Page 115 of Her Player

Victoria hadn't moved.

Good.

Neither would I.

39

VICTORIA

I didn't sit down for a single second of it.

I stood at the floor-to-ceiling glass of my owner's box with my arms crossed and my coffee going cold on the table behind me and my eyes tracking every single movement on that ice like my life depended on it. Which, in every way that actually mattered, it did.

The arena was deafening. Forty thousand people generating a wall of noise that vibrated the glass beneath my fingertips. Below me, the ice gleamed under the championship lights, freshly Zambonied and perfect, and on it my team moved like something I had spent three years building toward this exact damn moment.

Brynn stood beside me. She hadn't sat down either.

Dani was on her other side, gripping the railing with both hands, her eyes wide and locked on the ice like she’d never seen a hockey game in her life. She probably hadn’t. Brynn had flown her in yesterday and I’d caught the two of them at breakfast this morning, Dani asking questions about icing rules while Brynn laughed so hard coffee came out of her nose. I’d liked her immediately. She had that energy, the kind of person who showed up for the people she loved without needing to understand why it mattered. She just showed up.

"Their left side is locked," she said, her eyes on the ice. "Has been the whole first period."

"I know." I tracked Rhett as he circled back toward center, exchanging a look with Jett that communicated something the rest of the arena couldn't read. "He's waiting."

"For what?"

"For them to get comfortable."

The first period ended one to one. The Dynamites' center, Sokolov, enormous and ruthlessly efficient, had scored their only goal with a shot that Moose simply hadn't seen coming. Fast. Precise. The kind of shot that came from a man who'd done it so many times it lived in his muscle memory. I watched Moose shake it off before the period even finished, resetting his stance, rolling his neck, locking back in.

Good.

The second period was where we'd make our move.

I picked up my cold coffee and drank it anyway, my eyes never leaving the ice as the teams came back out. Down on the bench, Coach paced the length of it with his hands clasped behind his back. I watched him lean over the boards and say something to Rhett before the face-off. Whatever it was, Rhett's shoulders dropped half an inch, not in defeat but the way a man relaxed when he'd just been given permission to do what he already knew needed to be done.

The puck dropped.

And Rhett moved.

Not toward the puck. Away from it. A hard cut to the left that pulled two Dynamites defenders with him like he had them on a damn string while Jett collected the puck and immediately drove right. The right side gap I had found in three games of tape yawned open exactly like I said it would, and Jett hit it at full speed before their defense even registered the switch.

The goal alarm screamed.

The Vipers side of the arena came off their feet.

I exhaled for what felt like the first time in twenty minutes.

"There it is," Brynn breathed beside me.

"There it is," I agreed.

But the Dynamites were not a championship team for nothing. They adjusted inside four minutes, collapsing their right side, compensating for the gap we'd just blown through. Their coach was already on his headset, already redirecting. He was good. Fast. I watched him make three line changes in quick succession and I respected the hell out of it even as I wanted to strangle him.

The second period became a war.

Two to one. Then two to two when Sokolov got a clean look at Moose and took it without goddamn hesitation. Then three to two when Langley buried a rebound off a scramble in front of the net that had the Vipers bench losing their collective minds. Then three to three when a Dynamites winger found a seam in our defense that shouldn't have existed and Coach slammed his hand against the boards so hard I heard it from four stories up.

Goddamn it.