Page 146 of Offside Angle

My jaw tightens.

The officials apparently saw nothing.

Of course they didn’t.

Matteo doesn’t even look toward them. He sends the puck ahead, finishes the shift and goes back to the bench with the beginning of a red mark showing high on his cheek.

I take several pictures.

Evidence, really.

Four minutes before intermission, Vanguard finally gets through.

A broken play near center sends them the other way with numbers, and suddenly the Reapers are scrambling to recover. Shane handles the first shot, kicking the puck away with his pad, but the rebound stays loose in the crease for half a second too long.

That’s all Vanguard needs.

Their winger gets there first and jams it home.

The building explodes.

1–0.

The sound is so loud I can feel it vibrating through the glass in front of me. I lower the camera for a moment and look toward the Reapers bench, expecting at least some sign that the goal rattled them.

Matteo is already moving toward the next faceoff.

His mouth is bleeding, there’s a fresh mark high on his cheekbone, and his expression says he’d happily play another sixty minutes if that’s what it takes to make Vancouver regret scoring on them.

Something possessive and entirely unhelpful moves through me.

Beautiful man.

Terrible survival instincts.

I raise the camera again and find him through the viewfinder.

I love Matteo like this, even if watching him makes me want to strangle half the opposing roster.

When he’s locked into a game, everything about him sharpens. There’s no wasted movement, no hesitation, nothing left over for the overthinking that has followed him through most of this series. He reads the ice, commits, and trusts his body to do what it has been trained to do for most of his life.

Unfortunately, that same confidence means he throws himself into every collision like bruises are somebody else’s problem.

By the time the horn ends the first, the score is still 1–0. I stay behind the glass while the teams disappear into their tunnels, checking my settings and pretending I’m not following Matteo until the last possible second.

I lose sight of him only when he turns the corner.

The Reapers come back out meaner.

Whatever gets said during intermission works. Their breakouts are cleaner, they’re arriving harder along the walls, and suddenly Vanguard has much less time to make decisions with the puck. The crowd is loud, but the sound starts changing as the period goes on. There’s more irritation in it now, more nervous shouting every time the Reapers establish pressure.

Six minutes in, Elias wins an offensive-zone draw cleanly and sends the puck back high. Cole gets onto it, drifts across the top of the zone until a lane opens, and sends a low shot through traffic.

The goalie gets a pad on it.

Wrong choice.

The rebound kicks directly into the slot, and Elias is already there.