Because I made a rule.
Because she’s following it.
The thought settles something in me the tape couldn’t touch.
I don’t text back. Not yet. Not here. Not with my gear half on and the ice waiting.
I set the phone carefully in my bag, zip it up, and tuck it into the cubby above my stall. When I slide my helmet off the hook and feel the familiar weight of it in my hands, the noise in my head finally drops into a cleaner frequency.
Her “In” echoes under my ribs, syncing with the thud of my heart.
She’s my new ritual, whether she wants the job or not.
“Alright, boys!” Coach shouts from the doorway, clapping his hands. “Helmet on. Let’s go ruin their night.”
The guys howl. Sticks pound the floor. I pull the helmet over my head, the cage dropping into place. The world narrows to metal bars and the tunnel ahead.
For the first time all day, I feel like I can actually do my job.
Because she’s on the other end of that text.
Because I know exactly who I’m playing for tonight.
Not for donors. Not for my father.
For the man I want to be when she looks at me again.
I step into line and follow the team out to the ice.
We bury them.
By the time the third period rolls around, their student section has gone quiet. Their band keeps trying to rally them with the same tired fight song, but the sound just bounces off the rafters and dies.
The shots come in waves. Breakaway, glove side. I snag it. Shoulder save, top corner. I eat it. Bodies in front of me, screens layered like traffic, and I still manage to track the puck through a forest of legs and sticks. They get desperate; they start throwing garbage at the net. I turn it all away.
I play angry.
Every save is a rejection. Every rebound I clear is me shoving back against the hands on my throat. I channel the rage from the gala, the shame of the parking lot, the heat of Talia’s anger, and I feed it into the ice.
The scoreboard keeps climbing for us. Zero for them. Ten minutes left. Six. Four.
The buzzer finally blares. The horn is loud enough to rattle my cage, but it’s nothing compared to the roar that goes up from our bench. Sticks bang. Gloves hit the ice. Someone slams a hand into the back of my helmet hard enough to shove my head forward.
“Fucking wall, Reid!” Adrian yells in my ear, voice hoarse and bright. “That’s a shutout, baby.”
For a second, all I can hear is my own breathing, loud and steady. The ice under my blades, scarred and carved and honest. The clean math of saves and shots and angles.
I wish she could see this.
Not the scoreboard. Not the stat line. Me, like this—dialed in, useful, good for something other than breaking faces and wrecking donor photos.
We do the handshake line. The locker room is a chaotic, dripping mess when we pile back in—music blasting, guys half-undressed and yelling over each other.
Coach pushes through the bodies, claps me once on the shoulder. “Hell of a game, Reid,” he says. No big speech. No lecture. Just that.
I look up at him. There’s pride there. Not ownership. Not calculation. Just a coach happy his goalie played out of his mind.
It hits harder than any praise my father has ever given me.
