Tommy leans over from his stall. "You good?"
"Yeah." The lie comes automatic. My phone buzzed twenty minutes ago with a reminder from Chief—lieutenant promotion answer due Friday. Preston's been texting since yesterday about NHL meeting logistics. Two futures, both waiting for me to choose. "I'm good."
He doesn't look convinced, but the buzzer sounds for warmups and there's no more time for feelings.
The crowd's roar hits first when we take the ice. Biggest attendance all season—every seat filled, people standing along the back wall, the noise bouncing off the metal rafters like thunder. I scan the stands automatically, looking for?—
There. Front row. Sage is on her feet screaming, arms waving like she's trying to signal aircraft. Next to her, Piper claps with her hands above her head, and even from here I can see she's grinning.
Pride and terror hit me at once.
Gage and Trace are there with Tessa and Patrice. Grayson strapped to Gage's chest, Trace holding Brooklyn. The whole town turned out. Dotty waves from Section C. Diane's bedazzled jersey catches the arena lights like a disco ball.
This town. These people. All the things that matter packed into one building to watch us play a game with a rubber disk.
No pressure or anything.
Warmups pass in a blur of drills and stretches. Muscle memory takes over—wrist shots, passing patterns, skating loops that I could do blindfolded. The opposing team from Fairbanks looks good. Big defensemen, fast forwards, a goalie who moves like water. This won't be easy.
The buzzer sounds. Time for the opening ceremony.
The lights dim, spotlights hit center ice, and someone cues up "Footloose."
Oh no.
"I'm not doing it," I announce to exactly no one who's listening. "We're in the championships. This is serious."
Jax throws his arm around my shoulders, nearly knocking me over. "It's tradition, Captain. You gonna break tradition before the biggest game of the season?"
"I hate you."
"You love me." He's already skating to center ice, and the team's forming up, and the crowd's starting to clap because they know what's coming.
Fine. If I'm going down, I'm going down committed.
The routine starts the way it always does—synchronized stick raises, some questionable hip movements that would make a choreographer cry. Jax attempts some kind of backwards skating spin move and nearly takes out two guys. Someone tries a jump that ends in a near-faceplant. The crowd eats it up, clapping along, the noise building.
Then comes the sprinkler.
I commit fully—arms bent, rotating at the elbows like a broken lawn sprinkler, moving across the ice with the kind of dedication usually reserved for actual firefighting. The absurdity of doing this in full hockey gear, on skates, in front of scouts who could make or break my career, is not lost on me.
I catch Piper's eye mid-move and wink.
Her laugh reaches me even over the music and crowd noise—bright and real and exactly what I needed to hear.
We finish with the drop to one knee, arms spread, and the arena loses its mind. Three hundred people on their feet, whistling and cheering and making enough noise to wake the dead.
"THAT'S OUR CAPTAIN!" Diane's voice cuts through the chaos, and I can't help grinning as I skate back to the bench.
"You're an idiot," Tommy says, but he's smiling behind his mask.
"Yeah, but I'm your idiot." I tap his pads with my stick.
Coach gathers us one more time before the anthem. "Remember why you're here. Remember who you're playing for."
I look at my teammates—Jax with his ridiculous pre-game superstitions, Tommy already in the zone behind his mask, the guys who've become family over years of early morning practices and late night games. We're not the flashiest team. We're not the biggest. But we're ours.
"Let's go win this thing," I say, and the team roars agreement.
