That one word snapped something fire-hot inside me. Better than expected. Better than they thought we’d be.
By the fifth shift the air in my lungs scraped like sandpaper, but I couldn’t stop grinning behind the cage. Every collision turned into fuel. The first time I stole the puck off their captain, I heard someone on the Lakeshore bench yell, “Watch twenty-three!” and the sound lit me up.
We cycled through the zone clean—Reese broke wide left, called for it, then looked shocked when my pass actually reached her tape. She fired; their goalie blocked, but the rebound rolled free. I darted in, blade down, snapped a wrist shot before fear could breathe. Post. Clang so loud it vibrated through my chest. Close, but it had their defense scrambling.
At the bench, Calder stood with his arms folded, eyes narrowed. No smile, but his jaw ticked once. Approval disguised as irritation. I’d take it.
The next faceoff dropped near center. I crouched, eyes locked on the stripes of the puck. Whistle. Drop. I won it, kicked back to our D, took off down the right side before the play even developed. Years of instincts—mine, not Nate’s drills—took over. The puck found me on the fly. I faked inside, cut wide, defense shadowing too late. Their goalie flinched high, I slipped it low.
The red light glowed. For a half second the rink went blank white in my head, nothing but breath and sound and weightlessness. Then the roar—our bench slapping sticks, the real, shocked silence from theirs.
Reese crashed into me, helmet to helmet. “Girl, did that just happen?”
I laughed, gasping. “Think so.”
When we lined up again, Lakeshore’s players leaned harder, cheap with their checks, irritated we were up. They wanted to crush the anomaly back under their narrative. I wasn’t about to hand it over.
The last seconds ticked down, scoreboard still 1–0. I killed the puck against the boards, absorbing two hits, the kind that rattled bones and pride. The horn blared.
Skating back to the bench, I ripped off my helmet. My hair clung to sweat, vision buzzing. Calder met my eyes just long enough to send something unspoken across the space between us—recognition, warning, maybe both.
I dropped to the seat beside Reese. My hands shook with adrenaline, stinging from impact. The ache felt perfect.
We weren’t supposed to belong on this ice. But for twenty booming minutes, we owned it.
The second period opened with too much swagger in my legs. We were still up by one, and adrenaline was burning through me like cheap fuel. The puck came to me at the blue line—clean, perfect feed—and I saw it. A gap between their defense. Wide enough to thread a needle through if I moved fast enough.
I took it.
Two strides later, the defense read me clean and stripped the puck like I’d gift-wrapped it. I watched, frozen, as they broke the other way. Fast. Our D scrambled, goalie lunged, but the shot slipped glove-side and kissed the net.
The noise hit before I could breathe—their bench erupting, our crowd falling flat.
Then Calder’s voice knifed through it. “What the hell was that?”
Every head on our bench swung toward me. I skated in slow, legs heavy, helmet fogging with heat.
“I saw a gap,” I muttered, still gripping my stick.
He leaned over the boards, jaw tight, eyes sharp enough to cut open the ice. “You saw your ego. Sit down.”
The words hit harder than the check I’d taken in the first period. My chest hollowed. I dropped onto the bench, gloves pressed between my knees, trying to shrink small enough to disappear under the vibrations of the rink.
The play restarted. The roar of skates and sticks filled the space where I wanted to breathe. No one said anything near me. Reese kept her gaze locked forward. Our captain pretended to adjust her tape. Even the backup goalie stopped bouncing her leg.
I hated the silence more than his shouting. It wrapped around me, tighter with every passing minute. I could still feel Calder behind me, pacing, muttering to the assistants, not looking my way.
Every shift that followed, I stayed anchored to the bench, counting the grooves in my stick tape like a penance. My pulse thudded in my ears, matching the thump of pucks against glass. One dumb turnover, and suddenly all the air I'd earned in the first period turned toxic in my lungs.
Across the rink, the scoreboard glowed 1–2. The crowd hummed and shifted. All I could think about was the way he’d looked at me—like I’d proved him right about something awful he already believed.
The locker room between periods felt like a tomb. No one talked, not even Reese. She sat hunched forward, helmet balanced on her knee, eyes on the floor. The scoreboard on the wall read1–1,glowing red like a dare. I peeled off my gloves and flexed my fingers. They’d stopped shaking; my stomach hadn’t.
Calder stood by the whiteboard, tracing plays, voice even, almost calm. Nothing like the man who’d barked across the ice at me fifteen minutes ago. He drew lines and arrows, erased half of them, started again. The scrape of the marker filled the silence.
“Third period’s about control,” he said finally. “They’re tired. Use your speed, not your ego.” His eyes didn’t lift, but I knew the last part was meant for me.
I forced my jaw tight, nodded along with the rest. When he was done, he capped the marker, tossed it on the bench, and told us to get ready.
