“This is what we've been working for all season. Every sprint, every drill, every early morning skate—it's been building to this. To games like this. Games that matter.” He paused. “You're good enough to win this. You're better than them. But you need to believe it. You need to go out there and prove it.”
The bench was dead silent. Even the arena noise seemed to fade into background static.
“Sixty minutes,” Coach said. “Three periods. You leave everything on that ice. No regrets. No what-ifs. Just hockey.” His eyes swept down the line one more time. “Play disciplined. Play smart. Play like Wolves.”
“Yes, Coach!” The response was immediate, unified, charged.
The ref's whistle blew—the signal. Time to take the ice.
“Rook, bring them in,” Coach said.
We gathered tight at the bench—gloves stacked in the center, bodies pressed close, the energy building like a spark about to ignite. The Boston fans were screaming, trying to drown us out, but we were louder.
“Brothers on three,” Rook said, voice steady and strong. “One. Two. Three?—”
“BROTHERS!”
The word exploded out of us, and then we were moving—over the boards, onto the ice, the roar of the crowd hitting us like a physical force.
I took one stride onto the ice and felt it hit me.
My heart was pounding too hard. My chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped bands around my ribs and was pulling them tighter with every breath. My hands were shaking where they gripped my stick, and I couldn't make them stop.
Not now. Not fucking now.
I tried to breathe through it, tried to use the techniques my therapist had taught me.
The ice felt too big. The crowd noise too loud. Everything was too much and I couldn't?—
I skated toward the bench instead of joining the warm-up circle, and I saw Coach's head turn immediately. Tracking me. Reading me.
His eyes narrowed, and he moved down the bench toward where I'd stopped, one hand raised slightly — a signal to the assistant coaches that he had this.
“Hartley.”
I looked up and found him watching me with that intense focus that missed nothing. The rest of the team was still out there, skating patterns, taking shots, going through the comfortable noise of warm-up. Nobody was paying attention to us.
“With me.” Not a request. “Now.”
He jerked his head toward the tunnel entrance and I followed him off the ice, legs still unsteady under me, jaw tight. We stopped just past the entrance in the short stretch of tunnel where the bench cameras couldn't reach — far enough from eyes, close enough that nobody would think twice about a coach pulling a player aside before puck drop.
He turned, and his gaze dropped immediately to my hands. Still gripping my stick too hard. Still trembling.
“Hey.” His voice came down to something low and private. “Look at me.”
I forced my eyes up to meet his.
“You're ready,” he said, and there was no softness in it — just certainty, like he'd already run the numbers and this was the answer. “You've put in the work. You know it, I know it. Whatever's going on in your head right now—” he paused, letting it land — “leave it here.”
“Grant—”
“Leave it here,” he said again, quieter this time. Final.
Then he stepped in and kissed me — quick and firm, one hand coming up to the side of my jaw like he was steadying something. Not long enough to be reckless. Long enough to matter. His thumb pressed against my cheek for half a second before he pulled back, and I felt the loss of it immediately, that specific warmth he always left behind.
“For luck,” he said, dry, like he didn't believe in luck and wanted me to know it.
The shaking in my hands wasn't gone. But it had moved somewhere I could ignore it, pushed back behind the steadier thing he'd put in its place.
