I’ve just been floating along here. Anger at my father starts to claw its way to the surface, but I need to save that for the ice, direct it where I can work it right out of my body.
“Okay," I say to Spinner instead. "I'll talk to your guy."
"Attaboy." Spinner hops up and gestures toward the door. "Now let's go beat Columbus."
Coach calls us in. We huddle, we break, and I follow the guys into the tunnel with my stick on the ice and my heart hammering and the noise of the arena building above us like a wave about to crest.
Standing just outside the door is a man, the Stag brothers and Spinner approach warmly, greeting him with fist bumps. I think this is their shared agent, the infamous Brian Klein.
The guy looks around Spinner and steps forward, hand out. "Houser. These guys talk about you nonstop. Let's have a conversation after the game."
I shake his hand. "Yeah. I'd like that."
"Good." Brian pops his gum and grins. "I've got ideas for you, kid. Big ones."
He claps my shoulder the way you'd acknowledge a player after a good shift and walks past me toward the ice. I stare at him, realizing I might be an actual adult now, with a real agent who can help me get real money and look after me.
"Houser!" Coach's voice from down the tunnel interrupts my thoughts. "You playing tonight or sightseeing?"
I skate onto the ice.
The arena is loud and bright, and eighteen thousand people are on their feet, and the ice is fresh and perfect under my blades. I take warmup laps and feel my knee hold and my lungs open and my legs find the rhythm that I've known since I was four years old in a Minnesota rink with my dad's shadow over every stride.
But tonight the shadow is gone. Instead, with my girl in the stands and my name on her back and the weight of a secret lifted, I feel like every spotlight in this place is lighting my way.
The game starts fast. Columbus is physical, and we match them hit-for-hit. I play the second line with Spinner, cycling the puck, crashing the net, feeling the rust shake off with every shift. My timing is half a step behind, but my instincts are there — the reads, the angles, the sense of where the puck is going before it gets there.
Mayhem lays a guy out in the neutral zone, so clean that the arena roars. Rookie wins a faceoff and feeds it back to defense. Grentley makes a save that draws a standing ovation. The Stag twins work the power play like they share a brain.
Then I'm on the ice for a line change, fresh legs, and Spinner chips the puck along the wall. I chase it into the corner, shoulder down, muscle some defenseman off the biscuit — clean, hard, the way you're supposed to, not the way my father did it — and center it in front of the net.
It bounces off a skate. Comes back to me. I'm alone in the slot with the puck on my blade and the goalie sliding across, and I don't think. I just shoot.
Suddenly, the light goes red, the horn blows, and the arena explodes. Spinner crashes into me from behind, screaming in my ear, and the boys swarm me until I'm at the center of a hockey hug with my knee intact and my name on the scoreboard.
I peel myself away from the scrum and skate toward the bench, gloves up, stick raised, and I look up at the family section.
Ella is on her feet. She's in my jersey, and she's screaming, both fists in the air, and Cam is hugging her from one side and Essence from the other. My teammates’ partners and parents are all together with my girl, whose face shows pure, incandescent joy.
She sees me looking. Our eyes lock through the glass, through the noise, through people, and the distance between the ice and the stands.
She points at me. Then she presses her hand against her heart.
I press my glove against mine.
Chapter 28
Ella
I've spent my whole life in hockey arenas, but always in the general seats. The cheap ones behind a pillar, the nosebleeds my dad scored through a booster club, the standing-room spots where I did homework on my knees while Jason's team warmed up below. I never sat with the families. I was adjacent to the families. Background noise in someone else's experience.
Tonight I'm in the third row behind the glass with a HOUSER jersey and the other guys’ partners all around me. Cam and Essence are there, and Emerson Stag has a baby strapped to her chest, wearing tiny little headphones to block the incredible noise from the crowd and the speakers.
When the announcer calls Howie Houser’s name, I feel it in my sternum. My heart stutters each time the puck drops. Cam drops a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “It gets easier,” he says, gesturing at the ice. “But I thought you’d be used to it with your brother and all.”
I bite my lip, wondering how to explain that I somehow care a lot more about the man that I love getting injured. There’s no way to verbalize that yet, so I just squeeze his hand each time a Fury player collides with the glass.
I watch a Columbus forward drive Jason into the boards, and I realize I’ve barely watched him play since he went pro. It’s different now, with my education on the human body and my experience with all the damage it can endure. I see the angle of impact on my brother’s shoulder, and I calculate a rotator cuff strain and possible AC joint separation, and my hands grip the armrest.
