The Cup Final. Griffin Novak on the other side of the ice. The text on my phone I still haven’t answered.
The old piece still out there.
And I’m lying here in the quiet after the best night of my life with the truth still between us, untouched and waiting.
Soon.
No.
Before Game 1.
That’s the deadline.
I’m not letting Griffin get there first. I’m not letting it come out in a press scrum or a rival piece or a text from someone who read something online.
He hears it from me.
The Cyclones are going to the Cup Final.
Seven to one against. His folder getting bigger by the day. A city that believed before it had proof.
I want to be there for all of it.
Not watching it. Not writing it.
Just there.
In his house. In his shirt.
Four days.
Then he hears it from me.
Chapter twenty-eight
Jax
Seventooneagainstus.
I read the spread over coffee while Nova’s still asleep in my shirt in the other room. Every expert panel. Every analyst. Every former player turned commentator who has an opinion about what the Canyon Bay Cyclones are doing in the Cup Final and why it won’t last past Game 4.
I read all of it.
A smile creeps up the corner of my mouth.
I’ve been the underdog my whole career. Every camp. Every team. Every season in this city when nobody was coming to the games and the league talked about us like a footnote. I know exactly what to do with people who write you off.
You bring it on the ice.
I tape the spread inside my locker.
She’s at the counter when I come back out.
My shirt. Her coffee. Brick between her feet doing the weaving thing he does when he wants something and knows exactly how to get it.
“Seven to one,” she says without looking up from her phone.
“Yeah.”
