Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Maddox
The Pit hums like a live wire.
Fans pressed to the glass, faces painted venom green, every seat filled like it’s the playoffs instead of a meaningless preseason.
But there’s nothing meaningless about tonight.
New city. New logo on my chest.
A first impression I can’t afford to fuck up.
The ice smells fresh—paint still sharp under the sweat and rubber. My pads creak as I shift in the crease, settling into the cage.
Every nerve’s lit. Every sound’s magnified—the slap of pucks on boards, the scrape of blades, the Barracudas shit talking during warm-ups like their mouths can win them the game.
A winger brushes too close on a skate-by, mutters something about “old man legs.” I don’t bite.
Not yet.
My shoulder twinges when I roll it, a reminder I’m not firing clean yet. My body feels slow under the weight of gear that feels heavier than it should. Like it’s lagging a second behind my brain.
I clamp my glove tighter around the stick, force my breath steady. Focus and lock in.
It doesn’t matter how my shoulder feels tonight. What matters is stopping the damn puck.
The puck drops and chaos explodes.
Tampa’s center wins the face off clean, shoves it back, and they come charging, driving hard.
Their winger cuts wide and fires a low blocker. My pad’s there, but the rebound spits out hotter than I like. Their forward pounces, whacking for daylight.
I sprawl, glove snapping, stick jabbing, body sprawling over the crease. Whistle blows late, pileup pressing heavy over my ribs. Thirty seconds in, and they’re already testing whether I can survive the storm.
It was a decent save, but I can feel it. My edges aren’t crisp. My legs aren’t snapping the way they should.
Fans roar anyway, feeding me energy I don’t trust. My lungs burn already, chest tight.
The Barracudas keep pressing, like hungry sharks circling. I make two clean stops, but the third slips.
It’s a low wrister, a weak shot, and one I should eat alive. It skitters through the gap between pad and post before I can clamp down.
Fuck me.
It’s the ugly kind of goal that makes the crowd groan like they’ve just watched a car wreck.
The noise shifts, and the energy in The Pit tilts.
It feels a lot like doubt.
Heat crawls under my gear, sweat sticking at the back of my neck.
Fuck. You can’t afford to be that guy. Not here. Not now. Not in front of her.
Because yeah, I know exactly where she is. High box, perfect view of every mistake.
My eyes flick up without meaning to, and I catch her.
Leaning forward, elbows on her knees, lips pressed tight like she’s got steel sewn into them.
Eyes locked on me, sharp and steady.
It should feel like pressure, but it feels like heat.
The wrong kind of heat.
It’s like she’s got me pinned here in my own crease, stripped down under all this gear.
My chest tightens, pulse racing harder than the play in front of me.
For God’s sake, Lasker. Fucking focus!
The whistle blows, and the game resets. I drag my focus back, but it sticks on her, even when it shouldn’t.
Riley decides he’ll play hero. He toe-drags through two guys like he knows he’s on television.
Flashy stick work, diving blocks. He’s all swagger, all noise, but he leaves holes big enough to drive a truck through.
He loses the puck at the blue line, and Tampa counters fast. I read the pass, slide across, chest stinging when I take the shot square.
Riley’s skating back with that grin like it’s all part of the plan. My teeth grind so hard my mask rattles and my irritation spikes.
I don’t need him grandstanding. I need him to stay in his lane.
Logan cleans the next sequence with a tape-to-tape pass that settles the chaos.
Jace keeps his calm, barking one command and pulling the team back into shape.
But me? I’m scrambling, chasing the play instead of commanding it. That’s not me.
That’s never been me.
I glance up once and find her watching with that unreadable expression that digs under my skin worse than a blade.
Doesn’t matter if she’s judging or waiting—I can’t stop seeing her.
And it’s costing me.
As the game wears on, it turns mean. Barracudas finish every check, and shoving matches break out after nearly every play.
Riley’s in the middle of most of them, along with Finn, who’s stirring shit like he was born for it.
Tampa smells blood, and they’re pressing.
Their forward winds up and rips one high. My glove flashes, snagging it clean.
I hold on to it long enough for the cameras to see it before I drop it with a thud. Finn skates past, grinning, and winks like he set it up just for me.
I barely keep from rolling my eyes.
Cal gets burned next—pinched too deep and caught flat-footed. Three-on-one.
My gut drops.
I square, force the shooter wide, and save it with a kick. It rebounds to the trailer—snap shot. I stretch, glove open, and snag it by a thread.
The whistle blows and Cal looks like he’s about to implode.
I tap his shin pad as I skate by, low enough no one notices. “Breathe.”
His nod is jerky, desperate.
After that, something shifts. My legs catch. My reads sharpen.
Save by save, I claw myself back. A glove snatch here, a kick save there, stringing together moments that keep us alive.
By the third attempt, I’m dialed enough to shut the door when it matters.
Big stops, heavy traffic, chaos in the crease—I hold it down.
We scrape out a one-goal lead, and somehow, we hang onto it.
The horn blares and The Pit explodes.
We win 3-2.
Relief rips through me, but it’s laced with something colder.
Frustration.
Because it’s a win that doesn’t feel like a win.
It feels like we survived, not conquered. It feels like we were one shift away from crumbling.
And the first face I look for when I rip my mask up?
Hers.
Sloane’s already on her feet in the box. Hands folded in front of her, expression unreadable. No cheer. No relief.
Just cool, measured eyes locked on mine, cutting through the chaos like she’s the only one in the building.
And God help me, my chest pulls tighter. It’s want tangled with resentment, heat laced with shame.
We file into the locker room, where it’s thick with silence. Pads clatter to the floor, showers hiss, nobody says much. We all know what that was.
Not good enough.
We didn’t earn it.
The silence grows thicker when the sound of heels hit the tile sharply. Sharper than the smell of sweat and disinfectant. Every head snaps up, and movement stops.
Sloane walks in like she owns the room. Like she owns us.
She doesn’t waste time, doesn’t soften, doesn’t give us any phony platitudes.
Just lays it down for us, voice crisp and cold enough to sting.
“A win’s a win. But it won’t be next time if you keep playing like that.”
No names. No fingers pointed. But it lands.
Hard.
Right on me.
My jaw grinds as I strip the tape off my pads. Sweat burns down my spine.
She doesn’t even look directly at me, but I feel her words like a blade pressed to my throat.
That’s when Riley decides it’s time to talk.
“Maybe if someone back there wasn’t asleep the first ten minutes, we wouldn’t have been chasing all night.”
His eyes cut to me and his stick clatters as he tosses it, voice sharp, dripping venom.
Everyone sees it.
Feels it.
And I’m on my feet before I know what I’m doing, fists clenched, blood roaring. “Say that again, Peacock.”
My shoulder throbs, and my teeth ache from clenching. One more word, and I’ll take a fucking swing.
He doesn’t back down. Instead, he steps closer, smirk razor-sharp. “Maybe you should retire before you bury us.”
Before I know what I’m doing, I lunge—heat, fury, all of it ready to break.
Jace steps in, hand flat on Riley’s chest. “Enough.”
Eli’s there too, solid as stone at my side.
The room holds its breath.
Riley glares. I glare harder. The heat between us is wildfire, barely contained.
Finally, he leans back, smirk faltering. “Whatever.” He rips off his jersey, and stalks to his stall.
My pulse hammers as Eli lets go of me slow, his eyes warning me without words.
The tension simmers, but it doesn’t fade.
And through it all, Sloane is there.
She doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word during the scuffle.
But I feel her eyes, cold as glass, hot as fire, locking me down harder than any captain ever has.
Her silence is louder than Riley’s shout. Louder than the heartbeat in my ears.
She doesn’t need to cut in—because she knows I already feel it. The failure. The weight. The responsibility.
“Blame doesn’t win games either, gentlemen. Get it together before the next game.”
With that parting shot, she turns on her heel and leaves us chastised and in a silence that feels like Florida in July.
I drop onto the bench in front of my stall, letting the room clear out until I’m alone.
I sit thinking about the game, the near fight with Riley, and even though I’m the only one in the room, my stall feels too small and the air still feels too heavy.
I don’t bother to shower, knowing the media outside the door has left by now.
As I pack my gear, sweat drying sticky on my skin, my phone buzzes in my bag.
My heart rate picks up as I drag it out of my bag.
Shit, I hope it isn’t Sloane.
With my thumb, I swipe to brighten the screen.
Peter.
Shit, shit, shit.
Peter: Saw the game tonight. Rough start, but you pulled through.
Peter: Got your message about the community shit as you called it.
Peter: Play nice. Keep your nose clean. Don’t make this harder than it already is.
Pulled through. Play nice. His words scrape over my skin like salt in an open wound.
And those words may as well be a leash around my throat.
Like I didn’t just fumble through a game we could’ve lost by five.
Like none of it matters unless I smile pretty and play along.
My jaw locks, my thumb hovering before I hit delete.
The text is physically gone, but it’s burned into my brain, and carved under my skin with every other scar I’ve carried.
I shove the phone deep in the bag, zipper sharp in the silence. But it doesn’t matter how deep I bury it.
The weight of it stays on my mind.