He lined himself up with the goal.
Ten seconds.
He couldn’t second-guess. I raced up the side, trying to block one of the Sharks from getting to him. The Shark shouted something about my mother as I shouldered him into the boards. He lost balance and fell to his knees. I skated up, toward Eli.
Seven seconds.
Eli reared his stick back and swung it forward, hitting the puck with a loud crack. It flew with the same speed as before, directly at the net, at the gap between the goalie’s leg pads. Such a tight shot to make. A desperate one to take, a smart one to take.
The only one to take.
The goalie blocked it.
Five seconds.
The rebound sent the puck in my direction. It was as iftime slowed to a crawl. I functioned purely on instinct, honed by years and years of training and playing a game I truly loved. My muscles acted of their own accord as I burst forward. I met the puck with the edge of my stick, took control of it. The gap between the goalie and the net seemed to have been highlighted by a bright white light.
Or maybe that was just glare off the ice.
Whatever it was, I shot directly at it, putting all my strength behind the hit. Time zoomed forward, back to a normal pace. The Sharks’ defenseman that I had hit was back on his feet and coming for revenge, slamming into me.
He was a half second too late. The puck shot right past the goalie and into the net.
The air horn blared as the score updated, and the game ended.
Cheers erupted through the arena. The rest of the Bobcats who had been on the bench jumped over the boards and onto the rink. Hoots and chants and congratulations and fuck yeahs all echoed around me. I felt a rush of pure adrenaline mixed with unmitigated joy.
We won. We fucking won. The Bobcats won.
Eli and I had won.
Our first game as boyfriends together, and we played like a single mind. Together, we proved we were a force to be reckoned with.
And the Sharks would have to go home knowing they wouldn’t be playing for the championship series. They blew their chance, and I’d been the one to seal the deal.
“Fuck yeah!” I shouted as I took off my helmet and looked around, spotting the man I’d been keeping an eye on for the entire night.
I skated to Eli. He had his helmet off. His wavy curls were stuck to his forehead with sweat. His cheeks wereflushed, and his smile spread from ear to ear. Out of everyone in this building—all thousands of them—his scent was the strongest. And even after playing an entire hockey game, he still smelled amazing. Notes of pine and woodsy spice with hints of soft vanilla.
He didn’t just smell great, either.
He looked like more of a prize than anything we could have won tonight.
He was my Stanley Cup. He was my Olympic gold medal.
Elijah Sager was my everything.
I wanted him to know that.
And that’s when I said something I’d been meaning to say for a while now.
“I love you, I fucking love you,” I said, holding Eli’s face in my hands and kissing him, not even giving him a chance to respond.
He did, though. His wide, shocked puppy-dog eyes blinked through his surprise before he said it back. “I love you, Gabe.” He kissed me again, the roar of the crowd surrounding us like it formed its own protective bubble. Everything melted away. I knew I loved him the moment I allowed him into my shift room. Maybe sooner—maybe if I really looked at the threads fate had used to weave our connection, I would have seen that I had fallen in love with him from the moment I first laid eyes on him.
I’d been nervous to say it out loud, though. Even if I felt it as deeply as I felt the pull of the moon on my soul, I couldn’t bring myself to say it any sooner.
I’d been scared of hearing he didn’t feel the same. That this was moving too fast. That my declaration frightened him even more than seeing me in my were form.
