The faceoff is in our zone, six seconds left. Timeout. The guys skate to the bench, sucking air, jerseys soaked. Coach says nothing. Just looks at us, then nods. “You know what to do.”
Faceoff drops. Titans win it clean, Kruchten to the point, slapshot coming hot. I see it the whole way, glove it, then rip the puck out and toss it down the ice. The buzzer sounds.
It’s over.
We win.
There’s a second of total silence, then the world explodes. Helmets, gloves, bodies everywhere. I’m buried under a pile of teammates, the weight of victory and sweat and the end of a year that nearly broke me.
Ash finds me in the chaos, helmet off, hair sticking up like a lunatic, blood running from his eyebrow. He grabs me, shoves his forehead against mine, and for a second, we’re the only two people in the building.
“You did it, D,” he says, voice raw. “You fucking did it.”
I shake my head, dizzy. “No. We did.”
The rest is noise and celebration and beer dumped over my head and the feel of the cup, heavy and real, in my hands for the first time.
But all I care about is that, somewhere in the noise, Ash is laughing, and it’s real.
And for the first time, I let myself laugh too.
———
Asher
I don’t hear the horn. Not the first one, anyway. All I hear is the sound of my own blood, screaming through the tunnels of my ears like the whole world is about to explode, which, technically, it does.
The buzzer is swallowed up by a stadium’s worth of people losing their collective minds, and then there’s just gloves, helmets, and grown men launching themselves onto the ice in a kind of ecstatic brawl.
I’m on my knees in the slot, panting so hard it feels like my chest is going to collapse.
I barely have time to process the win before I get flattened by Kai, who tackles me from behind, arms locked around my ribs like he’s trying to pop me open and see what’s inside.
Then the rest of the team pours in, Tommy and Marcus and Raz and every guy who ever called me a slur or a try-hard or a sub, and suddenly I’m at the bottom of a mountain, crushed by a thousand pounds of muscle, sweat, and championship adrenaline.
For a second, I honestly can’t breathe, but then someone’s hands are in my hair, yanking off my helmet, and I come up gasping into a tidal wave of noise.
The scoreboard is still blinking down the last .01 of a second, the confetti cannons have already misfired into the lower bowl, and there’s a camera in my face.
I can’t feel my jaw, can’t feel my legs, but I start laughing anyway, because what else can you do?
Somewhere in the pile, Kai is screaming, “You did it! You did it! Ash is a fucking god!” and then he’s kissing the side of my face, which is weird, but not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me in this jersey.
I look for Darius. I always do.
It’s like my head has a magnet in it; even in the chaos, I know exactly where he is. He’s still at his net, stick held high, head tilted back, eyes closed like he’s soaking in every last sound.
For a second, it’s just him and me and the cold space between us.
Then he’s moving, fast, deliberate, cutting through the dogpile and the flying gear and the swarm of kids who somehow made it over the glass and onto the ice.
He tosses his blocker and mask to the side, like it’s nothing, then skates straight at me. He doesn’t stop.
He just plows into me, arms around my shoulders, forehead slammed against mine so hard it feels like a headbutt, but the good kind, the kind that says, “I am here and you are not alone.”
His breath is a hot gust on my face. He’s shaking, but so am I.
“We did it, Ash,” he says, voice blown out from yelling, raw at the edges. “We fucking did it.”
