“I know that, I just don’t want to see her get hurt.” I blew out a breath. I was being overprotective. “Eli is a good man. He’ll treat her respectfully, or he’ll answer to a cop and a firefighter.”
“And a hockey player.” He gave my chin a tender smooch.
Yes, and a hockey player.Myhockey player. And didn’t that make me the luckiest smoke eater in this damn city? Why yes. Yes, it did.
Epilogue
CHIP
The arena wasloud before I even got on the ice.
I knew it would be. Game Seven was always going to be loud. I looked up the decibel readings from previous Game Sevens—between 115 and 120 at peak, comparable to a jet engine at takeoff and significantly above the threshold for sustained hearing damage. I had packed my noise-attenuating earbuds in my bag as a precaution, not that I’d use them during the game itself, but having them there as an option was a thing that helped.
The Copperheads had never been here before.
Not in this barn. Not in the Cup Final. The franchise, which dates back forty-one years, has produced three Eastern Conference Final appearances and a 2009 Final loss. I’d reviewed game tape extensively, seen the mistakes, and learned from them; this year would be different.
The best-of-seven series was tied three-three against the Seattle Cascades—an Aldege Bastien Memorial-caliber goaltender named Fenwick who had faced 812 shots across the postseason and stopped 760 of them, and a power play operating at 31.4 percent efficiency, which was the highest of any team in playoff history.
Our power play was at 29.1.
Two percent. That was the margin we were working inside.
“Today’s a big day,” I said to Sable, who licked my hand.
Yep. Big.
The first periodwas a chess match with both teams playing for possession, neither willing to give up the neutral zone without a fight, and we went to the dressing room scoreless after one. Coach didn’t raise his voice; he simply pointed at the board and ran through what he’d noticed.
I put my headphones on for the rest of the break and sat with my knees apart, my eyes fixed on the middle distance, which was what I did between periods when my nervous system needed to find its baseline again.
Dane was watching in the same section as usual since this was a home game. He’d texted me that morning.
Dane: I’ll be the one in the red jersey with CORNISH on the back. Look for me. I’ll be loud.
Chip: I’m aware of what a Copperheads jersey looks like.
He had sent back three laughing emojis.
He was there with Morgan, Courtney, and Sully. Devon had come. Eli had tickets for the row behind them. I knew all of this because Dane had sent a photo from their seats approximately forty minutes before warm-up, all of them grinning at the camera, Courtney holding a foam finger, and Morgan already eating a pretzel the size of his forearm.
I’d looked at the photo four times.
I hadn’t looked at it a fifth time because I was trying to practice not spiraling into the DR folder when I needed the ice part of my brain switched on.
The DR folder was very full.
Seattle scoredforty seconds into the second.
A bad turnover at our own blue line, their center punishing us for it, quick release, top shelf. The barn went quiet for approximately two seconds, which was the time it took the Copperheads crowd to decide they were furious rather than dejected. Then they were loud again, angrier than before, and the noise pushed against my helmet like something physical.
I was on the bench. I pressed my stick against my thigh and counted the boards along the far side of the ice.
Cap tapped my shin with his blade. “We’ve got time.”
We have time.
A play developed off a board battle in the corner, when Taft won it and kicked it back to the point; Orly dragged one defender wide with his positioning, and the lane I’d been waiting for opened. The pass from the point hit my tape clean. I didn’t look at the net. I’d already calculated the angle, the goalie’s positioning, his tendency to cheat toward his blocker side on back-door plays—73 percent of the time in this postseason—and I redirected the puck along the ice toward the far post.
