A whistle blows with a stoppage in play. I coast to a halt near the bench, grateful for thirty seconds to breathe, to reset, to remember what I’m doing and why.
Gage skates out toward the circle for the faceoff, muttering to himself the way goalies do. He passes our bench, leans his stick against the boards, and grabs a water bottle.
I’m already looking back out at the ice.
I’m already thinking about her mouth.
I reach for my stick.
I don’t notice immediately. That’s the thing. That’s the part I will never be able to explain to anyone because there is no explanation that doesn’t end with me being a complete and total idiot.
I reach for my stick, and skate back out for the faceoff.
It’s all muscle memory.
But this feels different. The weight’s wrong. The balance is off. The blade sitting on the ice at an angle that makes no sense for the way I’m standing.
I look down.
I’m holding a goalie stick.
Gage’s goalie stick. Forty-seven inches of thick paddle and hooked blade, built for blocking shots and not a single other thing on this earth, currently in the hands of the Slammers’starting center who is standing at the faceoff dot like he’s never seen ice before.
I stare at it.
The referee skates over. Looks at the stick. Looks at me. Looks back at the stick with the expression of a man encountering a problem he has never once prepared for.
“Are you—” He stops. Starts again. “Foster, is that a goalie stick?”
“No,” I say. “It’s my special stick.”
It is absolutely a goalie stick.
The referee looks at me for a long moment with what I can only describe as professional pity.
“I’m going to need you to—”
“I know,” I say.
“Illegal equipment,” he announces, loud enough for both benches to hear. “Two minutes. Number eleven.”
The crowd reacts. Not with anger—with confusion, then laughter, because there is genuinely no threatening way to interpret what just happened. Their bench is already losing it. I can hear it from here.
I skate to the penalty box.
I don’t look at our bench.
I especially don’t look at Shep.
The penalty box attendant opens the door, closes it behind me, and then very carefully does not make eye contact with me for the full two minutes, which is the kindest thing anyone does for me all night.
I sit.
Two minutes. A hundred and twenty seconds. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no play to make or gap to close or puck to chase. Just me and the glass and the insults of the Wisconsin fans behind me and the very clear view of our bench where I can see, without wanting to, Shep Sawyer in the process of themost complete physical breakdown I have ever witnessed from a professional athlete.
He’s doubled over.
Actually doubled over, one hand on Holden’s shoulder for support, the other pressed to his face like he’s trying not to combust. Holden is shaking. Heath has turned completely away, shoulders heaving. Even Coach Duff, who has maintained a straight face through decades of professional hockey, appears to be studying the ceiling with suspicious intensity.
