CHAPTER 32
DEVON
MY SKATES ARE doing things I'm pretty sure skates should not do, sliding sideways, crossing over each other, threatening mutiny. The puck is somewhere to my left. Or my right. Honestly, I can't see shit through the snow that's pelting my visor like tiny frozen bullets.
The wind is screaming, and I'm pretty sure my face stopped having feeling about ten minutes ago. My legs are burning. My lungs are on fire from breathing frigid air. Every muscle in my body is staging a protest.
And I'm having the absolute time of my life.
"DEVON!" Someone—Petrov, maybe—is yelling my name, and I turn, squinting through the snow just in time to see a black blur flying toward me.
The puck.
Oh, fuck.
I stick out my stick—that's what you're supposed to do, right?—and by some miracle, by actual divine intervention, the puck hits my blade and stays there instead of ricocheting into my face.
"GO!" Becker screams from somewhere behind me. "GO, GO, GO!"
I'm going. I'm definitely going. I'm skating (if you can call this flailing motion skating) toward what I think is the goal. The snow is so thick I can barely see the net, but I'm committed now. No turning back.
I'm maybe five feet away when my skates decide they've had enough of my bullshit.
My left skate catches on absolutely nothing, and I go down hard.
Not gracefully. Not in a way that could be edited to look cool. I'm talking full sprawl, arms windmilling, stick flying, ass meeting ice with a crack that definitely echoes despite the wind.
The puck slides away from me, gliding lazily toward the boards like it's mocking me.
I lie there for a second, staring up at the sky, snowflakes hitting my face.
This is fine. Everything's fine. I'm just going to live here now.
Then a shadow blocks out the gray sky, and Ace is standing over me, looking down through his face shield, trying not to laugh.
He offers his hand.
I grab it, and he pulls me up with zero effort, which should not be as hot as it is, but here we are. For a second, we're close enough that I can see his eyes through the shield, bright and amused and so fucking fond it makes my chest ache.
"Having fun?" I gasp out, still trying to catch my breath.
He grins. "Best day of my life."
And then he's skating away, back to his position, leaving me standing there like an idiot with my heart doing gymnastics.
"Devon!" Becker yells. "You good?"
"Peachy!" I yell back, retrieving my stick from where it landed approximately seven feet away.
The game continues in beautiful chaos.
Becker has the puck now, weaving between defenders, making it look easy. He takes a shot, high and fast, and it sails past the firefighter goalie into the net.
The garage erupts with cheers. Hendrix's "WHAT THE PUUUUCK?" cuts through the wind.
"That's how it's done!" Becker's doing a victory lap, arms raised, nearly crashing into Groover in the process.
Groover just shakes his head, already moving to center ice for the face-off.
Thirty seconds later, Groover scores, and he skates directly to Becker, pointing at him like he just won a personal vendetta. "What was that about 'how it's done'?" he yells over the wind.
"Lucky shot!"
"Skill shot!"
"Your mom's a skill shot!"
"That doesn't even make sense!"
The whistle sounds. Two minutes. Rotation time.
I skate off—well, stumble off—toward the warming station, my legs shaking from exertion and cold. The garage is blessedly warm, portable heaters blasting, and I immediately gravitate toward one like a moth to a flame.
Kayla hands me hot chocolate, and I wrap my frozen fingers around the cup, letting the warmth seep into my bones.
"You're doing great out there!" She beams.
"I fell down."
"Yeah, but you fell down with enthusiasm."
Mama Paws appears at my elbow, her phone in hand, her face doing something complicated—somewhere between crying and laughing and complete disbelief.
"Devon," she says, and her voice is shaking. "Look."
She shows me her phone, the email app open, and I have to read the number twice before it processes.
547 unread emails. All adoption applications.
"What?" I grab the phone, scrolling through. Every single animal in the shelter is listed. Candy has twenty-three applications alone. The three-legged cat has fifteen. The ancient one-eyed cat has nine. Even the pissed-off rabbit who bites people has three families interested.
"We did it," I whisper, my throat tight. "Holy shit."
"No, honey." Mama Paws takes my face in her hands. "You did it."
I shake my head. "We all did it."
She pulls me into a hug, and I hug her back, and we're both crying now, standing in a garage during a blizzard, surrounded by portable heaters and coffee makers and the best people I've ever met.
The buzzer sounds again. Time to rotate back.
I reluctantly pull away, wiping my eyes, and head back to the ice.
***
THE GAME IS tied 5-5 with one minute left.
The viewer count on Becker's laptop has climbed to something obscene—150,000 people watching us play backyard hockey in a blizzard. The donation counter keeps climbing, numbers changing so fast it's hard to track: $187,000… $189,000… $192,000…
Steve is losing his mind: "Folks, we're witnessing history here! In the middle of a historic blizzard, these absolute mad lads are playing hockey for homeless animals! This is the most Chicago thing I have ever seen in my thirty years of broadcasting!"
I'm back on the ice, legs screaming, lungs burning, face so numb I'm not sure I still have one. But the adrenaline is pumping through my veins like rocket fuel, and I've never felt more alive.
The puck is loose, sliding across the ice, heading in my general direction.
Oh no.
Oh no, no, no.
Everyone's skating toward it, both teams converging like it's the most important thing in the universe, and I'm just standing here, watching it slide closer.
I should move. I should do something. I should—
It's right there. Right in front of me.
Instinct takes over. Or panic. Probably panic. I swing my stick, trying to pass it to someone, anyone who actually knows what they're doing.
But my blade catches the puck at a weird angle, and instead of passing, I shoot.
The puck flies off my stick, wobbly and pathetic, sliding across the ice at the speed of a leisurely stroll.
The firefighter goalie moves to block it, but Petrov's right there, massive and immovable, accidentally-on-purpose blocking the goalie's view.
The puck slides.
And slides.
And slides.
Right between the goalie's legs.
Right into the net.
For a second, nobody moves. Everyone's just staring. Then the garage explodes.
"GOAL!" Steve screams into his microphone. "DEVON SCORES! THE WINNING GOAL!"
Hendrix is losing his mind. "WHAT THE PUUUUCK! WHAT THE PUUUUCK!"
And then I'm being mobbed.
Bodies crash into me from all directions—teammates, opponents, doesn't matter—everyone's piling on. I'm being crushed, lifted, spun around, and I'm laughing and crying and I can't breathe and I don't care.
"YOU DID IT!" Becker's screaming directly in my ear.
"I DIDN'T MEAN TO!" I scream back.
After about forever and a half, the pile slowly disperses, people stepping back, and through the crowd of bodies and falling snow, I see Ace.
He's skating toward me, and the way he's looking at me makes everything else fade away. The noise, the cold, the people, all of it just… gone.
It's just him.
He reaches me, and without hesitation, without looking around to see who's watching, he cups my face with both hands and kisses me.
On camera.
In front of 150,000+ viewers.
My brain breaks. Every coherent thought evaporates. There's nothing but the warmth of his mouth, the solid weight of his hands on my face, the way he's kissing me like I'm the only person in the world.
When he pulls back, we're both breathing hard, visible puffs of air mingling between us.
"Hi," he says, and he's smiling wide.
"You just—" I gesture vaguely at everything. "—everyone saw—"
"I don't care."
"Ace—"
"I love you." The words come out firm, sure. "I don't want to hide anymore."
The world tilts on its axis.
Everything goes quiet. Or maybe I've just stopped hearing anything except the blood rushing in my ears.
"I love you," he repeats, like maybe I didn't hear him the first time, like he needs to make absolutely sure I understand. "I'm in love with you. And I don't care who knows."
Around us, the team is losing their minds, cheering, whistling, and someone's definitely crying (it might be Mama Paws, it might be me, unclear).
I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know anything anymore. Instinctively, I pull out my phone, completely numb fingers fumbling, and check the stream chat because I'm a masochist, apparently.
The comments are moving so fast I can barely read them:
OMG DID THAT JUST HAPPEN
I'M CRYING
THEY'RE IN LOVE
WHO'S CUTTING ONIONS
I CAME FOR HOCKEY AND LEFT WITH FEELINGS
I look back at Ace, and he's still there, still looking at me with those impossibly blue eyes, waiting for me to say something.
My brain is mush. Complete and total mush. I should say something meaningful, something romantic, something that matches the magnitude of what he just did.
What comes out is: "I love you too."
Not eloquent. Not poetic. Just true.
His smile gets impossibly wider, and he kisses me again, and this time I kiss back properly, wrapping my arms around his neck, not caring about the skates or the ice or the fact that we're both going to fall if we're not careful.
"SAVE IT FOR THE LOCKER ROOM!" Becker yells, but he's laughing.
We break apart, both grinning, and the team is already organizing for the final photo.
Everyone gathers on the ice—players, firefighters, Frank, Kayla, Hunter, Mama and Papa Paws. Becker's holding Hendrix, who's still screaming "WHAT THE PUUUUCK?" at random intervals. We're all covered in snow, cheeks red from cold, smiling so hard our faces hurt.
Becker's got his phone on a timer, propped up on his equipment case, and we all squeeze together.
"Say 'PUCKS FOR PAWS!'" he yells.
"PUCKS FOR PAWS!" we all scream.
The camera clicks.
***
INSIDE WASHINGTON'S HOUSE, warm and chaotic and perfect, I finally check the final numbers.
Donations: $212,847
Adoption applications: 612
Businesses offering long-term sponsorship: 3
And someone, some beautiful, generous stranger on the internet, started a GoFundMe that's raised another $50,000.
We fucking did it.
People are everywhere, stripping off wet gear, wrapping themselves in blankets, gravitating toward the food and hot drinks. The energy is exhausted but euphoric, everyone talking over each other, reliving moments from the game.
I slip outside, needing just a moment to process everything, to let it all sink in.
The storm's still raging, snow falling thick and fast, but I don't mind. I stand there in the cold, looking at the rink we built, the lights still glowing, and I feel…
I don't even have words for what I feel.
"There you are."
I turn.
Ace is in the doorway, bundled in a coat, holding two mugs of hot chocolate.
He hands me one and comes to stand beside me, both of us looking out at the backyard that became a hockey rink that became something bigger than either of us could have imagined.
"You okay?" he asks.
"I just—" I gesture helplessly at everything. "This whole thing. It's insane."
"You're the one who made it happen."
I shake my head. "We made it happen. All of us."
We stand in comfortable silence for a moment, sipping our hot chocolate, watching the snow fall.
"Did you mean it?" I ask quietly. "What you said out there?"
"Every word."
I take a breath. This is it. Time to be brave.
"I need to tell you something," I say.
"Okay?"
"I'm not—" I stop, searching for the right words. "I don't do relationships. I've never wanted to. I like things casual, uncomplicated, fun. No strings, no feelings, no—" I gesture vaguely. "—all of this."
I watch his face fall slightly, his smile dimming, and I rush to continue.
"But you—" My voice cracks. "You're making me want things I never thought I'd want. You're making me want to stay. You're making me want everything. And that's terrifying, but also—"
I reach out, taking his hand.
"Will you be my boyfriend?"
He just stares at me, hot chocolate forgotten, eyes wide.
"Too soon?" My heart is pounding so hard it might break through my ribcage.
"Yes."
I blink. "Yes?"
"Yes." He's smiles. "Yes, I'll be your boyfriend. That's actually perfect timing because—" He pauses. "I have something to show you too."
"What?"
He sets down his mug and takes my hand. "Come with me."