Page 42 of Breakaway Hearts

He cracks a smile and turns to face me. “I’m not worried about the pressure. That’s never really fazed me,” he assures me.

“Did I just disrupt your ritual?”

“My best season, my only ritual was a cinnamon raisin cookie before hitting the ice for warmups.”

“Want me to check with concessions?” I’ve never seen any here, but I’ll bake them myself – or buy them – if it gets us back to the Frozen Four.

“It’s all good,” he assures me, pulling a small Tupperware out of his backpack. He opens it to reveal at least twenty cookies, but my attention is snagged by the Post-it on the cover.

Please don’t share. Or at least pretend you didn’t.

There’s more in a smaller scrawl that I can’t make out.

“Want one?” Jason offers.

“You sure?”

“Old rituals die hard.” He shrugs, the tiniest bit of guilt on his face.

“Sav?” Colt asks, coming over as soon as he smells baked goods. “I thought she was visiting Callahan this weekend.”

“As if that would stop her from feeding us,” David reproaches.

“There are victory cupcakes at the Ivy House for when we win,” I tell everyone, because Savannah, our previous captain’s girlfriend, did indeed feed us before her road trip, “but these are Jason’s.”

“As in he’s not sharing?” Spring looks confused; there are a lot of cookies.

“Of course, I’m sharing. She’s heavy-handed with the cinnamon and spices,” Jason warns before every cookie disappears within a minute.

“Dude, these are the bomb,” Colt tells Jason.

“Better than Sav’s?” Donovan asks, because he’s a shit disturber today.

“Can’t they just all be good?” Colt laments.

“Come on, let’s get out there, warm up, and put on a show.”

I wait for everyone else to hit the ice first, because it’s what Noah always did when he was captain, but once I’m out, my eyes are on Hargraves, waiting for him to notice Madison.

Who is definitely here.

A shiver goes through me that has nothing to do with the ice, and I know that if I look over to my seats, Tab will be there, probably on her phone, and Madison will be beside her.

Hargraves does his stretching, then focuses on the net, tapping the posts with his stick and skating around it a couple of times before he finally looks up. Even from here, I can see the huge smile on his face.

I finally chance a glance, and Madison is deep in conversation with my sister. She’s bundled up in a youth team’s sweatshirt and a beanie, like she’s trying to disappear.

I stay back while Hargraves goes over, scans the crowd as if he’s looking for someone, then skates back to the net without singling her out.

My roommates have no such qualms, letting absolutely everyone in the arena know that Baby Brooks is here, turning Tab’s face as red as her hair, which is the only indication that she isn’t as bored and unfazed as she pretends to be while calling each of them out. It’s far from her first game here, watching us, but she wasn’t a student before, so she didn’t have a reputation to uphold. I tried to warn her what would happen, because I saw Savannah deal with it, but Tab laughed in my face and assured me my college hockey career wouldn’t crimp her style more than a father, uncle, and brother-in-law who appear in Marvel and Star Wars movies, win Oscars, and host SNL. She doesn’t get that it’s different in a closed community like a college campus an hour from the closest city…but she’s right that nothing can top the embarrassment of your dad being named the Sexiest Man Alive.

“You look chipper,” I tell Hargraves when we step off so the Zamboni can do the ice.

“Not that I believe in good luck charms, but if I did, she’s out there.”

“Your roommate?” I ask, not sure if Madison ever mentioned me, since she ends every interaction giving the impression she wants to forget she ever met me.

“Maddie. We’ve been best friends since we were eight, and I don’t think she’s ever missed a game.”