Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
Kieran
The ice was wrong.
Not visibly or in any way the broadcast cameras or the Zamboni crew would register. I'd been skating on this surface since October, and my edges knew it the way a swimmer knows water by resistance.
The humidity had shifted overnight. Late May in Chicago, the lakefront pushing moisture through every gap in the building's climate control, and the ice had softened by a fraction of a degree. Enough to change how a blade gripped on a sharp turn. Enough to matter.
I crouched at center ice during warm-ups and pressed my glove flat against the surface. Wet. Not crisp. The cold came up through the leather and into my palm, and I held it there, testing.
Soft ice favored heavy players. Grinders. Bodies willing to dig in and absorb punishment. It punished speed and rewarded stubbornness.
It favored Heath.
Fans were filing into the arena. Nineteen thousand seats, maybe a third occupied, but the sound was already different from every other game this season.
Game 7 acoustics. The crowd wasn't cheering yet; they were assembling, and the collective weight of their anticipation pressed down through the rafters.
Heath was at the far end, firing pucks at the empty net. His wrists snapped clean, but he had his shoulders set too high. Tight. Carrying the intensity of the game before it started.
The horn sounded. Warm-ups ended.
In the locker room, the noise compressed. Fewer words carried more weight. The air tasted the way it always did before elimination games: menthol, adhesive, and something metallic underneath.
Markel stepped inside. Hands in his jacket pockets.
Every head turned.
"Play what's in front of you."
Four words. He let them settle into the concrete. His gaze moved across the room, player by player. When it reached me, it held for half a second. Not evaluation or warning.
Permission.
He turned and left.
Across the room, Heath pulled his jersey straight and rolled his neck. Number 48. He caught my eye, brief and unguarded.
I'm here.
I know.
Where the tunnel narrowed, Heath fell into step beside me. His shoulder brushed mine, contact not collision.
The announcer's voice climbed. The tunnel opened into light and noise.
We stepped onto the ice.
For Game 7, everything nonessential fell away. Shifts ran thirty-five, forty seconds. You came off before your legs failed because tired legs made decisions your brain couldn't fix.
Nashville played heavy and disciplined. The soft ice worked for them, slowing transitions and turning the game into a war of attrition that rewarded structure over speed.
The first two periods were scoreless. The ice deteriorated into fog and ruts. You adjusted or you fell.
I ran my shifts cleanly. My body did what it always did: anticipated and executed. My body's machinery operated at top efficiency.
Underneath, I was tracking Heath. Where he was. How he absorbed hits. Whether his stride had shortened from fatigue or from the ribs he'd been protecting since Game 4.
The third period opened, still scoreless. Our line went out for the fourth shift. Cross at center. Heath on the left. I took the right circle.
Cross was at the dot. Faceoff. Puck dropped.
Cross lost it. Their center pulled it back to the point. Wrister through traffic. Pratt kicked it wide. Rebound to the corner.
Our defenseman got there first. Sealed their forward. Swept the puck behind the net. Cross collected. Cycled low.
I read the lane before it opened.
Their weak-side defenseman was cheating toward the boards. The same tendency Heath had spotted on the plane after Game 3: he leaves the back door if we sell the net drive and pull up. The gap between the D-man's inside hip and the far post was six feet wide and closing.
I carried through the high slot. Drew coverage. Their forward committed a half-step, which was everything.
The pass was instinctual.
The puck left my blade through a seam that existed for less than a second, finding the only lane to the crease where a body was about to be.
Heath was already there.
Full commitment. Stick flat. Their defenseman leaned on him, two hundred and twelve pounds of resistance, and Heath absorbed the weight, keeping his blade on the ice.
The puck caught his stick at an angle that turned the pass into a redirect. It tumbled, knuckling past the goalie's blocker and into the net.
Red light. Horn.
The whole place went vertical. Sound moved through the foundation, up through the ice, and into my skeleton. Nineteen thousand people standing. Glass shaking.
I reached him first.
I hit him at the crease and caught his shoulders. He held on to mine. We collided, and our foreheads pressed together through our visors, close enough to see the sweat at his temple and the freckles.
Half a second too long.
We both knew. Neither broke first.
The pile arrived. Cross from behind. Rook's glove on my helmet. Varga's voice shredding through everything—"GET IN HERE, THIS IS HISTORY, I CALLED THIS, I CALLED THIS WEEKS AGO—"
The replay looped overhead. Three angles. The pass. The redirect. And then: the two of us, visors up, locked together at the crease edge while the pile built around us.
Later, the commentators would call it chemistry.
Five minutes and fourteen seconds remained. Nashville pulled its goalie with ninety seconds left. Heath planted at the net front, absorbing crosschecks. I cleared the zone. Cross ate clock.
The horn sounded.
The crowd stayed on its feet.
We won.
The locker room door shut, and the room came apart.
Gloves flew. Tape snapped. Somebody body-checked Pratt into the whiteboard.
Varga was screaming about destiny.
Our media coordinator appeared. "Mathers, Donnelly, Cross—scrum in five."
I showered fast. Charcoal suit. The face in the mirror was the one that had been giving interviews since I was eighteen, except something behind the eyes had shifted. Less mask. More surface.
The media room setup was a long table, three chairs, and cameras in a semicircle. Cross on the left. Me in the middle. Heath thirty seconds late, still fighting his tie.
Questions started with the game.
"Walk us through the sequence, Kieran."
"Lane opened when their weak-side D cheated. Heath was driving the net. I found the seam."
"Heath, the redirect, a designed play?"
"I went to the net. Puck got there. I put my stick on it."
More questions. Then the Tribune reporter stepped forward.
"Kieran. This partnership with Heath has become the storyline of the season. What does it mean to you?"
Recorders adjusted. Cameras tightened their frames. In my head, I cycled through the safe answers: great teammate, on-ice chemistry, trust the process.
I'd been giving those answers for eight months. They were vague statements dressed in press-conference language. I was done with the lack of precision.
Heath turned his head to watch me. Tie still crooked. Hands on the table.
I leaned toward the microphone.
"Heath's the most important person in my life." Even voice. No drama. "On and off the ice."
Silence. Breathing. Shifting. They all expected one thing and received another.
I didn't elaborate.
I looked straight ahead. I didn't look at Heath. His exhale told me everything.
The PR coordinator called time.
In the hallway, Cross peeled off toward the training room. At the corner, he looked back and nodded once.
Beside me, Heath finally spoke.
"You said that."
"I said that."
"On camera."
"Yep."
"Your father's going to see it."
"I know."
Three steps. Shoes echoing on concrete.
"That was a clean pass," he said.
"Thanks."
"I mean the one to the media."
I looked at him, and he looked back at me. The hallway was empty in both directions.
"I'm done managing," I said.
"Yeah," he smiled. "I noticed."
We took his car. Eleven minutes. Neither of us spoke.
He shouldered the front door open against the humidity. Dark apartment. Alley light striping the floor. The city glowed through uncurtained windows.
His keys hit the counter. My jacket landed on the hook beside his.
Heath loosened his crooked tie. Pulled it over his head without untying it. Dropped it on the counter.
"Beer first?" he asked.
"No."
"Good answer."
He crossed the kitchen. He held my face in both hands and kissed me with the focused intensity of a man who'd been thinking about it since the first period.
I kissed him back. Pulled him closer by the belt loops. His hips pressed against mine. We were both hard.
Heath pulled back momentarily.
"I have something," he said.
"Okay."
"In the bedroom. I bought it last week. Don't make it weird."
"You haven't told me what it is yet."
"Right. So. Don't make it weird in advance."
He led me down the hallway.
Heath opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out a matte black bag, tasteful, the packaging designed to communicate adults purchase things here and that's fine. He set the contents on the bed with the matter-of-fact efficiency of someone unpacking stick tape.
Lube. The good kind, not the travel-size hotel afterthought we'd been making do with. And beside it, a silicone plug. Dark blue. Modest. Tapered in a way that suggested someone had read the reviews with the same diligence he brought to scouting reports.
"I did homework," he said.
I looked at the plug. Looked at him. His expression was open and slightly defiant.
"Consumer research. Comparison shopping. I read a guide."
"A guide."
"One had diagrams. I took notes."
"Heath."
"If you're about to tell me this is too fast—"
"I'm about to tell you that's a very responsible color choice."
He laughed, short, surprised. "It matched the sheets."
"The sheets are gray."
"Navy complements gray. I don't make the rules."
I pulled him in by the front of his shirt. Kissed the laugh off his mouth. He pushed my jacket off my shoulders while I worked his buttons.