Permission.
I look back at Declan. His eyes are open again.
He taps his stick against the glass right in front of my chest—thunk—then pushes off backward, gliding away toward the crease without looking back.
The crowd explodes.
My hand stays pressed to the glass long after he’s gone.
“What the hell was that,” Zoë demands, half shrieking, half delighted.
Maya is already typing something in her notes app. “That was a statement. Alistair Reid just lost the narrative.”
Clara leans into my side. “That wasn’t just grovel, T. That was a claim.”
Heat prickles behind my eyes. I blink fast, refusing to let tears fall in the middle of a packed arena.
I pull my hand back, fingers tingling, and wrap them around the sticky note in my hoodie pocket instead.
We are not letting you do this alone.
On the ice, Declan drops into his stance, head up, eyes locked on the first attacking player.
I tell myself I’m here for my dad. For the program. For the team.
But as the puck drops and the roar swallows everything else, the truth settles low and undeniable in my chest:
I’m here for him, too.
And no matter how long I make him work for it, he just told an entire arena exactly where he stands.
Not in the dark.
Not in the shadows.
Right here.
With me.
Chapter 22
Declan
Theritualheld.
I can feel it in the ice under my blades, in the way the puck looks the size of a beach ball coming off their sticks. The helmet against the glass. Her fingers tracing the bars. It unlocked something in the air, something in me.
Two minutes left. Titans up 2–0.
The other team pulls their goalie. Desperate. Stupid.
Six attackers swarm the zone. Chaos in a white jersey.
My heartbeat is a war drum, steady and slow in a way it hasn’t been for months. Every nerve in my body is sharp, calibrated, alive.
Puck comes flying in from the point—one-timer, heavy, screaming through traffic.
I kick it away. The pad thuds, solid.
