This was different.
This waswar.
From the moment puck dropped in the third game, the ice was a battlefield. Not a game. Not a match. Agrudge. Our lead in the series had the other team frothing, and the strategy was clear: hit hard, hit fast, hit dirty.
Roan knew it. He read it in the first thirty seconds and adjusted accordingly, but there was only so much a captain could do. Jay played smart. He was fast, fluid, always one step ahead. And Rhett, god help him, was the chaos we needed when the tempo threatened to stall. But the danger was pulsing under the surface, waiting.
From the box, I could feel it coming. The way the crowd leaned forward. The shift in the rhythm of the plays. The brutal hit Roan took in the corner that didn’t even draw a whistle.
The look on Jay’s face when he snapped something low to one of the refs under his breath, and the way the refdidn’trespond.
Something was off.
And then… it happened.
Jay had the puck on the rush, slicing through neutral ice like he was born there. Roan was wide, ready. And even from across the rink, I could feel Rhett’s focus in the crease, locked on the play like he was already bracing for fallout. The play was fluid, beautiful—until it wasn’t.
From the blind side, a defender launched.
Full body. High elbow.
Time slowed.
I couldn’t even scream. The sound caught in my throat as Jay’s head snapped back, his body went limp mid-air, and he crashed to the ice like a broken marionette.
The crowd sucked in a breath.
Then silence.
Then chaos.
Rhett was out of the crease and on the guy who hit him before the whistle even blew. Roan was there a second later, fists clenched, fury barely contained. The other player was dragged back by two teammates and a ref, but Rhett wasn’t backing off — not until Roan shoved him hard and pointed to Jay.
Jay.
He hadn’t moved.
I didn’t remember standing. Didn’t remember the way I must’ve shoved past someone in the box—a sponsor, maybe one of the owners—didn’t hear Marchand bark my name. All I knew was that I had to getdown there. My body was moving before my brain caught up.
But the med team was already on the ice.
One checking Jay’s vitals. Another stabilizing his neck.
I stopped just short of the glass, my palm flat against the cold as they lifted him onto the stretcher. The whole arena was a vacuum. Thirty thousand people and not one of them made a sound.
Except for Rhett.
He stood frozen in the crease, chest heaving, like the net was the only thing keeping him from going feral all over again.
Roan stood near the bench, his knuckles white where they curled over the top of the boards.
Jay disappeared down the tunnel taking what felt like half of my lungs with him. When I finally turned back, Marchand hadstepped beside me. His mouth was tight, his jaw clenched, and for once, the CEO mask had cracked.
“Medical team’s on it,” he said. “We’ll get you updates the second they know.”
I nodded, even if the motion didn’t feel real. I was aware of too many things at once — the hush in the box behind me, the murmur of the crowd, the buzz of my phone in my coat pocket.
The referee skated to center ice. Five-minute major for the hit. Ejection.
