Normal. Routine. I’d done it a thousand times.
I stretched my glove, flexing my hand until the leather squeaked. The crowd was a live wire, blue and white flags snapping behind theglass. You could feel it in the boards, that restless energy, that need. We were tied in the series. Lose this, and we were done.
The ref’s whistle cut the air. I bent low in the crease, stick ready.
The puck dropped, and chaos followed.
Dallas came hard. They always did. The rivalry ran deep, bad blood, old grudges, the kind of history that made every check a little harder, every shift a little meaner. I tracked the puck, watching it snap between sticks like lightning. My head moved on instinct. Angles. Distance. Threat.
A shot. Glove save. Clean. Another. Pad deflection. The crowd roared.
But somewhere between the shifts, something in the air changed.
We were up one. Mason had buried a beauty early in the period, and we’d been holding tight since. Dallas pressed, desperate. I could feel them breathing down my neck.
Then the puck went dead in our zone, whistle blowing for an offside. I straightened, mask up for a breath, scanning the stands the way I sometimes did to reset. Just white noise, people, lights, movement.
And that’s when my gaze snagged. Row three, behind the penalty box. Three faces that didn’t belong here.
My mom. Eli. Noah. Oh, my God, Noah’d gotten so big. Not my little brother anymore.
My whole body forgot how to move. Maybe because my brain short-circuited.
Mom’s hair was shorter than I remembered, neat and soft against her scarf. A different color too. Eli cheered with a homemade poster–Go Hunter!jumped out at me in big, crooked letters. Noah sat beside him, pretending not to care, but his eyes were locked on me.
Me? How did they–?
“Yo, Callahan!” Mason’s voice cut across the ice.
The puck was in motion again.
I snapped back, dropped into stance, stick down. But my pulse was stuttering. My body felt both too light and too heavy. It was too late. Whatever skin I had in the game had been knocked totally out of sync.
Dallas came barreling in. A slapshot from the blue line. I caught it on the blocker, barely. Rebound. Second shot went wide. Mason cleared it, but the sting stayed in my chest.
They were here.
They came.
After seven years of nothing.
I forced my eyes down, locked on the ice. Focus. Play the game. Don’t think.
But thinking was all I could do. Every save, every second, every whistle between plays, I saw them again. My mother’s eyes following me. Eli’s sign catching the light.
And all I could think waswhy now?
Dallas tied it with nine minutes left. A wrist shot deflected off Tucker’s stick. There was nothing I could’ve done. The crowd groaned like I’d failed them. In a way, I had. I was checked out and nowhere near the form I needed to be.
I crouched lower, jaw tight. My lungs burned with every breath, but I couldn’t shake the unsettling weight in my gut.
Focus, dammit. Just play your game.
Next faceoff. Another rush. They hammered me from every angle. The puck slammed into my chest, my glove, the post. I was barely holding on.
I knew I shouldn’t, but looked up anyway, my gaze finding Holly this time. Big mistake. The pieces melded together in the fog of my brain. It was her. She was the one who brought them here. It was the only explanation.
And that did it. The thin thread I’d been hanging onto snapped.
