31. Championship
Chapter thirty-one
Championship
Emma
B reathe, Emma. Breathe.
I head downstairs with my gear bag over my shoulder and find a living room full of women who aren’t supposed to be here.
Sloane, yes. Sloane lives here. Sloane has been hovering since last night with the restless energy of a guard dog who doesn’t know where the threat is coming from but has decided to bite first and ask questions later.
Becca’s in the armchair. Jordan’s on the floor with her back against the couch. Katya’s cross-legged beside her. Emery’s perched on the arm of the loveseat, looking twelve years old and also like she might murder someone on my behalf.
My team. In my living room. The day of our championship game, when they should be home doing their usual pre-game rituals.
“So,” Becca starts, “you want to tell us, or should we keep pretending we haven’t all seen it?”
The post. The rumors. The thing that detonated my life twenty-four hours ago and is still smoldering in every group chat, comment section, and DM thread in the collegiate hockey universe despite Sienna’s best attempt to squash it.
I set my bag down. Exhale.
“I first met Luke when I was fifteen,” I begin, and my voice doesn’t shake, which is a miracle I’ll unpack in therapy.
“He came for Thanksgiving, then stayed two weeks over Christmas. Another two months that summer where he taught me a new wrist shot. I think I actually fell in love with him sometime during my sophomore year when he led the team in assists and never once was smug about it. But he didn’t see me like that.
Not until… Well, you all get the picture.
I wanted him. He tried not to want me back.
And I don’t lose when I really want something.
” I take another breath. “I have no idea what happened with him yesterday. I don’t know if he’s in trouble.
I don’t know what today looks like for him professionally.
But I need you to know that nothing about this team—your ice time, your development, your season—was influenced by what’s between us. And if this hurts any of you…”
I don’t finish. Can’t finish.
Because this is the part that hurts.
The part that makes me feel selfish and self-serving.
“We’re fine,” Katya comments. “But we’re worried about you.”
“You shouldn’t, I—”
“You followed your heart.” It’s Becca that interrupts me. “Anyone with two eyes has seen it, Emma. It’s not some one and done thing. Not scratching an itch.”
“You knew?”
“Probably longer than you think.” She stands.
Walks toward me with the unhurried authority of a woman who’s been captaining teams since she could skate.
“But your personal life isn’t our business.
You were still the same person on the ice.
Your game didn’t suffer. If anything—” She pauses.
Recalibrates to something more captain than friend.
“You played the best hockey of your life this season. Whatever the reason, we weren’t going to mess with it. ”
“And now?”
“Now we have a championship to win.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. Squeezes once. “And we’re going to win it. Not for him. Not to prove anything to anyone online. For us. For this team.”
Jordan stands. Then Katya. Then Emery, who crosses the room and hugs me with the full-body commitment of someone who hasn’t yet learned that vulnerability in a locker room is supposed to be dangerous.
At BC, the locker room turned. Sides were taken. I became the problem.
Here, five women showed up at my house on a game day morning to make sure I knew I wasn’t alone.
Sloane catches my eye from the couch. Her expression is smug in the way only she can manage. Told you , it says. This is your team.
“Now let’s go,” Becca announces, grabbing her own bag from beside the door. “I refuse to be late for a conference final.”
Addison gives the pre-game speech.
It’s good. Tactical. She hits the right notes about Westmore’s tendencies, about how we need to prove our record isn’t coincidence.
It’s also completely wrong.
Not the content. The content is sharp. Addison Ryne knows hockey the way surgeons know anatomy.
But the voice is wrong. The energy. The thing that’s missing is the man standing six feet behind her with his clipboard held like a shield and his jaw locked so tight I can see the muscle jumping from across the room.
Luke is here. On the bench. In his Silver Pine polo, looking like every other game day except for the fact that his eyes are hollow and his hands haven’t stopped moving—adjusting the clipboard, touching his pen, checking his tablet, a constant rotation of fidgets that tells me he slept approximately zero hours and has consumed enough coffee to power a small municipality.
He hasn’t looked at me.
He’s looking at his tablet, at the whiteboard, at the far wall, at literally anything that isn’t the woman he was holding in the dark thirty-six hours ago whispering promises about forever.
And I understand. Can see it in his rigid posture, in the way Addison positions herself between him and the team like a human buffer. Someone gave him rules. A cage. And Luke Anderson, Mr. Rule-Follower, is following them because breaking them would hurt me more than following them hurts him.
The selfless idiot.
He starts to say something during Addison’s breakdown of Westmore’s power play and catches himself mid-syllable, the comment dying in his throat like a bird hitting glass.
He can’t even talk, can he?
He’s here, yes. But it’s only to prove a point. The university doesn’t remove coaches for rumors, except there’s just enough truth that they can’t completely deny them, either.
My chest cracks. Doesn’t break yet. That will come later when I’m alone and can afford to fall apart. Just cracks. Enough to let in pain that sharpens everything else.
Use it, Cole. Channel it. The way he taught you in a concrete corridor at BC when you were drowning and he pulled you out with six words.
Play your game. Not theirs. Yours.
I scan the crowd during warm-ups because I can’t help it.
Section 117. Third row. Sienna first, phone already in hand, managing whatever crisis still needs managing. Mom beside her in the same blue jersey she’s worn to every game this year.
And Grayson.
He’s there. Here . Came . Which means something. Means everything, actually, given that twenty-eight hours ago he told Luke to leave his house and couldn’t look at me in the arena.
He’s not smiling. His body language is closed, his arms crossed, jaw set like he can’t figure out how to be supportive and furious at the same time. But on his wrist—
The blue hair tie.
Wrapped around his left wrist the way it’s been for every important game since I was fourteen.
Blue for home. Our tradition. The one that predates Luke, predates Drew, predates every complicated thing that’s happened since I stopped being just his kid sister and started being a woman with her own devastating choices.
He’s wearing it.
My eyes burn. I blink. Hard. Twice. Force my vision clear because I will not cry during warm-ups at a conference championship with thousands of people watching and a social media post still circulating that’s trying to reduce my entire career to a footnote.
Grayson doesn’t wave. Doesn’t shout. Doesn’t do any of the things that make him Grayson at my games .
But the hair tie says what his voice won’t: I’m angry. I’m here. Those are both true at the same time.
Good enough. For now, that’s good enough.
The game starts and I go from girl in the middle of a potential scandal to just number four, left winger.
The woman who’s led this conference in scoring for four months and didn’t get here because someone loved her.
Got here because she’s better than almost everyone else on this ice and has spent her entire life proving it.
Westmore comes out physical. Expected. They’ve studied our tape the way we’ve studied theirs. Their top defensive pair is patient, disciplined, the kind of players who don’t give you space unless you take it from them as proven by our first loss.
But unlike that first game, I take the space. Make my own.
We score first. Top shelf. Stick side.
The arena detonates. Not just our fans. People who came to see the scandal, who bought tickets because a social media post promised drama, are on their feet for a goal that has nothing to do with gossip and everything to do with a woman who spent an entire season building something worth defending.
I don’t look at the bench. Don’t look at Luke. Don’t give anyone a frame to screenshot, a moment to dissect, a glance to weaponize.
Instead, I find Sloane, who crashes into me with the force of a small vehicle and screams something about my release being “absolutely filthy” directly into my ear. Becca raises her stick from the blue line. Emery bangs her blocker against the post.
My team.
And from there on, we own the game.
It’s 5-3 when Westmore pulls their goalie with two minutes left. Empty net.
I’ve already gotten a hat-trick, but I want one more just to prove a damn point to everyone watching, to everyone who might want to put an asterisk next to this season.
“First line,” I tell Addison. “Let us close this game out.”
Addison studies me, glances over at Luke before she catches herself and turns back to me.
“First line,” she calls out, signaling to the players on the ice.
Just as I’m about to hop the boards, I allow myself one glance at Luke. And in the language we’ve spent a lifetime building his eyes say everything his mouth can’t .
You’ve got this.
I do.
We win 6-3. Are conference champions in our inaugural season.
Everything becomes chaos.