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Theo

same. see you tonight

section four. same as always.

Theo

wouldn’t be a game without it

I get up, and I get dressed, and I make my way toward the rink with my whole nervous system doing the specific thing it does now before every one of his games — not dread, not quite, but something adjacent to it. The particular tension of caring this much about an outcome you can’t control. I’ve gotten better at it over the season, or at least better at hiding it, but tonight carries an extra weight underneath the usual one. Semifinal. One win from the championship. One step closer to a development plan that already has his whole future mapped out, waiting to see if the season cooperates.

I think about what he told me two nights ago — what if this season’s the peak and I regress instead of getting better — and I understand, walking toward the arena in the cold, that tonight isn’t just a game to either of us anymore. It’s a data point in a story neither of us has finished writing yet.

Section four. Front row. Same as always.

I find my seat. I wait. Somewhere underneath the stands a boy who’s spent three years building himself into exactly this moment is lacing up his skates for a game that matters more than almost any game has mattered yet. I think: whatever happens tonight, I’m still going to be right here after.

That’s the whole deal now, I think. Not fixing it. Just being there when it’s done.

The lights come up over the ice. The building starts to fill in around me — the specific pre-game hum of a rink that knows something’s at stake tonight. I pull my coat tighter and watch the ice crew finish their final pass, the fresh cut catching the overhead lights. Somewhere down that tunnel, he’s about to skate out onto it. I’m going to be exactly where I said I’d be.

Same as always.

Chapter 23

Margo

Section four, front row, and I know things now.

That’s the part that would have surprised me in October — not that I’m here, but that I actually understand what I’m watching. I know what a good gap looks like at the blue line, the specific distance Theo tries to hold between himself and whoever he’s covering. I know a clean first pass out of the defensive zone from a panicked one. I know, watching him take his warmup laps, whether tonight’s going to be a controlled night or a loud one, just from the set of his shoulders.

Tonight reads controlled. Good sign, this early.

Camden this time — a team Whitmore hasn’t faced all season, which means less history to read and more guessing. Their whole strategy tonight seems to be speed through the neutral zone. Quick transitions. Trying to catch Whitmore’s D off balance before the forecheck sets up. I watch Theo read it in the first five minutes. He’s not chasing anything. He’s positioning himself half a step ahead of where the puck’s going to be instead of where it already is. I know that now — because he told me, once, in his room, half-asleep, explaining hockey to me like it was the most natural pillow talk in the world. It’s the whole difference between a good defenseman and a mediocre one.

First period ends scoreless. Tight, careful, both teams testing the other’s patience. I don’t love scoreless hockey the way I used to not love hockey at all. But I’ve learned there’s a kind of tension in it that’s its own reward. I sit through all twenty minutes without once checking my phone.

Second period, everything changes fast.

Camden scores off a scramble in front. Nobody’s fault exactly — just a bad bounce and a goalie who couldn’t find the puck in traffic. I watch something happen in Theo that I’ve learned to recognize now. The way you learn a language by living inside it long enough. His shoulders come up half an inch. His next shift, he’s a step too aggressive on a puck battle along the boards, and the ref’s arm goes up before I’ve even finished registering what happened.

Interference. Two minutes.

He skates to the box. I know — I actually know, not guess — exactly what’s happening in his head right now. He’s told me before, in pieces, over months. The specific loop of I gave that up, I have to get it back. The way frustration turns physical for him before it turns into anything he’d say out loud.

Camden doesn’t score on the power play. Small mercy. But when Theo comes out of the box, he’s skating like the two minutes are still sitting in his chest. I feel it in my own — a low, specific ache. The particular helplessness of loving someone whose bad moments you can see coming before he can stop them himself.

“Come on,” I murmur, not really to anyone. Sloane, beside me, glances over.

“He’ll shake it,” she says. Not a question. She’s watched enough of these to know the pattern too, by now, secondhand through me.

“I know. I just hate the part before he shakes it.”

He shakes it two shifts later. I watch it happen — the exact moment his game resets, some internal switch flipping back to the version of him that reads the ice instead of fighting it. He strips a Camden forward clean at the blue line, no penalty, just a clean stick and better positioning, and he carries the puck himself into the neutral zone and dishes it off before Camden’s D can collapse on him.

Cash buries it.

1-1.