28. Thomas
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Thomas
Okay.
I’m not saying this is the best game of my life, but like… it might be the best game of my life.
Everything clicks. Everything hums. The puck feels like it’s magnetized to my stick. My legs burn, but it’s the kind of fire that makes you feel invincible.
Every breath tastes like victory. The fans are on their feet, the noise crashing over us like a wave of pure chaos and love.
From the opening face-off, we’re on. Rowan’s in the net, laser focused, jaw clenched, tracking every move like a predator.
Bruno and I are flying down the ice with the kind of telepathy we haven’t felt in weeks. We don’t even have to call plays, we just know .
I slip between two defenders like I’m skating on instinct, pass to Bruno, who fakes left, then fires right… and boom.
Goal .
The horn screams. The arena erupts. I nearly blow out my vocal cords shouting as I launch myself into Bruno, and we collide midair like two idiots in a beer commercial.
Rowan lifts his glove, gives us one of those tight nods from the crease. That small tilt of his head that says keep going . That we’ve got this.
And for the first time in a long time, it doesn’t feel like hope.
It feels like fact.
By the end of the first period, we’re up 3-0. The bench is buzzing. Helmets clink. Gloves slap. Coach actually smiles, briefly, and mutters something about “goddamn finally.”
I lean over the boards, chest heaving, eyes locked on the scoreboard. My heart’s doing double time, but it’s not panic. It’s drive.
Then the second period starts.
And everything shifts.
It doesn’t happen all at once. It’s not a car crash… it’s a tide.
Slow. Rising. Relentless.
At first, it’s little things. Missed passes. Loose puck battles. Stick checks that used to land clean now slide past.
We’re still skating hard, but they’re skating harder. We’re playing smart, but they’re playing like their lives depend on it.
Maybe they do.
They score once, on a power play we never should’ve given them. One of their wingers rockets down the side, finds an opening, and fires low glove side.
Rowan gets a piece of it, but the puck skitters just under the pad and into the back of the net.
The buzzer goes.
The crowd goes tight.
Still 3-1. We’ve got this. Shake it off. Reset.
Then they score again .
This one hurts. A brutal rebound. Rowan deflects the initial shot, but it bounces off Bruno’s skate and lands right on their captain’s stick.
He doesn’t hesitate. Just slaps it in, clean and deadly.
Rowan slams his glove down with a roar that echoes off the boards. He kicks the post, furious. I see it in his body, the rage, the disbelief, the desperation to hold the line.
The arena’s still loud, but not in the same way.
It’s nervous now.
They score a third time.
And just like that, it’s 3-3.
There’s a pulse under the noise, a low-level panic humming in the stands. The kind that tightens shoulders and sends fans to grip their seats like that might help the team hold the lead.
Coach is yelling. His voice cuts through the static like a whip.
“Reset! Stick to the fundamentals! Hold the damn line!”
We huddle fast. Tight, breathless, rattling with adrenaline. The cold air burns in our lungs, our exhales turning to steam like smoke from a battlefield.
Bruno’s jaw is clenched so hard I’m surprised his teeth don’t crack. He mutters something in Slovak, low and guttural, and I don’t know what it means, but it hits like a war cry straight to the chest.
Rowan slams his blocker against the goalpost twice. Sharp, metallic. The sound echoes like a starting gun. That’s his version of shouting. Of screaming.
I skate backward into position, my stick tapping the ice in a staccato rhythm to keep the nerves at bay.
“No more cracks,” I bark. “No more gaps. We lock this down. We finish. We didn’t claw our way here just to let it slip now.”
Bruno’s eyes meet mine, and he nods once, tight, grim, ready to bleed for this. Rowan crouches low in the crease, every muscle coiled like a spring.
The ref drops the puck.
And the whole game detonates.
It’s not hockey anymore, it’s a war zone.
Bodies crash into the boards with enough force to rattle the glass. Helmets snap back. Sticks clash like swords. Someone goes flying, loses a glove, and still dives barehanded for the puck like a man possessed.
Not me.
Probably should’ve been me.
We grind. We scrap. We refuse to give an inch. My legs are screaming, my lungs are lava, but I don’t stop. None of us does.
It’s not even about the scoreboard anymore. It’s about us. About pride. About proving we’re still standing. That we’re still us.
The puck squirts loose near the boards, chaos, bodies falling, a perfect storm, and Bruno gets to it first.
He spins out of a check and sends a pass up the wing, fast and clean, like he saw the whole play three seconds before it happened. It lands on my stick, and time slows.
I should pass.
I know I should pass.
But the net is open. Just for a second.
And I feel it. That electric pulse through my arms. That deep gut instinct.
I wind back. Snap my wrist.
The puck flies.
Top shelf.
Goal .
The horn blasts like thunder, and the stadium explodes. Screaming, stomping, a tidal wave of sound crashing down over the ice.
Bruno grabs me mid-stride, slamming into me like a truck, and I just start yelling. Nothing coherent. Just raw, pure joy.
We’ve got a lead again.
But there’s still time.
Still a clock ticking.
Still blood to spill and pressure mounting with every heartbeat.
And if we want to win this thing?
We’re going to have to earn every last second.
I’m skating like a man possessed, adrenaline pouring out of every pore, banging my stick against the boards like it’s a war drum.
“Let’s go, Marauders!” I yell, throat raw, heart pounding out of rhythm with the roaring crowd. And they roar back, like they believe we’ve already got one hand on the damn trophy.
The whole arena feels like it’s vibrating. Like we’ve stirred up a storm and now it’s surging at our backs.
As he coasts past, I catch Bruno by the collar and give him a rough shake, wild-eyed. “You ready to crush some souls, or what?”
He grunts, low and deadly. “Always.” Then he headbutts my helmet lightly like a Viking about to march into battle, and I laugh, because of course he does. Of course.
We circle back toward the bench, where Coach is waving us in like a pissed off air traffic controller on a runway full of lightning.
Everyone piles in, shoulder to shoulder, sweaty, red-faced, breathing like we just sprinted out of hell and ready for more. Our energy’s off the charts, crackling in the air like static before a thunderclap.
Coach doesn’t waste a second.
“They’ve figured out your cycle pattern,” he snaps, stabbing at his clipboard so hard I think he might crack it in half. “Every damn time you run that low to high play on the left, they’re collapsing the lane. It’s predictable. They’re shutting it down.”
He flips the board around, starts drawing with furious speed, arrows slashing, circles flying, a couple Xs that get aggressively crossed out. It’s chaos, but it’s genius chaos. We can see the plan forming in real time.
“You flip the ice,” he barks, “Use Bruno and Liam for screens and go backdoor on their weak side. They’re leaving it open. I want you sneaking in there like ghosts and burying it before they know what hit ‘em.”
Rowan’s nodding like he’s already visualizing it. Bruno’s not speaking—he’s calculating. His focus is razor sharp, like he’s mapping every movement in his head before we even leave the bench.
Then Coach turns to me. His marker points at my chest like a dagger. “You’ve got speed, Boyd. So use it. Stretch their defense. Force ‘em wide. Bait the hit, draw the coverage, but don’t go full hero mode. We win this as a unit. No solo glory. You understand me?”
I throw him a salute. “Yes, sir, General Dad.”
He sighs so hard it could power a wind farm, but he doesn’t yell. Not this time. He just says, low and lethal, “Execute. Get the damn job done.”
We break the huddle and charge back onto the ice like we were born there. The crowd swells again behind us. This tidal wave of sound and belief and hope. Every muscle burns, every breath feels like fire, but it doesn’t matter.
We’ve got a new plan.
We’ve got each other.
We’ve got one more period to carve our names into the story of this team forever.
This isn’t just about a win anymore. It’s about proving who we are.
It’s about redemption.
And we’re coming for it.
Or so I thought…
Suddenly, everything shifts.
The overhead lights drop in a dramatic snap, plunging the arena into a hush so sharp it slices through the roar of the game like a blade.
A collective gasp ripples through the crowd, an electrified “oooohhh” that sounds like confusion, excitement, and magic all colliding in one breath.
For one heart-stopping second, I panic. Please don’t let the power go out. Not during the championship. Not now.
But then…
The opening notes of “The Light in Your Eyes” drift out over the sound system, slow and soft like the universe just hit “play” on the most important mixtape of my life.
And something inside me detonates.
My chest seizes like I’ve taken a puck straight to the heart. That song. Her song. The one she used to hum under her breath while wrapping our wrists and icing our bruises like it was nothing, like she didn’t know we were listening.
The one she danced to in our living room, barefoot and laughing, with a freaking lizard on her shoulder, like that was just a normal Tuesday night.
I whip around, my heart in my throat…
…and then a single spotlight cuts across the arena like a comet, slicing through the dark, illuminating the front row near the rink.
And there she is.
Jinx.
Lit up like the climax of every dream I’ve ever had. Wearing her oversized Marauders jersey like armor, her hair wind-tossed and wild, her cheeks pink from the cold, and that smile, God , that smile.
It’s shy and chaotic and full of mischief and hope, and it wrecks me. It’s so her it feels like being kissed and punched at the same time.
She’s holding a sign over her head, arms shaking a little, the letters painted big and crooked like she couldn’t be bothered to make it perfect because she was too busy being brave.
WILL YOU GO ON A DATE WITH ME?
The arena explodes.
Even more than for a goal.
Whistles, cheers, people losing their damn minds like we just won the championship and a lottery and the Bachelor finale all at once. Someone screams her name. Someone else throws popcorn into the air.
There’s glitter. I swear there’s glitter falling from somewhere.
She’s not just a fan, she’s the event . The whole crowd is hers now.
I start laughing. It erupts out of me without warning, bright and helpless and cracked wide open. My heart’s a live wire, my legs feel like jelly, and I’ve never felt more alive.
I grab Bruno’s arm like a kid tugging his best friend’s sleeve. “Look.”
He turns, and the second he sees her, his whole face softens like a storm clearing. That crooked grin hits like a sucker punch.
Rowan’s already skating over, like he sensed her before he even saw her. And for once, all three of us are locked on the exact same thought.
Her.
“Let’s go,” I shout, already pushing off the ice, tearing toward the boards.
We skate like there’s no game, no scoreboard, no clock. Just her .
The cameras are spinning around, trying to keep up. Fans are screaming. Coaches are shouting, probably. We don’t hear any of it.
We reach the glass. She’s still holding the sign, eyes wide, breath visible in the cold air, but she doesn’t flinch.
Not when I kiss her first, fast and reckless and grinning against her mouth.
Not when Bruno leans in, kisses her hand with this quiet intensity like she’s sacred and he’s just remembered how to believe in something.
And not when Rowan cups her face in those big, callused goalie hands and kisses her like he’s anchoring himself to the world.
The jumbotron catches it. Freezes it in crystal clarity for the entire stadium to see. Us, tangled in this messy, impossibly perfect moment.
The crowd loses it again.
Flashing lights. Cell phone screens. Giddy, ear-splitting cheers.
And the announcer, laughing into the mic like even he’s gotten swept up in it, says, “Well, folks… if that doesn’t inspire the team to win, I don’t know what will.”
He’s right. Because I have never felt more inspired.
Not in my life. Not in this game. Not ever.
We’re not just playing for a trophy anymore.
We’re playing for her. For us.
And we’re not gonna let either one slip through our fingers again.