Saturday night finds me in the press box, cold air humming through the vents. I've shoved the sleeves of my jacket up to my elbows the way I always do once I'm settled, and the chill settles along my bare forearms. My seat is third row, left side, angled toward both benches and the tunnel mouth. I chose it freshman year because it gave me the cleanest sightline, because I needed to see everything.
My laptop sits open. Notes arranged by period: line matchups, penalty kill percentages, faceoff numbers. Below me, the arena fills. Students flood the section behind the glass. Donors take their seats along the lower bowl. Two scouts settle into the press level with clipboards resting on their knees. It's a conference rival, with seeding on the line, and the air already crackles with a tension that makes my skin prickle.
My hand dips into my bag, and my fingers close on nothing but lining where the recorder should be. The shape of it is still imprinted in the fabric, a depression worn smooth by three years of my own fucking fingerprints. I press my palm into that hollow, and the absence lands like a brand—a reminder that he has it, that he's kept it, and that I haven't made myself go take it back. Two weeks now. Asking for it back would mean going to him. Going to him would mean standing in the space where he saidthen come get it.I have not decided what it means that he's kept it this long. I pull my hand free and rest it beside thekeyboard, my palm still tingling with the ghost of what's not there.
Two weeks.Sixty feet above the ice. Taking notes. Writing about things I've watched from a safe distance.
Tourism.The word is two weeks old and heat still crawls up my neck every time I think about it.
The lights cut out. A spotlight blooms over center ice. The team pours out of the tunnel. Cole emerges third, his stride loose and easy, a smile already touching his lips as he glides into the light. Dante comes out sixth. My eyes track him before I realize they've moved, a reflex I can't control. His stride is tighter than it usually is on warmup laps, the controlled, predatory grace he carries through hallways turning kinetic on the ice. My pen stops on the notebook, my lungs holding for a count I don't authorize, and a low, unwanted heat sparks deep in my belly.
I write:Warmup.My hand stops after the word, the letters blurring.
They find each other within thirty seconds. Cole drifts left along the blue line. Dante shifts right. Their paths cross, and it's like watching a magnet click into place. A puck moves between them, pass, receive, release, the sequence repeating until the rest of the warmup looks unsteady by comparison. On the third sequence Cole holds the puck a beat too long before releasing. Dante's stride breaks for a half-stride, then re-syncs. Imperceptible to anyone who hasn't watched them for three years, but I see it, and my breath catches at the intimacy of that tiny correction.
I write in the Chronicle notebook.Voss-Maddox line continues to operate with elite transition efficiency.The sentence sits there, sterile and safe. A tourist's sentence, and the shame of it prickles at the back of my neck even as I keep watching them.
The puck drops. First period stays tight. Both teams testing edges. Declan turns away two shots that should have gone in. The scoreboard stays at zero, the tension building with each shift.
Second period cracks open. The Northeastern center scores first on a rebound off Declan's pad. Three minutes later Dante strips the puck at the blue line, his stick a blur. Cole is already gone, a streak of speed down the ice. Breakaway. Backhand. Top shelf. The goal horn blasts, and the sound vibrates through the press box floor.
Cole's head turns immediately toward Dante. Dante taps his stick once against the ice. The tap is short. Shorter than usual.
I see it, and my hand moves toward my jacket pocket on instinct before I stop it, tightening my fingers around the pen until the plastic bites into my skin hard enough to leave marks. A flush of heat washes over me, sudden and intense, centering low in my stomach. I'm turned on by a fucking stick tap.
The second period ends 2-1 visitors. A deflection off Adrian's stick. He cracks his stick against the boards as he skates past the bench, the sound slicing through the noise even from up here.
Then the third period begins. Eight minutes in, Dante drives the net. A Northeastern defender cross-checks him low across the back. Dante goes down hard into the boards, the impact shuddering through the glass. He gets up fast, too fast, a predator rising. He shoves the defender into the glass with both hands, then catches him with a short right to the jaw, the punch quick and contained and brutally efficient. The linesmen grab Dante from behind. The whistle blows. The defender gets two for cross-checking and two for roughing. Dante gets two for roughing.
He says something on the way past the referee, his voice a low growl I can't hear but can feel in my bones. His jaw is set as he steps into the penalty box, the muscles along it locked in away I can read from sixty feet. He sits with his stick across his knees. His hands open once on the shaft, fingers spreading wide before closing again, and the slow tightening that follows turns his knuckles white even from up here. His leg starts bouncing, a fast, tight rhythm that stops and starts again while his chest rises and holds a breath too long before the exhale finally breaks loose, ragged and visible.
My palms flatten against the press counter, the cold surface solid under my skin. My eyes flick to the penalty clock above the box: 1:47 left. The glass between us. The locked penalty box door. His leg bouncing again, and my mouth goes so dry my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. Heat coils inside me, tight and anxious. I can't look away.
His head turns slightly, and for a half-second, his eyes sweep the press level. I don't know if he finds me. My throat closes around the uncertainty, a tight knot that makes it hard to swallow. I track everything. I count seconds and catalog angles and cross-reference patterns across months of data. I cannot tell if Dante Voss just looked at me.
My hands leave the counter and fold into my lap, fast enough that the reporter beside me glances over. I stare at my laptop screen. The cursor blinks. My face is hot, a flush spreading up my neck and across my chest.
I reach into my jacket and pull out the pocket notebook, my fingers unsteady.
D.V.—penalty box, 3rd period, 12:00. Jaw locked. Hands: opening once on shaft (control deviation), then re-grip. Chest: held breath, delayed exhale. Leg: rapid bounce, self-corrected x2. Observed throughout full 2:00 minor. Press counter grip logged at 1:47 (clock-confirmed). Possible eye contact: half-second, direction toward press level, target unconfirmed. Unexplained.
The notebook closes and slides back into my jacket, a secret against my ribs.
The penalty ends. Dante explodes out of the box. He hits the ice already moving, forecheck first stride, stick knocking a puck loose along the boards. The Northeastern defender's second minor is still running, so Briarcliff stays on the power play even after Dante's released. Adrian one-times it from the point. Ties the game.
Ninety seconds left. Gio cycles the puck low. It slides to Dante at the near post. He waits. One beat. Two. The defense collapses toward him. He pushes the puck through the crease. Cole is already there. Far side. Stick on ice. The puck slides under the goalie's pad and into the net.
The arena detonates. Cole finds Dante in the collision of jerseys and gloves. His glove lands on the back of Dante's neck, a grip that looks more like possession than celebration. Dante's hand closes in Cole's jersey and drags him into the crush of bodies. Two seconds. Then the celebration swallows them, but the image of that contact—Cole's hand on Dante's neck, Dante pulling him close—burns behind my eyes.
I take the press elevator down and cut through the corridor to the post-game media tunnel. The tunnel after a win fills fast. Equipment staff weave through the hallway. Trainers move between stalls with tape and ice packs. Cameras and boom mics crowd near the locker room door.
"MAYA!" Cole bursts out of the locker room still in pads and jersey, helmet and gloves gone, hair damp and plastered to his forehead. He spots me and closes the distance in four strides, his gaze cutting once toward the locker room door behind him before landing back on me, the glance so quick I almost miss it. His arms wrap around me, the bulk of his shoulder pads pressing awkwardly across my back, and he lifts before I can brace.
My feet leave the ground. I grab his shoulders automatically. The pads dig into my ribs from below, the chest piece bunched between us hard enough to hurt. Heat presses through the gear, sweat, adrenaline, the sharp cold smell of ice still clinging to him. My face ends up against his neck and the scent of exertion hits me all at once—skin and salt and the sandalwood underneath that's just Cole. The same way he smelled in my bedroom at home when we were seventeen and I pressed my mouth against the pillow so I wouldn't make a sound.
My stomach tightens, a sudden clench low in my belly. Two seconds. Three. His heat soaks through the gear, the smell of him flooding my senses until I shove back, my hands pressing hard enough against his padded shoulders that my knuckles ache.
He sets me down on my feet, but his hand stays on my shoulder. His eyes drift past me toward the tunnel mouth for a beat before they come back, and a flicker crosses his expression, too fast to name.
