Twenty seconds. Liam won the face-off, cycled it back to the point.
Fifteen seconds. A shot from Keller, blocked, scramble for the rebound.
Ten seconds. Varlenko found it, passed it across to Liam.
Five seconds. Liam wound up?—
SCORE.
The arena exploded. Overtime.
Libby realized she was standing, her heart pounding, press neutrality completely forgotten. Around her, even the veteran journalists were caught up in the moment.
"Christ," Rodriguez breathed. "Your boyfriend's got ice in his veins."
Not my boyfriend,she didn't say. Her heart would be beating just as fast even if she didn't know what he smelled like, or how heavy-lidded his eyes got after two glasses of wine.
Right.
Overtime in playoff hockey was sudden death. Next goal wins. The tension was almost unbearable.
Three minutes in, Portland had a breakaway. Somehow, Boston's goalie made a miraculous save.
Seven minutes in, Boston hit the post. The sound of puck on iron echoed through the arena like a gunshot.
Twelve minutes in, it happened.
Liam stole the puck at center ice, catching Portland on a bad line change. He had a step on the nearest defender, then two steps, then he was gone. His speed was breathtaking, that explosive acceleration that made him special.
The Portland goalie came out to challenge. Liam deked left—the goalie bit. Liam went right, and in one smooth motion, lifted the puck top shelf, bar down.
The red light. The horn. Series over. Boston wins.
But in that moment—that split second after the puck hit the back of the net, before his teammates mobbed him—Liam looked up. His eyes searched the crowd with singular focus until they found what they were looking for.
Her.
The joy on his face was completely unguarded. Raw. Real. Intimate. It was the look of a man who'd just accomplished something magnificent and needed one specific person to see it.
The ESPN photographer at ice level caught it. Within seconds, the image was up on the jumbotron—Liam's face in that unguarded moment, eyes locked on the press box with raw, unmistakable joy. The crowd erupted as eighteen thousand people witnessed what looked like a love story playing out in real time.
The image would be everywhere within minutes.
Except she wasn't his girlfriend.
And the way they'd been avoiding each other for three days made that painfully clear.
But for that one moment, that single heartbeat of time, the truth was written all over his face. And hers too, probably, because she couldn't help but smile back, couldn't help but feel her heart soar with his victory.
Then his teammates reached him, and the moment shattered.
The Black Rose was exactly the kind of dive where Boston teams celebrated victories—sticky floors, scarred wooden bar, bass so heavy it vibrated in your chest. The Steel had taken over the entire place, players and staff sprawling across multiplerooms, the music turned up loud enough to make conversation impossible unless you were shouting directly into someone's ear.
The main bar was chaos—bodies pressed three deep, everything reeking of beer from the celebration spraying earlier. Someone had started a "WE WANT THE CUP" chant that kept rising and falling like waves. The air was thick with sweat and cheap beer and expensive cologne, strobing lights turning everyone into snapshots of movement.
Libby had wedged herself into a corner near the back room, nursing warm champagne someone had thrust into her hand. Even through the crowd and chaos, she could track Liam—the way people kept pulling him in for shots, for photos, for shouted conversations over the pounding music.
They'd managed exactly two words when she'd arrived: her "congratulations" yelled over the music, his "thanks" before someone dragged him away for another round.
