Page 156 of Slapshot Bride

I saw it the morning after she left. I was still on the kitchen floor. Hadn’t moved from it. The sun had come up over the canyon, and my phone had been going for twenty minutes on the tile beside me before I picked it up.

Riley, with Preston’s arm around her waist. Her hand resting on his chest so the ring caught the light.

The headline was something about a private matter resolved. Gratitude for everyone’s patience during a difficult season.

She was smiling in it.

That’s the part I can’t get past. I’ve looked at that smile until my eyes burned, and I know that smile. I’ve had the real one across a kitchen island at six in the morning, and this isn't it.

Except I would think that, wouldn’t I?

Any man would. Every man who’s ever been left tells himself exactly that.

Warm-ups are fine.

The anthem follows, then the drop and the game starts.

I know it’s going to be a shitty one from the first puck drop.

In Chicago I was late. Tonight I’m not here at all.

My body is doing the job but my mind is still on that photo, and the smile. The ring too, sitting on her finger like a mockery of what I thought we had.

I’m running behind, and by the second shift Kai has started calling for the puck twice, because I can’t seem to keep up.

I get bumped off the puck by a winger forty pounds lighter than me. I ice it on a power play.

I take a lazy hooking penalty in the neutral zone because I’m out of position and can’t be bothered to skate the four strides that would have fixed it. I sit in the box for two minutes with eighteen thousand people behind me, and I don’t hear one of them.

They score on the power play.

Wyatt says something to me on the bench after. Some joke, some shake it off, big man. I look at him, and whatever’s on my face makes him stop mid-sentence and turn around to stare at the ice.

Second period. We’re down two.

I get a shift with eleven minutes left, and I have the puck at their blue line with Kai driving wide. I make a decision I’m going to think about for a long time. I try to force it through a defenseman’s stick instead of chipping it deep like a professional.

He picks it clean.

It goes the other way two-on-one, and it’s my man. I’m three strides behind him the whole way because I turned late, and I watch it happen from behind, regret hitting me late.

Their winger buries it in the top corner.

Three-nothing.

I skate to the bench, and Coach shoots me a look. One that means I’ll hear about it later, and I’m benched till the game ends.

Twelve minutes into the third, he leans down.

“Blake.”

I look at him.

“You’re done. Go get changed.”

His voice is tight, and he’s already looking back at the ice before he’s finished the sentence.

I get up, legs feeling weaker than ever. They carry me down the tunnel with my helmet in my hand while the game goes on above me, and it’s the first time in my adult life that anyone has taken hockey away from me.