I was physical in ways I hadn't been all season — taking bodies off the puck, finishing every check, making myself difficult and uncomfortable everywhere I went on the ice. I won five of seven face-offs. I killed thirty seconds of a delayed penalty by being too much to deal with in the neutral zone, forcinga stoppage rather than giving them a clean entry. When their captain tried to get in my head with a cheap shot behind the play, I turned around and looked at him with the specific expression that told experienced players they'd made a decision they were going to regret, and he took two strides backward before he caught himself.
The assist on Cole's goal came from a sequence I could have drawn up in the film room. I forced a turnover in their zone by being relentless on the forecheck, won a puck battle behind the net that three weeks ago I'd have put at fifty-fifty, and found Cole cutting to the weak side with a pass he buried cleanly.
Three to two. Lead secured. Fourteen minutes to hold it.
The rest of the period was discipline hockey — protecting the lead, not giving them space to run, making every shift a defensive exercise that burned clock and forced turnovers and gave Saint clean looks at everything that came through. I was where I was supposed to be for fourteen consecutive minutes, and when the final buzzer sounded I felt the full weight of the exhaustion land at once.
The team was celebrating around me and I stood in the middle of it with my hands on my knees and just breathed.
Coach found me in the tunnel afterward. He stood beside me for a moment without saying anything, watching the stream of people moving through the corridor.
“We won,” he said finally.
“Yeah.”
“First and second periods looked like you'd never seen a hockey stick before.”
“I know.”
“Third period looked like you.” He said it without inflection, which was as close as Coach got to a compliment in a corridor after a playoff game. “Whatever you worked through betweenthe second intermission and the third, figure out how to work through it before the next game instead of during it.”
“I will.”
“This about the guy?” He asked it quietly, and the question carried the specific weight of a man who had watched me lose my grip on everything and had a good idea why.
I didn't answer. My silence told him what he needed to know.
“Figure it out, Rook. I can't have my captain half-present for a round.” He paused. “But you came back tonight. Remember what that felt like.” He squeezed my shoulder once and walked away, leaving me standing in the tunnel with the noise of the arena fading behind me.
The locker room was loud with celebration, everyone riding the high of advancing, Finn getting roasted mercilessly for his sudden goal-scoring streak while looking absolutely delighted about it. I stripped my gear off mechanically, answered the media questions on autopilot, showered without registering the water temperature.
By the time I made it back to my hotel room, the sun was gone and my phone had missed calls from Jace and a text from my dad that just saidgood third period,which from Martin Kincaid was practically a declaration of love.
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall.
We'd won. I'd come back. Found something useful in the anger and used it instead of drowning in it, and the team had survived my worst two periods of the season and come out the other side with a two-nil series lead.
I picked up my phone and stared at his name for a long time, turning over what I'd say if I called, and finding nothing that was good enough yet.
CHAPTER TWENTY
paper cuts
SOREN
Jamie's hands were on the practice pad, feeling the vibration of the beat I was trying to teach him, and I'd explained the pattern three times already but couldn't tell if he was getting it or if I was just doing a shit job of communicating. His face was scrunched up in concentration, tongue poking out between his teeth the way it always did when he was working through a problem, and I should have found that endearing but all I could feel was the exhaustion of trying to be present when my brain was somewhere else entirely.
“Like this?”he signed, demonstrating the rhythm with his hands against the pad.
I watched him and realized he'd actually nailed it, but it took me a full three seconds to process what I was seeing because my thoughts kept sliding back to Montreal.
“Yeah,”I signed back, forcing a smile I didn't feel.“That's perfect, Jamie. You've got it.”
Jamie deserved better than a teacher who was barely holding himself together.
Jamie's grandfather was in the kitchen making coffee, the smell of it drifting into the living room where we'd set up the practice kit. Finn was away with the team doing drills or training or whatever playoff prep looked like when you were a rookie who'd just scored two clutch goals. The house was quiet except for the rhythmic tapping of Jamie's practice and the sound of my own thoughts screaming at me.
You're too much chaos.
