half of his gear. The shirt had stretched tight across his chest at the beginning of the season. It was looser now, sagging a little in the empty spaces where he’d lost weight. And the clear outline of the athletic tape on his shoulder. Yet despite the gauntness to his frame and the weariness finally leaking into his face, he was as handsome as ever. Henri longed to run his hands through the bronze strands. He’d never felt less worthy of it.