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The messages couldn’t make Cole believe he was ready. They reminded him how many people would still be there if he wasn’t.

By the time he stood, his knees had stopped shaking. Hours later, a hit slammed into the boards beside him and the coach called his name. Cole took the ice before his legs could start again.

His first shift lasted barely half a minute. He got the puck below his own goal line, took a hit to move it, and put the first pass on the center’s tape. Nothing happened. The puck went north. Cole changed.

He came over the boards with his thighs burning and his lungs refusing to fill. Cole dropped onto the bench and bent forward, dragging in air while the next pair took the ice. The shift had been short and simple, exactly as ordered, and it had emptied him like he’d been trapped in his own zone for two minutes. Nothing in Port Haven had prepared his body for how little time this league gave him to recover between one decision and the next.

His second shift was worse. A winger caught him flat-footed at the line and forced him to turn. Cole recovered before the circle and steered him outside, but the shot still reached the net. The goalie swallowed it.

Patrick was waiting when Cole got back to the bench. He leaned close enough to be heard without raising his voice. “You’ve got more time than you think. Trust your gap.”

Cole nodded and climbed back over the boards when his turn came.

On the next rush, he kept his gap.

By the second period, he could hear the game again. Skates cut the ice under the crowd. The bench called changes behind him. His partner struck the boards once with his stick when Cole killed a play at the line and sent the puck back deep.

Chicago won by one. Cole wasn’t on the ice for either goal against, and one of the coaches clapped him on the shoulder as he followed the team into the locker room.

His phone lit up again before he could clear the first screen of notifications. The family chat took up most of them. Britt had sent a picture of their father standing in front of the television. His mother had photographed the same television from a different angle. Noah wanted to know whether Chicago had better towels. Riggs had sent nothing but a row of deer emojis.

Nadine had sent a picture from the Penalty Box. Stags players and their families crowded around every table Cole could see, with more people standing along the walls behind them. Halsey was pointing up at one of the televisions while Novo held both arms over his head.

Ford had watched from home with Charlotte. In the video he’d sent, she sat cross-legged on his couch in her Stags jersey, shouting at the television while Cole cleared the puck on a penalty kill. The camera shook when Ford laughed behind it.

“That’s Cole,” Charlotte yelled. “I know him.”

Cole played it again to hear Ford laugh.

He called from the hotel. Charlotte answered from Ford’s couch and told him about every time she’d seen him on television, including several when the camera had been pointed somewhere else. Cole listened until her words began to run together beneath a yawn.

“Bed,” Ford said from somewhere beyond the screen.

Charlotte frowned at him. “Cole just called.”

“And he’ll call again tomorrow.”

She made Cole promise before she surrendered the phone. Ford waited until her footsteps disappeared down the hall, then looked into the camera.

“You gonna tell me which shift you’re tearing apart in your head?”

Cole got up from the edge of the bed and crossed to the window. His reflection looked back at him instead of the city: tie loosened, shoulders bowed, phone clutched too tightly in his hand. “Take your pick.”

“You settled down.”

“After I got beat wide.”

“And recovered before he got inside.”

Cole pressed his forehead to the glass. He could still feel that first shift in his lungs. “I shouldn’t have been that tired.”

“It was your first game at that pace.” Ford’s voice softened, losing the edge he might use in the video room. “You adjusted. You kept them outside. You weren’t on for either goal.”

“That doesn’t mean I belonged there.”

Ford went still on the screen. “Yeah, it does.”

Cole closed his eyes. He wanted to believe him so badly it hurt.