14
Luca
The arena ice gleamed under the television lights.
Game 7. Stanley Cup Finals. Tied 2-2 with eight minutes left in the third period.
My heart hammered against my ribs—not from fear, but from the sheer electric reality of it. This was what I’d built my entire life around. The captaincy. The championship. The culmination of sixteen years of sacrifice.
Except now, everything was different.
I glanced across the bench and found Theo immediately. His sling was gone. His shoulder was taped heavily beneath his jersey. He was grinning like an idiot despite the exhaustion carved into every line of his face.
He caught me looking and winked.
Something warm flooded my chest. Something I didn't have to hide anymore.
"Moretti!" Coach Reeves’s voice cut through my thoughts. "You’re up. Callahan, Bishop, Volkov—with him."
I vaulted over the boards. The roar of the crowd hit me—sixty thousand people screaming, stomping, desperate for a goal. I could taste the tension in the air, sharp as ozone before a storm.
Theo fell into position on my wing. Our eyes met for half a second.
Let's finish this.
The puck dropped.
I won the draw. I snapped it back to Bishop on the point. The defenseman wound up for a slapshot, but the coverage collapsed on him. He fed it across to Volkov instead.
I drove hard toward the net, using my body to create space. Two defenders converged on me. I felt their weight, their desperation—they knew who I was, what I could do.
But they didn't see Theo.
Volkov threaded a pass through traffic. Theo collected it at the circle, one-handed because his injured shoulder was still tender. The goalie shifted, committing to the angle.
Theo’s eyes flicked to me.
Here.
The pass came tape-to-tape. Perfect as a prayer. I one-timed it without thinking—pure muscle memory, sixteen years of repetition compressed into a single motion.
The puck rocketed past the goalie’s glove.
Top corner.
Net.
Goal.
The red light exploded. The horn blared. The crowd erupted into something beyond sound—a physical wave of noise that made my ears ring.
I’d scored game-winning goals before. Dozens of them. But this...
This was different.
Theo slammed into me first, wrapping me up in a bear hug that lifted my skates off the ice. His injured shoulder had to be screaming, but he didn't care. He was laughing, bright and unguarded and so goddamn beautiful that I forgot how to breathe.
"You did it!" Theo shouted over the noise. "Holy shit, Cap, you did it!"
