19. Victoria
VICTORIA
I was on my fourth call of the game when Jett scored the winner.
I knew it happened because the arena shook.
Not metaphorically. Literally. Forty thousand people coming off their feet simultaneously produced a vibration that moved through the concrete walls of the corridor outside the owner’s suite and into the soles of my heels and up through my spine.
My lawyer Seth said something on the other end of the line that I didn’t catch.
“Hold on,” I said.
I stepped back through the suite door and looked at the ice.
Three to two on the scoreboard. Jett skating with his stick raised, the Pirates goalie staring at the net like he was trying to understand physics.
Rhett intercepting Jett mid-celebration and wrapping him up with that barely-contained joy he allowed himself in public, which was quieter than everyone else’s but somehow louder for it.
I watched for exactly five seconds.
Then I stepped back into the corridor.
“Sorry,” I said into the phone. “You were saying.”
The truth was I’d been managing the Detroit situation from the corridor for most of the third period.
Detroit’s legal team had been on the phone with Seth since the forfeit was announced, trying to negotiate the terms of the loss designation before the PHL office had even weighed in officially.
It was exactly the kind of procedural maneuvering I’d expected from them and it required exactly the kind of attention I didn’t want to be giving it on a night when my team was playing for a wildcard berth.
But that was ownership. The game happened whether or not you were watching it.
Brynn had texted me three times during the second period.
Mom come back in.
Rhett just hit someone into the boards so hard the glass shook.
MOM.
I’d sent back a thumbs up on that last one, which I knew would annoy her, and felt only slightly guilty about it.
I was wrapping up the call when the noise changed.
Not the good kind of noise. Not the roar that built and peaked and broke over itself the way crowd noise did when something went right.
This was sharper. More jagged. The kind of noise that had an edge to it that you felt differently than you heard.
I’d been in this building long enough to know the difference between a crowd celebrating and a crowd reacting to something that had gone wrong.
I ended the call without saying goodbye.
I pushed through the suite door.
The ice below was chaos.
Chaos.
It was the only word to describe the scene that unfolded. And the second I saw Rhett get tackled, I raced out of that VIP box. I clocked my daughter pushing her way through the crowd, moving away from the drink machine and toward the rink.
I practically leapt over that fucking wall as my heels touched down onto the ice.
The crowd cheered. Punches were thrown. Officials of all shapes and sizes blew their whistles as men dogpiled on top of men. It was an absolute shitshow. Brynn skated her way to me in her tennis shoes, grabbing my hand before we made a beeline for the dogpile on top of Moose.
I wasted no time in grabbing the first Detroit Pirates jersey I could put my hands on.
“Get off him! Get off him, or I swear to hell on high, I’ll bury your team in lawsuits and paperwork until I dismantle the entire fucking thing!”
Brynn helped me toss one of the guys toward the officials. “Tell ‘em, Mom!”
“Victoria! Brynn! Get off the fucking ice!” Coach bellowed.
One by one, my daughter and I pulled those Pirates off Moose. Punches were thrown around us that we ducked. Men screamed at the top of their lungs, their voices roaring over the crowd that cheered us on.
I’d never witnessed such chaos on our ice before.
The thing nobody told you about crisis was that fury was just fear wearing better clothes.
I knew that. I’d learned it the hard way, in a hospital waiting room fourteen years ago, when I screamed at a doctor for twenty minutes straight because screaming felt better than the alternative.
Fury kept you moving. Fury kept your hands busy and your voice loud and your feet on the ground. Fear just kept you still.
So I kept moving.
“Get the fuck off him!” Brynn exclaimed.
I grabbed one of those assholes by the helmet and tugged his face to mine. “Get. The fuck. Up. Or I will have you. Put. In handcuffs.”
“Ah!” my daughter exclaimed.
I whipped around, tossing the man whose helmet I held to the ground as I shoved my hand toward the ice. I grabbed another jersey, tugging at the neck as I watched Coach Mercer lift my daughter clear into the air. She kicked her feet like a toddler, trying to wiggle out of his grasp.
I barely got the other guy pulled off before I was lifted clear off my feet as well.
“I swear, you surprise me every day I know you, Miss C,” Rhett said as he wrapped those burly arms around my waist.
I kicked my feet just like Brynn and realized exactly where she got it from. However, if I wasn’t going to be able to use my body, I’d use my words.
“I’ll have each and every one of you arrested if Moose is hurt!
” I bellowed. “None of you will see the light of fucking day again if you’ve hurt our goalie!
Do your mothers know you’re out here fucking around with people’s lives?
! What if I fucked with your life, huh?!
Because if you’ve ruined his, I’m going to fucking ruin yours! ”
“Miss C!” Jett barked with laughter. “You tell ‘em, Miss C!”
“Put! Me! Down!” I exclaimed as I tried kicking out of Rhett’s grasp.
He didn’t put me down until I stood in front of the team bench and off the ice. But I didn’t stop pointing around him and glaring at the opposing team’s coach.
“I will have your fucking head!” I bellowed. “And I don’t play around with my words! Ask my goddamn daughter!”
“Yeah!” Brynn exclaimed.
“Is that really what you have to do?!” I asked, bellowing across the ice as my voice finally cracked while Jett laughed somewhere in the distance.
“You aren’t good enough to rely on your skills, so you gotta take out the team just to win?
! How the fuck did you ever get your goddamn contracts signed in the first place with that kind of lack of coordination?
! I’m surprised your boys could hold the pens to sign in the first fucking place! ”
And that’s when one of the officials stepped into my vision with a blood red face. “Miss Caldwell, if you don’t calm down, the game will be forfeited.”
I glared at the official, holding my head high and staring down my nose at him.
“Then you better go ahead and fucking call it for unsportsmanlike conduct. Because if I get our doctor on call back here and he figures out that Moose is hurt in any way, I’m instructing my team to go after blood before I make that asshole coach pay for Moose’s fucking medical bills, because you know damn good and well they took a shot at the weak part of his helmet on purpose. ”
The official stared me down for quite some time. So long, in fact, that Caldwell Arena fell silent once more. We could’ve heard a pin drop onto the ice as I stood there, immobile. Unwavering.
Then the official shook his head before skating his way back out onto the ice.
“How the hell did you navigate the ice in those heels, Victoria?”
I barely heard Rhett’s question as I watched the pack of officials that gathered at the other end of the ice.
A play booth. We needed a fucking replay booth in Caldwell Arena.
We had one, but the cameras weren’t up to date.
They caught big things, but the cameras weren’t high-tech enough to catch the smaller, finer things.
I was about to remedy that fucking situation.
Then the official skated into the middle of the rink and turned on his microphone. “Tonight’s game is being forfeited for unsportsmanlike conduct on both sides.”
“Oh hell fucking no you don’t,” I glowered as I leapt back over the wall that separated the bench from the ice.
Rhett caught me midair and touched my heels back down in place. “Oh no you don’t.”
“That’s fucking BULLSHIT, AND YOU KNOW IT!” I yelled out onto the ice.
The official turned to me and stared me down, still talking into his microphone as the crowd booed. “The game will be struck from the books on both sides. A loss for both teams.”
And with a curt three-pulse blow from his whistle, the game was over.
Our undefeated streak was done.
I wanted nothing more than to tear the heads off the opposing team and stake them onto spikes.
Rhett’s hand found the small of my back.
I didn’t pull away from it. I probably should have, given that half of Caldwell Arena still had their phones raised and the press box was directly above us, but I found that I didn’t have the energy left to care about optics.
Not tonight. Not with the forfeit still ringing in my ears and Moose somewhere in the tunnel with our team doctor and the adrenaline starting its ugly withdrawal from my system.
“He’s okay,” Rhett said quietly. Close enough that only I could hear it. “Doc’s with him. It looked worse than it was.”
I exhaled through my nose. “The camera on the northwest corner caught the hit.”
“I know.”
“I’m filing a formal complaint with the PHL office tonight.
That hit was deliberate. Anyone watching that replay for more than five seconds can see it.
” I straightened my spine and smoothed the front of my blazer, which had somehow survived the last twenty minutes entirely intact, which was more than I could say for my composure. “They’ll be fined. Possibly suspended.”
Rhett was quiet for a moment. “We still advance.”
I turned to look at him.
“Forfeit counts as a loss for both teams,” he said. “But we’ve got enough wins in the division to clinch the wildcard regardless. Coach confirmed it.” His jaw was set, that look he got when he was containing something larger than the expression he was showing the room. “We’re still in.”
I held his gaze for a moment.
The arena was still buzzing around us. Fans filing out, some still chanting, some booing the empty ice.
The lights had shifted from game-bright to the flat overhead wash of post-game cleanup.
It made everything look a little more like the real world and a little less like the heightened, electric version of it that a live game produced.
We were still in.
Fifteen years. Every decision I’d made since Ryan died, every dollar I’d poured into this franchise, every morning I’d walked into Caldwell Arena and chosen to keep going instead of letting it go the way everyone said I should.
It had led to this. A forfeit and a brawl and a wildcard berth and a man standing at the small of my back telling me we were still in.
“Good,” I said.
Rhett’s mouth curved. Just slightly.
“Good game, Miss C,” Jett called from somewhere behind us.
“I pulled one player off by his helmet,” I said flatly without turning around.
“And it was beautiful,” Jett said sincerely.
Brynn appeared at my elbow, slightly rumpled, her hair coming loose from whatever she’d put it in this morning. She looked at Rhett’s hand at my back and then at my face and then very deliberately looked somewhere else entirely.
Smart girl.
I always did raise her right.