"If I am," I say, "I'll bury him myself." I push the door open. "I’m not fucking worried about it. We have a game to win."
I step onto the ice.
Portland State is already in warmups at the other end, and I already know we’re winning tonight because I’ve decided. Coach Crick didn’t dedicate this game to Cody Ravenshaw. Thank fuck.
I find my stride in two laps. Sharp, clean. I run a passing drill with Caleb and feel the communication between us that was missing in Denver. Still, it’s present now, locked in, two people who understand each other in the language of positioning, timing, and the half-second reads that happen below the level of conscious thought.
I think about Cody.
He's watching this game. I know it the way I know certain things — not because I have evidence but because I understand how he operates. Cody Ravenshaw does not miss an opportunity to gather information. He's sitting in his father's house, watching the UW feed, looking at every face on our bench, and building his picture.
He’s probably staring at mine.
I know he remembers that night. I wanted to be the last thing he fucking saw. And tonight, I want him to see exactly what I am on this ice.
The puck drops.
Portland State comes out the way I expected — physical, immediate, their center winning the first face-off and pushing the pace before we've settled. Silas recovers it in the corner, moves it to Beckett, and we start to build.
I play the first five minutes clean and controlled. Nothing exceptional. I let them think they're managing us.
Then I open up.
The shift that changes the game happens eight minutes in. Their left defenseman — slower than his partner, cheating toward the boards on every possession — leaves a lane that I've been watching since the second minute. I time it. I read the pass before it happens, cut inside before their winger has fully committed, intercept it clean at the blue line, and I'm through their defense before they've registered what happened.
I don't shoot.
I wait.
One more second than anyone expects me to wait. Long enough that their goalie commits to the angle. Then I move it to Owen, cutting across the slot, and he puts it exactly where it needs to go.
1-0.
I skate back to center ice without celebrating. Without looking at the camera. Without doing anything except taking my position and waiting for the next drop.
The second period is mine in a way that feels almost unfair. I'm in every play — not forcing it, not manufacturing involvement, just reading it, anticipating it, being in the right place before the right place is obvious to anyone else. Their top line runs a cycle in our zone for ninety seconds in the twelfth minute, and I dismantle it so cleanly that their center actually stops skating for a half second and looks at me.
I don't look back.
Silas scores on a two-on-one that I set up from behind their net, a pass so precise it doesn't require him to adjust his stride. 2-0.
Between periods, Coach says my name once, just once, in the way that means keep going. I nod and drink my water.
Barnes and Noble tomorrow morning.
She's going to walk in, and I'm going to be there, waiting. I meant what I said to her, that I would meet her at the edge of the earth every day if she asked me. I squirt more water in my mouth and find that camera, staring at it square in the eye.
In the third period, Portland State pushes. They're not ready to lose on our ice, and they make that clear — harder hits, faster shifts, their goalie finding something in the third that wasn't there in the first two. They score six minutes in, a deflection that Isaac had no play on, and the arena goes briefly nervous.
I am not nervous.
I win three consecutive board battles in the next four minutes. Not elegantly — elbows and leverage. Their winger, the one who scored, learns quickly that the area within ten feet of me has a cost.
He stops going there.
Beckett seals it with four minutes left. A shot from the circle that Miles should have stopped, and doesn't because Beckett has been setting it up since the second period, the same motion, the same angle, four times without shooting until Miles has the pattern, and then the pattern breaks.
3-1. Final.
