Chapter 21
Cillian
Los Angeles, California.
The puck rims hard around the boards and I beat their defenseman to the spot, taking a forearm to the base of my skull for the trouble, but I move it before the second man can line me up. The whistle shrieks, and thousands of fans immediately begin booing me by name.
We're in Los Angeles tonight, playing our biggest rival, and this crowd is loving every minute of it. They beat us out for the division last year and they've been smug about it ever since, the fans, the team, the whole organization.
And the truth that still burns is that they earned the right.
I handed it to them. I came back from my injury too early to play right, and down the stretch, with everything on the line, I gave them exactly what they needed.
Stupid penalties. Forced plays. Snapped sticks over the crossbar like the equipment was the problem.
But tonight we're up three games to none, and if we take this one, the series is buried. Vegas is already gone. Bury Los Angeles tonight, and the only team left standing between us and the Final is Seattle. Get through them, and it's the Cup itself, against whichever team survives the East Coast.
Which, if the season so far means anything, will be New York. Brennan. And there is no fucking way I'm costing this team anything else.
For the last few weeks I've been playing the best hockey of my career.
The game feels effortless again. LA's been desperate to rattle me tonight, but they haven't found a crack in the armor yet.
Though Decker, their resident pest, has spent two periods chirping at me, which he appears ready to do again right now.
He glides past as the linesmen sort out the latest scrum.
"Hey, O'Rourke, I've been meaning to say how fucking pathetic you look out here.
You should've gotten a lifetime ban after that stunt you pulled in the stands.
But hey, if the league won't put you in your place, I'll happily do it for them tonight. Free of charge."
I roll my eyes. He's been running his mouth for twenty minutes, but the man is such a loser he can't even get a rise out of me anymore. He hasn't even attempted much beyond some playground trash talk.
"Any time you're ready to stop talking and start playing, let me know," I say, skating off before his brain can even begin to process a retort. I'd be waiting a lifetime.
A year ago, I'd have let him under my skin. A year ago I'd have swung, taken the major penalty, and handed them the momentum. Tonight he's just background noise.
Nobody's even managed to score yet. It's that kind of game, tight and mean, a team with nothing left to lose throwing everything it possesses at a squad trying to finish a job. And during a TV timeout, I finally let myself look up. Just once.
Company seats, halfway up on the visitors' side. Carol and Elaine flew down for Elaine's gallery opening and figured they'd catch the game while they're here, support the brand ambassador, call it work. And right there next to them, hiding inside her own boss's cover story, is Margot.
She's watching me, chin propped on her hands, and she's so fucking gorgeous it almost makes me forget to breathe.
I've never wanted relationships in my life before her, but with Margot, none of it feels scary or restrictive.
It just feels like I was inevitably waiting all along for her to appear, and there's no uncertainty in it.
I turn back to the ice, and the cold focus comes down over me cleaner than it has all night at the sight of her, like my own personal lighthouse calling me back to shore. I take one slow breath, in and out, the way she showed me in Galway, and lock back into the game.
The grind continues, and midway through the second period, their defenseman finally cracks.
We've been hounding him all night, and when Jonesy closes in on him, the lad panics and throws the puck straight up the middle of the ice.
Suddenly it's on my stick and I'm all alone, the whole rink rising to its feet.
Last year's version of me would have rushed this. I'd have gripped the stick too tight, fired it straight into the goalie's pad, and screamed at the rafters. I watched that man miss for months on end.
So I take my time as I approach, waiting for the tell. The goalie has to move first; that's the whole secret. His knees buckle for a fraction of a second, and I wait for the opening. Then I slide it cleanly under his arm.
Our corner of the crowd erupts through a building full of boos, but who fucking cares. We're up by one and I'm laughing while Jonesy hammers my helmet, yelling "THERE HE FUCKING IS!"
Betts grabs my jersey as I drop onto the bench. "Hell yeah, O'Rourke! Fucking beautiful!"
"And this means you owe me that fancy bottle, by the way. The beard predicted a sweep back in round one. The beard is never wrong."
"No chance."
LA punches back, because cornered teams always do. Late in the second, Decker smacks in a rebound and makes sure to skate the long way past our bench, pointing at the name on his own jersey. Like I said, a total fucking loser.
The third period is an absolute knife fight.
We're trading hits, taking heavy contact, and leaving everything on the ice.
We're seven minutes from the final horn when Betts refuses to let the puck out of their zone through sheer stubbornness, shoveling it toward the front of the net.
It hits my stick. Then the back of the net.
And just like that, we're back in front.
The last two minutes are pure adrenaline.
They pull their goalie to send out an extra attacker, six of them against five of us, their crowd roaring them forward.
We defend the house hard, blocking everything in sight.
Jonesy dives headfirst to cut off a pass; Tom eats a slap shot. Sam makes two massive saves.
And with thirty seconds left, the puck finds its way back to me. I skate through the neutral zone, dodging a hit and racing toward the empty net. My heart feels fucking steady; I feel fucking steady. I feel like nothing can even touch me tonight. I glide past the last man and shoot.
The puck crosses the line and the buzzer sounds a second later.
It's over. Swept.
The bench empties and we crash into a pile, gloves and sticks raining down everywhere. Betts is screaming himself hoarse, Jonesy is howling with laughter, and all of us are celebrating to a chaotic mix of cheers and boos.
I emerge from the pile laughing, because I'm on top of the fucking world.
I look up to find her, and she's on her feet, jumping up and down and screaming for me.
I can't tell her how much I love her from here, but fuck, I think I've been falling since that first meeting at the launch party. And I'm never letting go.
"We fucking did it!" Jonesy yells, nearly tackling me again. "Conference Final, baby! We fucking did it!"
Four more wins to Brennan. Eight to the Cup.
I finish loading the dishwasher and click it shut, surveying the small, sunny space of Margot's kitchen.
Her house is cozy in a way that reminds me of a grandmother's place back in Ireland, if the grandmother in question collected succulents, a minor forest of windowsill cacti, and more paperbacks than the local library.
There's a stack on the counter alone that could concuss a man.
She slides up behind me, wrapping her arms around my waist. "Thanks for handling the cleanup."
I turn around in her hold and band my arms around her, pulling her against my chest. "Well, it's the least I can do after you made such a grand dinner for me, Ace."
She smiles up at me, the evening light catching the dark edges of her hair. "Wine on the porch?"
"Sounds grand," I murmur, and steal one more kiss before letting her go.
She gathers a bottle and a pair of glasses, and we head out to the back porch, settling onto the swing overlooking her small garden, the dahlias fully recovered from the great gutter flood, and watch the Napa hills go pink in the dying light.
She's in a pair of shorts and a tee, and once the swing starts its slow rhythm, she slides her legs over my lap and leans back against the floral cushions. We stay like that for a bit, just swinging in the quiet, completely relaxed and content with the wine and the view.
I'm off tomorrow for the next road game, and we've been making the most of every second in between, with her coming to every home game she can manage. This last month has been unreal.
"Oh, I forgot to mention, Sabrina gets back from her film trip this week," she says, swirling her own wine with considerably more authority. "And she wants to officially have you over for another movie night with us this weekend."
I rest my hand on her knee. "Sounds great. I had a lot of fun last time."
"Good." She smiles over at me.
"Oh, that reminds me. Speaking of sisters." I take a sip of my wine. "Fiadh wanted me to pass something along. She saw the news that your guy from the arena got formally charged, and her exact words were, 'tell Margot I said good riddance, and that I'm proud of her.'"
Margot smiles. "It only took a month for them to actually move forward. Though I suppose that's fast, compared to what most people have to deal with."
"Well, I'm proud of you too. You handled the aftermath far better than I did, and all I had to survive was three games in a suit. You’re tough as nails."
She grins. "Thanks. And for the record, I did thoroughly enjoy watching him get punched, so my moral high ground has a bit of a slope to it."
I laugh, and she nudges my ribs with her toe.
"And that's sweet of Fiadh," she adds. "I'll text her a thank you. She and I had a really nice talk about it at that dinner in Dublin, so it means something that she followed up."
"I'm glad. They're all mad about you and keep asking when we're coming back." I shake my head. "And Mam's taking full credit for us, by the way. Tells anyone who'll listen that putting you in my childhood bedroom is what lit the spark. She's very smug about it."
Margot giggles into her wine. "I don't know that it was the deciding factor, but sure. Let her have it."
"There's no stopping her anyway." I rock the swing slowly with one foot, and for a while we sit with it, the wine and the hills and the crickets tuning up somewhere in her garden.
Then, because it's been sitting in my chest all week, I just say it. "Can I ask you something?"
"That sounds ominous."
"How long do you want to keep this quiet?"
She goes still, her glass halfway to her mouth. It's the question we've both been stepping around since Ireland. The separate cars, the hotel rooms under different names, the whole careful circus of it.
"I don't know," she says finally. "Until the season's over? Until the internet forgets my face? Until it's... convenient?" She lets out a slow breath. "Which is starting to sound like an excuse, even to me."
"I'm not pushing, Ace. I mean that." I run my thumb along her ankle. "I just need you to know the quiet isn't me hiding you. I'd tell the whole world tomorrow. It's your call, and I'll wait as long as it takes."
"I know you would. That's almost the problem." She turns the stem of her glass. "You just decide a thing and it's decided. I run every worst-case first."
"So run me through one."
She huffs a laugh, but it's thin. "I dunno.
Just the comments, the think-pieces about whether I'm using you or you're slumming it with the wine girl.
" She swallows. "And I know I'm supposed to be above caring what strangers think.
But I don't think I'm ready to hand the internet a reason to hate me on purpose. "
"That's a fair fear. It's not a small thing, what they already put you through."
"It's not just the strangers." Her voice drops. "When it gets loud out there, it gets loud in here too." She taps her temple. "The anxiety doesn't care that it's irrational. It just floods. And I finally feel steady with you. I'm scared of anything that might wreck that."
Something in my chest aches at that, and every instinct I own wants to fix it, to plant myself between her and the whole braying internet. I set my glass down and take her hand properly.
"There's no clock on this, Margot. Not from me."
"You really mean that?"
"I really do." I press a kiss to her knuckles. "When you're ready, you're ready. And if you're never ready to make a production of it, then we'll just be the worst-kept secret in Napa. I don't need a press release. I just want you."
"After the season," she says softly. "When it's quieter. I’ll be ready then."
"After the season." I pull her legs tighter across my lap. "Deal."