This time ...it’s almost impossible.
Two nights ago, I let a stupid goal slip through.It didn’t cost us the game because Callaway scored two and added an assist like he was trying to make the universe apologize on my behalf.
But I still know.
One goal is one too many in my book.
“It’s going to be amazing,” I hear Callaway tell one of the rookies.
Not rookies, technically.First year in the league, but they’ve been grinding for it long enough to earn the right to look tired.
Callaway is wearing the Orcas black-and-white like he was born in it.
It should piss me off.
It does.A little.
Then he grins at the kid and claps his shoulder, and the kid looks like he just got handed a winning lottery ticket, and something tight inside me loosens without asking permission.
Callaway is annoying.
Callaway is also a connector.He makes everyone around him better because he refuses to let the room go quiet long enough for fear to settle in.
My chest feels too full for no reason.
I stand, roll my shoulders, and do the last stretch—forward fold, fingertips grazing my shins, hamstrings pulling.I straighten slowly, letting my spine stack one vertebra at a time.The equipment manager tosses me a look.One of those silent check-ins that says,You good?
I nod because nodding is easier than answering.
Then we’re out.
We take the ice for warm-ups, and the cold hits my face like a slap I asked for.The rink smells like clean ice and rubber and adrenaline, like every game I’ve ever played and every game I’ve ever lost.
The crowd swells when I step onto the sheet.
My blade bites into the ice.I glide toward my crease and take my place, stretching my legs wide, dropping into a butterfly and pushing side to side.Post to post.Edge work.Short pushes.Controlled slides.
Everything precise, contained.
A goalie is not allowed to be anything else.
I’m about to settle in, to lock everything down, when Callaway skates up beside my crease like he owns the damn arena.
He leans in just enough that I can hear him over the roar.
“You ready to break some hearts, babe?”
I don’t look at him.I stare straight ahead like he’s a mosquito and I’m trying not to swat.“Stop calling me that.”
“Make me,” he says, pleased with himself.
My jaw tightens.“You have to stop fucking teasing me.”
“What’s the fun in that?”He winks and skates away like he didn’t just light a match and toss it at my feet.
Asshole,I mutter in my head, because if I say it out loud he’ll grin harder.
I’m going to do something about him one day.
