Page 155 of Slapshot Bride

“For six years, I let you tell me who my daughter was. I believed you over her, in my own house, to her face. That was my failure, and I will carry it.”

He looks around the room, at Preston’s mother, at the partners, at every person here who’s ever nodded along. “It ends tonight. This family is finished being useful to you. If you contact her, if you contact anyone she loves, if I hear your people have so much as breathed near her name, you’ll find out what my name is worth in this city too.”

Nobody moves.

“Riley…” my father says, without turning. “Get your coat.”

My mother is already holding it. I toss the ring to the floor, and together, they lead me out.

I shake the entire way home.

I sit in the back of my father’s car with my hands between my knees and my whole body trembling like I’ve been pulled out of cold water, and my mother reaches back between the seats and holds on to my ankle the whole drive, because it’s the only part of me she can reach.

Nobody says anything.

It isn't over. I know that. The tape is still in a safe in that house, and Preston is a man who doesn't lose quietly, and all he needs is one phone call that could ruin Easton Blake by morning.

My mom walks me to my bedroom when we arrive. My childhood bedroom still has the same look from when I was a teenager.

I’m sitting on the end of the bed in the navy dress with my shoes off when my father appears in the doorway. He doesn’t come in. He leans a shoulder against the frame, hands in his pockets, and looks at the carpet.

“Riley…”

“Dad…”

“I’m so sorry it took me this long.”

I cover the distance between us and hug him.

“Thank you, Dad.”

33

EASTON

The End of Maya

The building sounds the way it always does at forty minutes to puck drop.

I come up the tunnel with my stick over my shoulder, and the noise comes down to meet me. Vendors, the PA doing a mic check, eighteen thousand people finding their seats. I’ve walked into this exact wall of sound more times than I can count. But today, it sounds different.

Like I shouldn’t be here.

I push the feelings down and step onto the ice for warm-ups, and my eyes go up and left.

They do it before I’ve had a thought. Nine rows up behind our bench, the family section, and I’m scanning it the way I scanned it in Chicago and the way I’ve scanned it every home game since the preseason opener, looking for her. The way she smiles with the camera at her face.

My chest tightens, and the dull ache starts.

Quinn’s there. Emma’s there too, on her lap.

And the next seat, the one that’s been Riley's since September, there’s a man in a green sweater eating nachos.

I look away. I drag in a deep breath to ease the pain, but it doesn’t go away.

I take a lap. I take another one. I fire a puck at the empty net from the hash marks, and it goes in, because that’s the one thing in my life that still works.

But the moment is ruined when the photo from seven days ago flashes into my head.