11. Cole #2
Beside her stands Marco in a charcoal overcoat and open collar, his watch catching the arena lights.
He stands the way Dante stands, shoulders square, weight centered, but where Dante's stillness reads as control, Marco's reads as ease.
Just Marco and his mother on the silver carpet.
Marco Voss, dateless, in a coat that costs more than the lighting rig.
Dante sees them. His stride loosens. His shoulders drop. He exhales whatever he's been holding for hours. When he reaches them, Serena steps forward first and pulls him down into a hug with her arms around his neck, her face against his chest, her hand gripping the back of his jersey.
She's crying. She doesn't wipe it away or turn from the cameras.
"Mio figlio."
My son.
It's loud enough that the microphone catches it, and the cheers dip for half a breath around the sound.
Dante's arms close around her, tight. His chin rests on the top of her head. His eyes shut.
She pulls back and holds his face in both hands. Her mouth moves with words too low to carry while his gaze stays on hers. With the back of her hand, she wipes her eyes and laughs at herself, and people close enough to hear it smile back before they can help it.
"Salvatore wanted to be here," she says, louder now, her hand smoothing his jersey. "Gia sends her love. Rafael too. They're watching."
She presses the bouquet into his hands and steps aside.
Marco steps forward, grips Dante's shoulder, and pulls him in. He presses his forehead against Dante's for two seconds. Brief. Physical. Their mouths move. Italian. Words between brothers that stay between brothers. Then Marco claps his shoulder once and steps back.
Serena turns. She looks past the carpet, past the flowers and silver ribbon, directly at my father and Suzanne, who are still waiting near center with the rest of the families. She crosses to them with her arms already open.
"Suzanne."
Serena pulls her into a hug before Suzanne can get a word out. The way she always does. Six years of hockey games and holiday dinners and phone calls between New York and New England, and Serena still hugs Suzanne like she hasn't seen her in a decade.
"Look at him," Suzanne says into Serena's shoulder. "Look at our boys."
Serena pulls back and holds Suzanne's face in both hands, her eyes filling again. "Last one," she says. "The last home game."
Two mothers stand at center ice with the arena noise washing over them.
My father stands beside them with his hands loose at his sides, letting the moment move around him. He catches Serena's eye and nods once. She reaches over and squeezes his arm without releasing Suzanne.
Maya watches from beside my father. Her mouth is soft, her eyes too bright, and her hands stay empty at her sides while she looks at Serena and Suzanne.
Dante stands on the carpet with the bouquet in his hands. Marco is beside him, and both of them watch their mother hold Suzanne like all these years still haven't made her less grateful.
Marco catches my eye across the ice. He holds the look for one beat. Then he smiles, and the press-room edge falls out of it.
Maya walks toward Dante and stops in front of him with her arms at her sides. Six thousand people watch from the stands while the arena lights burn down on the silver carpet.
A week ago, she would have kept three feet of space between them. Now she stands at two. Maybe less. Her chin lifts. She holds his gaze. Dante leans barely an inch forward, the same lean I clocked at the dining hall table when she started talking about neutral zone reads.
Barry's Irish Breakfast ended up on our kitchen shelf. A mug sat on the counter with one sip gone. Since then, Dante has stopped two feet away from her, then one, then two again, like every inch needs measuring twice.
She says something low, just for him. His jaw loosens. The hard line of his mouth softens for three seconds. His eyes stay on hers, and his mouth opens slightly before he catches it.
Three seconds. The crowd roars around them. Neither of them moves.
My hand closes into a fist at my side, and my knuckles go white before I feel them.
My chest constricts, my ribs pulling tight around my lungs the same way they did at the dining hall, in the lobby when her bag brushed his arm.
Except here it's six thousand people, and I can't press my thumb into my thigh to quiet it because my body is on display for every one of them.
I keep watching anyway.
Watching them stand too close fucks me up, and my body still wants the moment she might step closer instead of back.
Maya steps back. Serena is already close enough to take her arm, the way she always does, easy and natural. Serena claimed Maya the first Christmas she spent at our house and has treated her like a daughter since. They walk off the carpet together.
Dad's hand lands on my shoulder as I stand beside him. He squeezes once.
"His mother's something else," he says.
The families clear the ice. The puck drops. We win.
Dante and I connect midway through the third on a sequence that starts with a look.
His gaze finds mine across the neutral zone, and I cut before the puck moves because I already know where it's going.
The pass arrives on my tape like it was always there.
The net shakes. Six thousand voices merge into a single sound, and for three seconds on the ice, it feels the way it feels at midnight: the two of us operating inside a language no one else speaks.
The arena sees teamwork. I feel his hand on the back of my neck.
The final horn screams. The bench floods onto the ice. Families crowd the boards. Somewhere in the noise, Gio lifts Zoe off her feet near them. Her arms wrap around his shoulders. His face drops into the curve of her neck, and her hand grips the back of his jersey.
After the game, after the locker room and the media crush, the lobby is packed. The doors keep opening and closing as people pour through from the arena. Cold air slides in with every gust, carrying the smell of ice and popcorn.
Everyone is here. Clara and Talia stand near the merchandise table. Clara has a program open in her hands, already marked with pen and notes filling the margins. Talia leans into her shoulder, arms folded, watching the crowd drift past.
Dante stands near the tunnel entrance with a scout, jacket on, posture straight, voice low, coffee in one hand.
Marco is beside him, positioned close enough that the scout registers his presence without Marco having to say a word.
The overcoat, the watch, the posture, all of it speaks for him.
The scout glances at Marco and recalculates.
His shoulders straighten. His voice lowers.
Marco breaks away and crosses the lobby toward me. He moves through the crowd the way Dante moves through crowds, smoothly, with everyone else adjusting around him.
"Cole."
He extends his hand. The grip is firm, warm.
"Good game."
"You drove three hours for this?"
"I drove three hours for my brother. The game was a bonus." He grins. "My mother has been crying since the ceremony. Your stepmother has been handing her tissues. They've moved from the carpet to the booster tables, and I believe they're now planning a summer trip to Milan."
"Again?"
"Serena considers every visit an insufficient amount of time with the people she loves. She's been lobbying for a longer stay since Christmas."
"On both sides," I say.
"On both sides." He grins wider. "They'll never stop." A beat passes. "My cousin Nico offered to fly in for tonight, but I told him not to."
A colder expression crosses Marco's face, there and gone before the sentence ends. The dismissal of a man who measured someone once and never needed to measure again.
"I told him family had it covered."
"That's either the best thing or the most dangerous thing about our families."
"With our families? Both. Always both." He says it lightly, but his eyes stay sharp.
His attention cuts to Dante across the lobby. "He played well tonight."
"He plays well every night."
"The Voss-Maddox line." Marco says it like he's tasting something. "Your journalist wrote a piece about it. The transition chemistry. The passing accuracy. I read it three times."
He turns back to me with dark eyes. Dante's eyes, except where Dante's carry calculation, Marco's carry patience.