West behind me. His arm around my waist. My back against his chest. Cedar Falls around us, holding its collective breath for a gold medal, and I'm holding mine for something that already landed.
Nothing needs to be said.
He squeezes my hand, and I lean back into him, closer. Everything has already been said.
One minute and thirty-five seconds into overtime—Hughes recovers the puck behind his own net and takes off. Werenski jumps with him. A give-and-go. A one-timer. Five-hole on Binnington. The puck is in the net before the building understands what happened.
One minute and forty-one seconds.
2-1. USA.
The eruption is seismic.
West's arms tighten around me. I'm screaming—again, the kind that comes from a place in your chest you didn't know had volume controls. Grace is somewhere above us, hugging another stranger.
Gold. First time since 1980. February twenty-second. Forty-six years to the day.
Miracles.
West's mouth finds my ear. Just three words, barely audible over the chaos:
"Same date. Unbelievable."
I turn in his arms. Look up at him. His eyes are bright—not with tears, not exactly, but with the particular shine of a man who devoted his life to this sport and just watched his country win without him and managed to feel joy about it anyway.
I rise on my toes. Kiss his jaw. Hold on.
We stay there. In the noise. In the gold. In Cedar Falls.
Together.
Outside.
The crowd filters into a Cedar Falls morning that's already shifting—sky lightening, the warmth of a February day that will reach fifty-six degrees by noon. Mountains catching early sun along their eastern faces, turning from shadow to amber to gold.
Grace is already twenty feet ahead. Walking backward. Beaming.
West and I on the sidewalk. His hand around mine.
"I was going to call you today," he says.
"I was going to call you today too," I say.
We look at each other. The laugh that comes is small, shared, the particular sound of two people who spent three weeks circling the same gravitational center from opposite ends of the country.
He squeezes my hand.
I let him.
Cedar Falls stretches out ahead of us. Main Street visible in the distance, the string lights between lampposts catching the early gold. Unhurried. Warm. The kind of town that doesn't rush you toward a decision but leaves the door open while you figure it out.
Grace, twenty feet ahead, without turning around:
"SO. Are we all getting breakfast or WHAT?"
Chapter 23
Already There
