“Come on, come on,” I muttered under my breath, tracking him from across the ice.
He wound up and fired. Glove side, top corner.
Goal.
Tie game.
The bench exploded. Tucker slammed his glove into Mason’s helmet. Grayson threw both arms up, the roar of the Surge fans drowning out the announcer completely.
But I wasn’t smiling now. Not yet.
Dallas wasn’t done.
Next shift, they came roaring back, throwing everything at me—cross-crease shots, one-timers, rebounds. My body was pure reflex. I dropped, sprawled, twisted, covered.
Every hit rattled my bones. Every save sent a tremor through the boards.
Then came their breakaway.
Two minutes on the clock.
Their sniper caught a lucky bounce and went screaming down the ice, alone.
I squared up, waited. The crowd was on its feet.
He faked glove, went five-hole.
I dropped. The puck pinged off my pad and shot harmlessly into the corner.
The surge from our bench was instant. “Let’sgo, Hunter!” Mason roared.
We transitioned fast. Grayson and Mason lead the rush, the entire team pouring down the ice like a storm.
Fifteen seconds later, Grayson hit Mason with a pass at the blue line. Mason deked, shot, missed wide… no, not missed. It rebounded off the back boards right to Grayson.
He didn’t hesitate.
He flipped it, short-side, top shelf.
Goal.
4–5, Surge.
The sound that erupted from our fans hit like thunder.
I dropped to my knees in the crease, gasping, every muscle trembling with adrenaline. We’d done it.
Now all we had to do washold.
Dallas pulled their goalie. Six on five. The puck never left our zone. Every second stretched thin.
One-thirty left. One-ten. Forty seconds.
I tracked every pass, every flick of the puck. The air in my mask tasted like heat and fear. My gloves were soaked, legs shaking, but I wasn’t giving this up. Not now. Not with her watching.
A shot came screaming through traffic. I couldn’t see it. It was screened completely. I lunged anyway.
The puck hit my blocker and bounced out.
