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Whitmore Wolves. Conference semifinal. Home ice. Win and we’re one step from the Frozen Four.

I don’t think about the stakes while I skate. That’s not how I do this. I think about the gap. The read. The specific physical job in front of me tonight, which is stopping whatever Hartwell’s top line tries to run at us. Same as it’s been all season. Except tonight it matters in a way that makes the building louder before the puck’s even dropped.

Coach runs us through the standard drills. Shooting lanes. Passing lines. I take a few reps at the blue line, working the gap control, and by the time the horn sounds for the teams to clear I’m settled into the specific headspace I need for a game like this. Locked. Quiet. Everything else pushed to the edges.

I skate toward the tunnel.

That’s when I see her.

Section four, rink level, right behind our bench.

Margo’s in the green peacoat — not the emerald one from Charleston, a different one, but the same energy, the same impossible-to-miss-ness against the gray of the arena. She’s got Sloane next to her, both of them talking, Sloane gesturing with her hands the way she does, and Margo’s laughing at something, head tipped back.

She said she’d be here. Front section, same as always. I told her she didn’t have to rush.

She rushed anyway.

There’s a version of me from six months ago who would’ve called this a distraction. Coach would call it that too, probably, if he knew — a player who’s supposed to be locked in for warmups instead spending a full second finding a girl in the crowd. But it doesn’t feel like a distraction. It feels like the opposite. Like something settling into place instead of something pulling me off it. Like knowing exactly where the most important person in the building is sitting makes the rest of the ice easier to read, not harder.

I don’t wave. I don’t do anything that would read as anything to the eighty or so people already taking their seats. I just let myself look for one full second — her hair down, the peacoat, the specific brightness of her laugh. Then I turn and go down the tunnel. I carry that one second with me into the locker room like something I’m keeping in a pocket.

The room before a game like this has its own weather.

Cash is running his pre-game routine — specific music through one earbud, a ritual about which skate he ties first that borders on religious. Wyatt sits in his stall in complete silence, taping his stick with the same three motions he’s used since September. Nobody talks to Wyatt before a big game. Everybody’s learned that the hard way.

Beau — not suited up, shoulder still in the brace, three weeks out from being cleared — moves through the room the way he always does when he’s not playing. Like a captain instead of a player. Checking in with guys. Reading the room. Doing the job that matters even when the pads are off.

He stops at my stall.

“She’s here,” he says. Not a question.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He claps my shoulder once. Brief. “Focus up anyway.”

“Always do.”

He gives me the look — the one that means he doesn’t fully believe me and is choosing not to push it — and moves on to Cash, who needs a different kind of talking-to before every game. Something closer to a coach settling down a golden retriever.

Coach O’Grady comes in at six-fifty-five. Standard pre-game. Matchups, special teams reminders, the specific tight tone he uses for games that matter more than others. Not louder. Just tighter.

He mentions Hartwell’s top line by name. Their power play, running hot the last month. He looks at me and Cash specifically when he says the word discipline, because Cash and I are the two guys on this roster most likely to take a bad penalty in a big moment. For very different reasons.

“Clean feet,” Coach says. “Clean sticks. We don’t give them anything free tonight.”

Then Beau steps forward.

He’s not supposed to talk before every game. That’s not how it works — normally the captain talks when he’s playing and lets the room breathe otherwise. But tonight he’s got something, and everyone can feel it coming before he opens his mouth.

“I’m not playing tonight.” Plain. “You all know that. I’m going to be standing right there —” he points to the bench “— useless, in a brace, watching you do the thing I’ve wanted to do since September.”

Nobody moves.

“But here’s what I know.” His voice is steady. “I know this room. I’ve been in this room for three years. I’ve watched every single one of you get better every single season, and I know what this team is capable of. And I’m telling you right now — this is the best team I’ve ever been part of. I’m not on the ice tonight to prove it.”

The room is completely still.

“So go prove it for me.” Something shifts in his voice — goes lower, goes true. “Because I can’t. Not tonight.” A beat. “Play like the guy next to you needs you to. Because he does. Every single one of you. Cash, when your legs get tired in the third — Wyatt’s going to need you at that net front. Wyatt, when you’re the only guy back on a rush — Mercer’s going to need you to trust the gap. And Mercer —” his eyes find mine across the room “— when it gets chippy, and it’s going to get chippy, this team needs you to hold the line. Not throw the punch. Hold the line.”