The arena goes silent. And then everything explodes again.
Holt is already fighting their goalie. Zane is dragging Johnson off me. Perth is still there. Still leaning in. Still pushing. Still making sure the damage sticks.
The referees finally pull them away. Too late. My shoulder’s gone. I know it immediately.
“It’s my shoulder,” I tell Zane when he reaches me.
His face tightens instantly.
“It’s dislocated. It hurts,” I admit through clenched teeth.
“Those bastards,” he mutters, looking straight at Perth. Perth’s smiling. Of course he is.
“I can’t play,” I say.
The words feel wrong in my mouth.
“I can’t play. The asshole got me.”
“We’ll win this for you,” Holt tells me as I skate off.
The crowd applauds while I leave the ice. It doesn’t help. Not really. Because I’m not supposed to be leaving. Not tonight. Not this game.
Jenna wants me gone immediately. She tries to tell me it’s the Grizzlies policy, but I refuse.
I stay on the bench anyway, shoulder hanging useless at my side while I watch the rest of the game unfold in slow motion. Every second stretches longer than it should as Zane throws himself into blocks that should never reach him, and Holt fights for possession like he’s trying to make up for me not being out there beside him.
One minute left. Perth takes a shot. Zane blocks it with his knee. The buzzer sounds seconds later. And the arena explodes.
“We did it!” Holt shouts.
“Where’s Blake?”
I’m already there. Waiting. Watching them skate toward me. They slam the plexiglass hard enough to make it shake.
“I told you we would win!” I shout back at them, because even with my shoulder screaming with every movement, this still feels like the only thing that matters right now.
Jenna steps in again.
“You have to get this checked now,” she says.
She’s been trying to move me for ten minutes. I know it. I just wasn’t leaving before the buzzer.
As she finally pulls me toward the tunnel, I look up into the stands automatically.
Gwen’s there. Tess. Leo. Celebrating. Laughing. Relieved. But Lisa… Lisa isn’t there.
And for half a second, the victory feels incomplete without her.
Chapter 20
Lisa
The hallway outside the surgical wing feels too bright and too quiet at the same time. It’s the kind of quiet that doesn’t calm you but instead makes every small sound feel sharper and more important than it should be. I realize after the third time I walk past the same vending machine that I have absolutely no idea how long I’ve been pacing back and forth in front of section A. Time stopped making sense the moment they wheeled Blake away from me.
I saw him for less than ten seconds. Less than ten seconds.
Somehow, those ten seconds keep replaying in my head over and over again, like I missed something important that I should have said before they took him through those doors.
