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The red light came on.

Our bench erupted.

Dante and Baelor reached him first, and when Ash emerged from between them, grinning despite the obvious pain of being congratulated by two overenthusiastic teammates, his gaze came toward the bench.

Straight to me.

Not his father.

Me.

I didn’t bother hiding my smile.

We carried the lead into the third, lost it briefly when Vegas tied the game, then took it back with a little over eight minutes remaining. Taz handled everything they threw at him after that, and Dante put the final puck into an empty net with thirty-six seconds left.

4–2.

Colorado led the series three games to two.

One more win, and for a few glorious minutes, nothing else mattered.

Or it didn’t until we left the locker room.

Media ran long, and Cinder checked Ash again before allowing him to shower, confirming that he’d made himself considerably more sore without causing any additional damage. By the time we were changed and heading toward the secured exit, most of the arena had emptied, leaving the corridors strangely quiet after hours of relentless noise.

I’d checked the seats after the final horn and found Ash’s father gone. Part of me had hoped his appearance had been nothing more than another attempt at intimidation, a reminder that he could turn up wherever Ash happened to be.

The shouting ahead of us destroyed that hope.

We rounded the corner to find a security guard blocking a man from entering the restricted area, and it took me a moment to reconcile him with the smug figure I’d seen during warmup.

Ash’s father could barely stand straight.

His expensive jacket hung open over an untucked shirt, his face was deeply flushed, and his movements had the loose, unpredictable quality of someone who’d passed drunk several drinks ago. He kept trying to maneuver around the security guard as though persistence would eventually make the man forget why he was there.

Ash stopped dead beside me and his father saw him. “There he fucking is.”

The words carried far enough that conversations behind us faltered.

Ash’s shoulders tightened beneath his jacket, his gaze flicking briefly around the corridor.

Teammates.

Arena employees.

Witnesses.

His father pointed toward him. “Tell this asshole I’m your dad.”

The security guard didn’t move. “Sir, you can’t enter the players’ area.”

“I don’t want the fucking players’ area. I want my son.”

Ash swallowed before asking what he was doing here, keeping his voice low as though there were still some chance of containing the scene. His father had no similar concern. “I need money.”

For a moment, Ash simply stared at him, not even noticing security rapidly clearing everyone away. Not caring we were standing in the middle of a corridor with zero privacy. “I just gave you money.”

His father dragged a hand across his mouth, swaying slightly before finding his balance again. “Yeah, well, I need more.”