Everyone jumped to their feet screaming like crazy. I didn’t shoot.
Instead, I executed a backdoor shot to Grayson at the last second.
Goal.
5–4.
My name started up in a chant before the puck even hit the net.
“LAN-DON. LAN-DON.”
I looked up.
Nicole was screaming it, hands cupped around her mouth. James stood beside her so he didn’t look out of place, but he wasn’t saying a damn thing. I saluted her from the ice, and laughed my ass off when she lifted that giant foam finger to the side of her head in reply.
The final minutes crawled.
Utah pulled their goalie. Six attackers swarmed.
We blocked shots and cleared pucks as the seconds burned down. With ten left on the clock, Mason iced it.
Horn. Game. Ours.
The bench exploded. Helmets and sticks were tossed into the air as the guys crashed into an ecstatic pile-up.
Wild card entry was officially within reach, and tonight we’d celebrate as though we’d won the cup itself.
I got back to my apartment a few hours later, still buzzing, sweat barely dried on my skin. Somewhere between the taste of beer in my throat and the echo of the crowd lodged behind my ribs, I was vaguely aware of how huge tonight was. For the team, but mostly for my game. My gear bag thumped against my leg as I took the stairs two at a time, keys already in my hand.
I slowed when I reached my door, glancing to the one on the right. Nicole’s.
It was closed, quiet. Obviously, because it was late. She was already asleep. If not here, then at her boyfriend’s place. The thought tensed in my gut, and I pushed it out of my head as quickly as it had shoved in.
This was exhaustion, plain and simple. The dregs of adrenaline and too much beer in that cramped locker room. That was why I just stood here, staring at Nicole’s door as though it would burst open if I looked long and hard enough.
I shifted my weight and slotted my key. The hallway hummed faintly with pipes and distant TV noise, but no sound came from her place. Which meant she wasn’t there. She and James probably went for drinks after the game, a late dinner maybe. Doing normal stuff that normal people did.
I turned back to my own door, took a step, then stopped.
“Fuck it.”
With two determined strides, I was in front of Nicole’s front door, keys forgotten. I knocked before I could talk myself out of it.
The sound echoed louder than I’d meant it to, but it was too late now. I dropped my hand and waited, suddenly hyperaware of everything. The way my heart raced too fast, the dampness of my palms, the walls around me closing in…
What if they’d come back here instead of his place? What if James opened it?
I needed a cover for why I was beating down his girlfriend’s door at this insane hour. My brain lurched into slow, fumbling action and I knew I was doomed. Nothing I said would sound like anything but a—
“Landon?” The door had opened, and Nicole stood blinking at me through sleepy eyes. Barefoot and framed by the warm yellow light of her living room.
Her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy knot that looked like it had given up halfway through existing. She wore a faded, oversized t-shirt that hung off one shoulder, soft and thin and very clearly not paired with anything else. Her legs went on forever, bare and relaxed, toes curling slightly against the floor.
My mouth had gone dry. Which didn’t really matter since a total number of zero coherent thoughts occurred to me.
I just stood there, gym bag hanging off my shoulder, staring like I’d been dropped into a different life without warning.
She tilted her head, stifling a yawn. “Is everything okay?”
