Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
Heath
The bruise from Thursday's practice was fading on my left forearm, yellow at the edges, and still tender when I pressed it.
I pressed it anyway. Sat in my stall and ran my thumb along the discoloration, testing the tenderness, confirming that the body underneath was still mine and still responding to input.
Playoff morning. The practice facility felt different before anyone spoke. The tunnel was concrete and flat white light casting the surfaces in sharper relief. An Ironhawks crest above the door had been there since September, invisible for months. Today I saw it.
Varga was talking as usual, but the room had absorbed his voice, turning the volume down with no one touching a dial. Nobody complained.
I reached for my tape. Heel to toe. Half-overlap. Clean under my thumb, base to tip. No bubbles. No gaps. I cut the tape with my teeth, pressed the end flat, and set the stick across my stall.
Kieran's document sat in the top drawer of my dresser at home.
Seven pages. I'd read it twice the night he gave it to me, once at his kitchen table, and once alone with a beer going warm on the counter.
Without him watching, I didn't have to manage my face, and some of his sentences hit me hard. I wasn't ready for him to see that.
Rook dressed two stalls down. Socks, shin guards, pants. Same order, same pace. He'd been here before.
Pratt stretched in the center of the floor, forehead near his knee, eyes closed. His pregame routine evolved from flexibility work to something that looked like prayer. Goalies lived in their own world.
"—and I'm telling you, first-round matchups are cosmically designed to punish anyone who sleeps well the night before. Every metric favors us, which means we'll lose Game 1 because the universe has a subscription to our analytics package and is specifically betting against it—"
"Varga." Rook didn't look up.
"I'm rehearsing my coping mechanisms!"
"You're too caffeinated at nine in the morning."
"Indistinguishable."
Coach Markel entered with a brief statement. "Same game you've been playing. Play it tonight in front of more people. That's the only difference."
He scanned the room once.
"Be ready."
He left.
Team stretch on the floor. I ended up on Kieran's left, close enough that my elbow passed within six inches of his knee when I reached for my ankle.
His shirt rode up when he stretched his arm overhead. An inch of skin above his waistband. I knew the taste of that skin and the feel, the give, beneath my lips. His breathing changed when I kissed the line where his hip started.
I looked at the floor. Held the stretch until my hamstring burned enough to crowd other thoughts out.
When I stood, the heat was still there, sitting low in my stomach like a second pulse. I let it stay. Channeled it into lacing and tension checks.
I grabbed my stick and stood.
The arena was already full when we took the ice. Nineteen thousand people who'd paid playoff prices and expected playoff product. The noise had layers, rising and falling with the play instead of reacting to it. Playoff crowds read the ice.
The first pass was off.
A half-inch of blade angle, the puck arriving at Kieran's tape with a wobble instead of a clean delivery. He collected it without adjustment and moved the play forward. Nobody noticed.
I noticed.
Three months ago, a missed connection would have sent me into an anxiety spiral. Now it landed as information. Adjust. Continue.
Second shift. I drove the net.
Their defenseman picked me up at the hashmarks. Six-three, two-twenty-five, playoff beard filling in like topsoil after rain. He threw a forearm across my chest.
I planted. Blade flat. Stick active.
Kieran carried through the high slot. Drew coverage. Cross cycled low.
Rook's wrister from the point, heavy and low through traffic. Bodies converged. A stick slashed across my shins. The goalie shuffled, trying to track through the screen I was holding with my entire body.
A deflection off a shin pad changed the puck's direction. I got my stick on it. It was a correction, not a shot. My blade was in the only place it could be because I refused to move.
Goal.
The pile-on was immediate. Cross grabbed my shoulders. The defenseman who'd been leaning on me peeled off, disgusted expression on his face.
Through the tangle and the roar, I found Kieran. Eye contact. Half a second. Through visors smudged with sweat.
There you are.
Shin pad tap. Helmet tap.
The second point came mid-second period. Clean zone entry. Kieran through neutral with the puck on his forehand, drawing their forward into a commit a half-step too early. The lane opened. He hit me in stride at the blue line.
I drove up the middle.
Their defenseman stepped up. I took the contact through my left shoulder and kept my feet. One more stride, long enough to slide it across the slot to Cross, already loading.
Bar down. Far side.
Varga stood on the bench and slammed his stick against the dasher.
"PLAYOFF DONNELLY IS A DIFFERENT SPECIES! I HAVE DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE!"
"You have nothing," Rook said.
"I HAVE A FEELINGS-BASED HYPOTHESIS AND IT IS BEING VINDICATED IN REAL TIME!"
I sat. Grabbed water. My ribs were sore from the contact.
Three spots down, Kieran pulled his helmet off. Hair plastered to his forehead as he watched the replay on the overhead.
I looked away before anyone else could read my attention.
The third point came late. My assist. His finish.
I cycled low behind the net. Their coverage over-committed, both defenders rotating toward the corner. The lane through the slot opened for maybe a second.
I sent it without looking. Not a guess. Not a hope. I knew where he was the way I knew where he was in the dark.
One-timer. Clean release. The net bulged before the goalie finished his push.
The crowd noise shook the arena's foundation. I felt it through my skates and up into my chest.
Standard celebration on the ice. Brief shoulder bump.
On the bench, Rook nodded at the ice. Approving the play rather than the player. Pratt tapped both posts from the crease, faster than usual, locking his superstition in.
Three points. Game 1.
We weren't playing carefully. We were playing with honest passion.
I walked through the tunnel with my stick across my shoulders. My ribs ached with each step. Kieran was behind me and to the right.
He reached out to place his hand on the curve where my shoulder met my neck and stayed for a full stride. Warmth delivered through the fabric.
My pulse raced. My body didn't care that we were in a tunnel with twenty other people. It wanted to turn into that hand and press my shoulder blade back against his chest.
I kept walking.
His hand dropped.
Fifteen feet ahead, Rook's stride shortened by a half-step. He didn't turn his head.
A reporter appeared from a side corridor. Credential lanyard bouncing. Recorder already out.
"Kieran, Heath, the three-point night, the chemistry on that third goal—"
Rook stopped. Turned. Filled the corridor with twelve years of NHL experience and the understanding that the hallway between the ice and the room belonged to the players.
"Tomorrow."
The reporter read his comment and lowered the recorder. "Sure. Thanks, Mattias."
Rook resumed walking without looking at either of us.
He'd seen the hand. Had decided, without drama, that the appropriate response was to stand between us and the person who might ask about it.
I looked at Kieran. He was already looking at me.
Postgame ran fast. Cross was already half in street clothes when I passed. He looked up from unwrapping his fingers. "Good series game." Pulled a strip free. "Most guys play a good game. There's a difference."
Before I could respond, Pratt appeared beside my stall, still toweling off. "Screening was good in the second. Stayed out of my sightline." He continued past without breaking stride. He paused at Kieran's stall, said something low. Kieran nodded.
Markel delivered his analysis. "Deployment was clean. Forecheck adjustments Wednesday. Film at two."
His gaze passed over me without pausing. When Markel stopped looking for problems, it meant he wasn't finding them.
I showered. Let the water run until the heat worked into my ribs. The tile was cold under my feet.
When I came back, the room had thinned. Rook sat two stalls down. Unhurried. He tossed me a towel without looking up, and when I caught it, he held my eyes one beat longer than usual.
I nodded. He went back to his bag.
I pulled on a clean shirt and checked my phone.
Maggie: Three points??? Call me when you're not being famous.
Pickle: THREE POINTS IN A PLAYOFF GAME. I am claiming spiritual authorship. Hog is knitting you a commemorative something. He won't tell me what.
I smiled, packed my bag, and headed for the door.
The series compressed time the way only a playoff run could.
Games stacked on each other. Travel days that were transfers, not days—bus to plane to bus. My body accumulated damage in layers. Bruises on my ribs, forearms, and the inside of my left knee. By Game 3, they overlapped. I stopped keeping track.
We lost Game 2. Their defense tightened the cycle exactly as Cross predicted, took away the back-door lanes and made every possession feel like digging post holes.
I spent fifteen minutes of ice time getting cross-checked in front of the net by a defenseman who'd decided that if he couldn't stop me from screening, he could make my presence painful.
Kieran played cleanly and correctly the entire game.
Drew a penalty late that should have been the game, but our power play misfired and the puck found its way out instead of in.
We lost 2-1. He sat at his stall afterward and untied his skates with the same slow precision he used after wins, and something about that precision made me want to break things.