31. Championship #2
Sticks hit the ice. Bodies collide. Sloane’s screaming at a decibel that suggests she’s discovered a new frequency of joy unavailable to normal humans.
Emery’s being hoisted onto Jordan’s shoulders for the second time this season.
Becca skates to center ice with the championship trophy and holds it up.
And the sound that follows is the roar of a team that didn’t exist seven months ago announcing to the world that it does now.
I’m in the middle of it. Part of it. Arms around teammates, voice raw from screaming, tears mixing with sweat on my face in a way I’ll pretend was purely from exertion if anyone asks.
Four goals. In a championship game. With a possible Olympic camp invitation and a scandal currently trending and an ex-boyfriend who tried to burn my life down because I had the audacity to love someone who wasn’t him.
Four goals.
Put an asterisk on that.
The family finds me outside the locker room.
Mom first. When she reaches me, she doesn’t ask questions. Doesn’t mention the post or Luke or the thing that’s been living on her face since she opened her phone yesterday afternoon.
She just takes my face in both hands. Looks at me in the way only a mother can, past the sweat and the adrenaline and the champion’s grin I’m performing, and into the exhausted, frightened girl underneath.
“Baby,” she says.
One word. And I break.
Press my face into her shoulder, my body shaking with the exhale I’ve been holding since Luke walked out of Grayson’s kitchen twenty-nine hours ago.
Mom holds me. Doesn’t shush me. Doesn’t say it’s okay or it’ll be fine or any of the things people say when they don’t know what to say. Just holds me and lets me be twenty-one and scared and in love with someone the world is trying to take from me.
“I’m proud of you,” she murmurs against my hair. “So proud, sweetheart. No matter what.”
No matter what. The unconditional clause. The one that covers championships and scandals and tattoos and all the messy, complicated choices her daughter has made in the name of wanting something too much.
I pull back. Wipe my eyes. Rebuild my face into something that can withstand the next conversation.
Grayson’s standing three feet behind Mom. Hands in his jacket pockets. That closed posture from the stands, the one that says angry and here in equal measure.
We look at each other.
“Hell of a game,” he comments, voice landing somewhere near a gravel road.
“Thanks.”
A beat. Two. The space between us filled with everything we haven’t said and the one thing he did— you need to leave —that’s been sitting in my chest like a stone since yesterday.
Then he steps forward. Pulls me into a hug that’s not the usual Grayson hug.
Not the lift-off-the-ground, crack-your-ribs, announce-to-the-world-that’s-my-sister kind.
Something quieter. Tighter. The kind of hug you give someone when you’re still figuring out whether you’re holding them or holding on.
“Four goals,” he says into my hair. “Ridiculous.”
“Learned from the best.”
“Yeah, you did.” A pause weighted with something he’s choosing not to say. Then, quieter: “We’re not done talking about this, Em.”
“I know.”
“But not today.” He pulls back. His eyes are red-rimmed, which he’ll blame on the arena lights if anyone asks. “Today you’re a champion.”
He doesn’t say the rest. Doesn’t say and I’m proud of you and I love you and I’m terrified for you and I still want to kill him . But I hear it anyway, in the way his hand lingers on my shoulder before he steps back, in the blue hair tie he hands me, in the fact that he came at all.
Sienna hugs me next. Brief. Warm. Her mouth near my ear: “You were incredible. And don’t freak out over the email you’ll get later. We’ll figure it out.”
Don’t freak out.
And because it’s Sienna telling me this, I nod.
The team celebration starts in the locker room. Champagne someone smuggled in. Music Sloane controls because no one else is brave enough to fight her for the speaker. Becca delivering a captain’s speech that’s four sentences long and makes everyone cry.
But I’m checking the edges of the room the way you check the boards. Looking for him.
Luke’s not here.
He was on the bench. I saw him there through the final buzzer, through the trophy ceremony, through the moment when our eyes met across the ice for a half-second that contained an entire conversation.
Now the bench is empty. His office light, visible through the window that overlooks the corridor, is dark.
He’s gone.
My phone vibrates with an email notification and I know…
I open it in the corner of the locker room while Sloane attempts to teach Emery a victory dance that involves moves no human skeleton should attempt.
FROM: Silver Pine University Athletics Communications
TO: Women’s Hockey — All Staff, All Players
RE: Coaching Staff Update — Effective Immediately
The Office of Athletics announces that Head Coach Luke Anderson has been placed on paid administrative leave effective today, pending a standard institutional review.
Assistant Coach Addison Ryne will serve as interim head coach for the duration of the review period.
The university is committed to maintaining the integrity of its programs and supporting all student-athletes during this process.
Questions should be directed to the Athletics Communications Office.
I try not to freak out.
Fail spectacularly .
The speculation was all about me, yet it’s Luke who’s being punished. Luke who’s placed on administration leave. Luke who’s going under formal review. Luke who’s commitment is being questioned.
Luke who can’t clear his asterisk with a four-goal game.
Around me, my teammates celebrate a championship they earned.
Every goal. Every assist. Every defensive stop and blocked shot and overtime win.
Theirs. Ours. Built on ice time and film sessions and 6 AM practices and the belief that a first-year program with a twenty-five-year-old coach could compete with anyone in the country.
They did it.
We did it.
He did it.
And now he’s gone. So I can be here.
Self-sacrificing.
I do the only thing I can, given the circumstances.
Given the sacrifice he's decided. I slip my phone into my bag. Walk back into the celebration and let Sloane pull me into a dance and pretend my heart isn’t sitting in a dark office five hundred feet away, waiting for a man who promised he wasn’t going anywhere.
A man who doesn’t break promises.