Chapter 35 Ellie
ELLIE
Ican’t read Fletcher’s expression as the guys line up, rolling their shoulders, flexing in their skates as they wait to head out onto the ice.
Fletcher is quietly arguing with Zayne about who’s going out last.
“You have the C on your shirt,” Zayne insists.
“I didn’t put it there. You’re Murphy’s Law—you go last.”
“I went last the last time, and we lost.”
Fletcher huffs.
“You can’t argue with the logic of superstition,” I tease. I smile at him then quickly look away. He’s back, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I know where we stand.
The crowd roars. The game’s about to start.
“The announcer yells, ‘And here are your Rhode Island Hockey Club!’”
The bass of the rap song drops. I brush the sleeve of Fletcher’s jersey.
“Any last-minute tips, Coach Candy Cane?” He pauses before stepping on the ice.
“Just…” I shrug helplessly. “Thanks for coming back.”
He looks like he’s about to say something, but I yelp, interrupting him in panic as I recognize the music of the Barbie song. “Why are they playing this? They can’t play this song!”
Fletcher just smirks. “It’s the Nicki Minaj version. A little of you, a little of me.” He winks at me. “Let’s go win a game, Barbie.”
The crowd sings along as the announcer yells, “Your new captain, Fletcher Sullivan! Give it up!” He speeds around the ice. It’s not lost on me that there are more than a few women who lift up their Rhode Islanders jerseys to show pink lace bras as he zooms by, flying through the crossover.
And some of them I’m related to.
Great.
“Yeah, here’s your motivation, boys!” Granny Murray whoops behind me.
“Gran, put your shirt on.”
“People are ruining the sport of hockey, turning it into a Disney movie! This is a working-class sport!” She shakes her fist.
I have to clutch my clipboard to keep from chewing on my nails in anxiety.
“Good thing you wore the pink suit,” Granny Murray tells me as she nudges me with a bottle of tequila.
“You won the last time when you wore the pink suit. This is going to be a tough match. We need all the luck we can get. Shoot, I even brought some tampons to throw at them. They need it,” she tells an irate Harlowe loudly.
“You should have seen them at practice. Between you and me and the betting market, I don’t have high hopes. ”
Fletcher lines up at the red line for the face-off. Austin, the Boston captain, is across from him with Eddie directly behind.
Fletcher’s locked in.
The puck drops. Fletcher smashes it to Jovi, then the two teams go at each other, each trying to gain and keep possession of the puck. The crowd groans or roars when the puck heads toward their net or ours.
I cringe. We can’t get it out of the neutral zone. Neither team scores, and during the breaks between periods, the guys all chew on their mouthguards and suck down Gatorade while I go over offensive plays.
It doesn’t help. The Boston Harbor Hawks are known for their defense, and they dig in.
I keep switching out the lines. Cookie is chewing on his mouthguard. He didn’t score the last time he was on the ice, and I can see him getting shaken.
“Cookie, let’s go!”
Cookie jumps onto the ice over the boards. He’s on with Zayne and Fletcher and the Finn.
The line is probably too stacked with talent, but we need a win. We have to put everything on the ice, or the Rhode Islanders are toast.
They break through the defenders. The Finn and Fletcher going breakneck down the ice, clearing a path. Fletcher passes the puck back. Zayne collects it and defends it. The Boston defenders chase him around the net as he ducks and weaves.
“You didn’t give Zayne anything, did you?” I ask Granny Murray suspiciously. “He looks like he’s twenty-five again.”
Zayne makes a quick release pass to Cookie. Cookie takes an incredible backhand shot and—
“GOAL!” I scream as the horns blare. It’s one to nothing, our favor.
The players jump on Cookie, patting his helmet. He plops down on the bench.
“You got us a goal!” I pat his head.
“Yeah,” he pants happily.
I let him have some Goldfish crackers and Gatorade.
“I won.” He holds up the bottle cap. “I get Direwolves tickets.”
On the ice, the Harbor Hawks are pissed. My guys are chirping them, telling them they’re about to lose to a girl.
“I’m gonna mail you a box of tampons,” Carlsson hollers at Eddie. “Fucking traitor!”
I look up at the clock and cringe. “We have another seven minutes until the game is over. That’s a lot of time. Anything could happen. Boston could easily score another goal.” I chew worriedly on my lip.
Fletcher jumps the boards, grabs me around the waist, and sets me on top of the bench. “Nah,” he says, leaning back to rest against my legs. “We’re going to win. And if we don’t, Ren has a gun in the trunk of his car, so one way or the other, this is over.”
Ryan West, another hockey superstar, thanks for coming, calmly calls out line changes for the Harbor Hawks. His son Mason is new, a rookie, but he’s going to be as good as his father.
The first line isn’t out on the ice, and Mason’s locked in. Ren readies himself in the net as Mason flies down the ice, dangles the puck, then—
“Goal!”
I cringe. “Dammit, we’re tied.”
“I’m going to get another goal,” Cookie says happily, handing me the bottle cap for safekeeping.
“Please do.”
Cookie’s magic as he flies around the Boston players, the puck glued to his stick. He sends it to the Finn, and then, tic-tac-toe, it’s a—
“Goal!”
“Yes! Surprise bag is mine!” Heikkil?inen whoops, skating past on one leg, pretending to play his stick like a guitar while Cookie dances to the Barbie song and my players throw tampons that Granny Murray has provided into the air like money in a rap video.
The ref blows his whistle at us.
“Sorry,” I tell him.
Eddie glares at me as he skates by to get a drink of water from his bench during the commercial break. He seems furious as his team digs in for the face-off.
Fletcher wins the face-off, and the puck flies to Cookie. One of the bigger forwards sprints at Cookie. He dodges him but loses the puck. Zayne is there, knocking the guy off-balance and collecting the puck.
Cookie already put himself in position. Fletcher’s keeping pace with him but gets tangled up with Boston’s centerman.
The Finn makes a break to the net, passes to Zayne, then back to Cookie. He’s about to score.
Mason cuts him off. Cookie quick-whips the puck to Fletcher and sprints toward the net. It’s a play we’ve practiced. If Fletcher gets him the puck, he’s going to score, and we’re going to win.
“We’re going to make it,” I breathe.
I can barely watch as Cookie hurtles down the ice. Then Eddie clips Cookie. The kid’s skating so fast that he goes flying, smashes into the boards, and lands in a heap to yells from the crowd.
“Cookie!” I cry.
Fletcher doesn’t even hesitate. He leaves the puck he was chasing and turns on Eddie.
Technically, the rules state that fighting is allowed, but it’s supposed to be a fair fight—drop the gloves, no weapons.
That’s not how the Marines trained Fletcher to fight, apparently, because he goes after Eddie with his stick, smashing it over him, kicking him, and trying to slash his throat with his skate.
“Fletcher, stop it! You’re going to kill him!”
“He’s going to get a massive fine and be banned for the rest of the year.” Harlowe sucks in a breath.
Zayne grabs Fletcher around the arm, trying to get him off of Eddie as Eddie’s new teammates jump Fletcher. He uses his hockey stick to slash at them.
Ren is screaming obscenities from the net.
Finally, the Finn wades through the carnage and grabs Fletcher around the waist, hauls him away, and dumps him on the ice.
Fletcher bounces back up, ignoring the blood streaming down his face.
“You!” He muscles through the Boston players, not even registering when they hit him.
He gets up in Eddie’s face. “You touch any of my teammates or say a goddamn thing about my fucking girlfriend again, and I will kill you. Because guess what?” He gives a mean, bloody smile.
“You’re right. I’m not an NHL player. I’m a goddamn Marine. ”
“Hey!” Harlowe nudges me. “You’re not single anymore! And you thought he didn’t care.”
The ref shoves Fletcher, bleeding and bruised but unapologetic, into the penalty box. Cookie is helped to the bench. He plops down next to Braxton, who is playing his video game.
Granny Murray starts measuring out vodka for Cookie.
“Gran, he can’t have that. He’s a child.”
“He’s eighteen. He’s a grown man.”
Cookie slugs it back then immediately throws up.
There are two minutes left on the clock. The game is tied.
The Boston team is on the power play.
With Fletcher out and Cookie out, we’re down a man because of the penalty. I swap out to more defensive players, but it’s not enough. The Harbor Hawks use the advantage to knife through our line and score on a furious Ren.
The game is tied again.
“We can take them in overtime. Maybe.” I can’t put Cookie back in, though. I’m worried about his leg.
In the penalty box, Fletcher is breathing hard, furious eyes locked on the play, breathing fog and flecks of blood against the glass.
Forty-five seconds to go.
“Go,” I tell Zayne. He jumps over, swapping out with Bramms.
Fletcher readies for the penalty minutes to countdown, up on the balls of his feet, stick raised.
As soon as the ref opens the door, he shoots down the ice.
Zayne already has the shot set up, and the puck hits Fletcher’s stick. He quick-releases it, textbook, through the defenders into the corner of the net.
“Goal!”
“We win! We won!” I scream.
“We’re staying!” Cookie cries.
I hug him.
The players in the box jump over the boards. The Finn politely helps me over to join the crush of players in the middle of the ice as we cheer, throwing gloves and sticks and mouthguards in the air.
“We’re staying!”
“We survived!”
I jump into the fray, breathless, laughing, hugging any player I can get my hands on. “Rhode Islanders for life!” Jonesy hollers. We celebrate like we just won Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, screaming and rolling around on the ice while everyone looks on like we’re insane.
Then suddenly—he’s there.
Fletcher. Standing in front of me in the center of the ice, breathing hard, bloody from the fight. And the stadium, the noise, the chaos—all of it falls away.
“You won,” I whisper, a little breathless, trying not to cry.
He doesn’t even look at the crowd. His eyes are locked on mine, soft now in a way I’ve never seen on the ice. “You won,” he says simply.
The cameras broadcasting the game circle us, but he has eyes only for me. Then he leans down, wraps me in his arms, and kisses me in front of the whole stadium and my family and all the cameras.
“You can’t do—”
He kisses me again.
“If you want me to quit,” he says, “because you refuse to date a player—I will. I’ll walk away right now. I don’t need hockey. I need you. I love you. You got me further than I ever thought I’d go. I can quit. And I’ll be happy.”
I stare up at him, heart slamming against my ribs, throat tight.
I rise onto the tops of his skates so I can kiss him again, wrapping my arms around his neck. “I can’t have you quit and be happy,” I murmur against his mouth, “because at least one of us wants to win a Stanley Cup. I might be the one having to quit my job, though.”
Fletcher smirks. “I wouldn’t count on it. Though the NHL is a big, soulless organization, they have nothing on Dana, who will happily sacrifice her morals for profit.”
The press is waiting when Fletcher grabs my arm to lift me over the lip that leads off the ice.
He is unapologetic when the press demands, “Are you with your coach?”
“I don’t get paid shit,” he says, “so I’m going to sleep with my coach because I’m in love with her.”
“When they’re together, we win,” Jovi says simply when the press hounds him. “You can’t mess with superstition.” He knocks on the side wall.
Ziggy snickers. “It’s like Mom and Dad. She brings the snacks, and he’ll beat you if you step out of line.”
“He gets her pregnant, we’re going for the Stanley Cup,” Carlsson jokes, slapping Fletcher on the back.
“Grandbabies!” my mom squeals from the stands, making me choke on my spit.
The press clamors for quotes. “Are you going to spend Christmas together? What are you getting her for Christmas?”
“An engagement ring, hopefully,” my mom interjects.
“No! Get a hot tub.” My drunk female family members whoop.
“Do not bring a hot tub to my house,” I warn them.
“You live at home, Ellie.”
“Fuck.” I groan.
Fletcher snickers.
“Are you moving into her parents’ house?” Bramms asks him, confused.
“No.” My dad muscles through. “They’re going to date, then they’re going to get married, then they can move in next door to me.”
Fletcher’s eyes narrow.
My dad stares back.
“You, me, Ellie—we’re all gonna be roommates!” Granny Murray throws her arms around me and Fletcher.
“Can I move in with you?” Cookie begs.
“No,” Fletcher barks. Then he kisses me again in front of all the cameras.
“Don’t act so offended,” he tells the press, leveling that cold gray gaze on them. “I’m the captain of the Rhode Islanders. And Dana Holbrook didn’t hire me for my good behavior.”
And in that moment, I got everything I didn’t know I wanted for Christmas.
My team.
My dream.
And him.