Page 144 of Puck You Both

I kiss his knuckles in a luxury box in front of Wall's mother, and she watches the ice like the ice is the only thing happening, but pats my knee once without a word.

And under all of it, the whole spring long: the captain.

Washington is everywhere. He blocks shots with the parts of his body a man is supposed to be protecting, scores twice in the clinchers, and assists on everything else that matters. After each round the handshake line takes longer to release him, opponents holding his glove, saying things into his helmet. The Wolves have stopped talking about it in the thread, which is how I know that’s all they think about. They play like men who have decided, without a meeting, that this particular person is not leaving hockey empty-handed.

Leila watches her husband's last spring from the seat beside mine with her chin high and her thumb moving over her wedding ring. Between periods she tells Linda stories from years I wasn't family for. I drink my beer and get to be family for this one.

Between rounds there's a single free night, and we spend it maintaining the asset.

That's Theo's term. The asset lets himself into his own apartment at nine and finds us already there, moving carefully, one bruise on his collarbone shaped like a puck. We feed him. We put on a nature documentary he doesn't watch and lie on either side of him while whales migrate somewhere warm. I knead the games out of his shoulders while Theo handles the feet, a service he provides under auditory protest and with visible devotion.

Wall submits to all of it in silence. Twenty minutes in, his head tips onto my shoulder and his breathing goes long. Theo turns the volume down one click at a time, and we sit there in the whale light, holding between us the most watched man in hockey, asleep.

I've kept a lot of things safe in my life. It was never this literal.

The conference final tries to kill us all.

Seven games, three overtimes, one puck off the crossbar that I will see behind my eyes every night until I die. We survive it in the box, barely, clutching each other through every overtime, and Wall survives it in the crease with numbers I would hate him for back in October.

Then, it's June, and there are two teams left, and one of them is his.

The Stanley Cup Final. My boyfriend's net, four wins from the whole thing.

They split the first two on the road. They drop game three at home, ugly, on a night when nothing bounces fair, then take game four on a Washington goal that half the bench cries about in high definition. Game five belongs to Wall, a road performance so composed it's rude, and they fly home up three games to two, with the math suddenly very simple.

Game six. At home. The Cup is in the building.

Win tonight and it's over, the season ending with the Cup in Washington's hands in his last June. Lose, and it's a game seven with everything on it, on someone else’s turf.

The United Center tonight is a beast. Standing room packed to the rafters, the anthem swallowed whole. Our box is at full strength. Mama Paws on Linda's far side with a paw-print flag, Devon and Mateo behind us in matching shirts, Leila at the rail with her eyes on one man in white, crying before warmups end.

Chicago scores first, and the building lifts off the ground. Some old Milwaukee reflex in me flinches at the roar. The rest of me is already on its feet with everyone else.

They give one back in the second, on a fluke even I couldn't have fought through, and the game tightens into hockey I recognize from the inside, where every pass has consequences and both goalies are past nerves and into something cleaner.

Wall is playing the game of his life. I've earned the right to that judgment. I've watched him closer and longer than anyone else alive, and it is the game of his life.

Third period. Wolves are up by one on a power-play goal that Theo celebrates so hard he pulls something and refuses to say what.

Ten minutes become eight. Eight become seven. Chicago can't get the puck out of their end, and it lives one bad bounce from Wall's crease, where he keeps erasing chances with the calm I used to hate from the far end. A shot disappears into bodies and doesn't come out. The whistle screams, and the replay shows his glove closed around the puck, six inches off the ice.

The board says 6:00 even.

I reach for my drink and can't lift it. It takes me a moment to understand why. My hands are shaking. Hands that took a Final-week shootout without a flutter, hands I've built a whole career and half a personality on, rattling a plastic cup against the rail of a box. While I'm staring at them, Theo laces his fingers through my right without looking away from the ice, and Linda Wallace takes my left, her grip tight and absolute. Three people holding on in a row.

Eight years I tried to beat him. Tonight I'd give anything I have for him to win.

The building stands for the last six minutes, all of it, one beast on its feet.

The Wolves lose the draw.

Chapter 30

WALL

THE PUCK IS in my zone the second the scoreboard finishes saying 6:00.

Point shot, immediate, through a forest. I pick it up late off a stick blade, kick it to the corner, and their winger is on it before my defense finishes turning. The crowd noise drops out of my ears the second the puck moves. Twenty thousand people become background, something happening to the building, and my whole world narrows to hips, blades, and the black disc that wants my season.