Chapter 28
LIAM
Win tonight and I'd be a champion.
I woke before Anne, lay in the dark for a while, and let myself feel it — the full weight of what today was.
Not the anxiety, not the game planning, not the shoulder tape checklist. Just the fact of it.
The fact that I was here, in this bed, in this city, with this woman beside me and my son down the hall, and tonight I was going to play for the Stanley Cup.
I got up quietly and made coffee and stood at the kitchen window.
The city was already awake. I could feel it even at this hour — that particular energy that had been building all week, the whole of St. Louis pointed at tonight like a compass finding north.
Car horns already. Someone's stereo. The distant sound of a crowd that hadn't gathered yet but was already on its way.
Finn appeared in the kitchen doorway in his jersey, hair everywhere, completely ready to go.
"It's early," I said.
"I know." He climbed onto a stool at the island. "I couldn't sleep."
"Me neither."
He looked at me with those serious blue eyes. "Are you scared?"
I thought about it. "A little. Are you?"
He considered this with the gravity of a five-year-old taking the question seriously. "A little. But I think you're going to win."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." He nodded once, certain. "Because you always show up when it matters. Mommy says so."
I looked at my son sitting at my kitchen island in his oversized jersey on the morning of the biggest game of my life, telling me I was going to be okay.
I had to look at the ceiling for a moment.
"Come here," I said.
He slid off the stool and I picked him up and held him the way I had that first Saturday in Chicago — both arms, all in, the particular solid weight of him that I still hadn't gotten used to and hoped I never would.
"Whatever happens tonight," I said, "I love you. Okay? Win or lose."
"I know, Daddy." He patted my back like he was the one doing the reassuring. "But you're going to win."
Morning skate was short and focused.
Coach gathered us at center ice at the end.
"I'm not going to give you a speech," he said. "You've earned the right to be here. You know what to do. Play your game, trust each other, and bring that Cup home." He looked around the group. "That's it. Let's go."
Sticks tapped the ice.
We went.
Anne worked my shoulder in the apartment.
The tape went on in the careful strips she'd been applying since Dallas — supporting the AC joint, no restriction on range of motion. Her hands knew this shoulder the way she knew everything she'd committed herself to: completely, without shortcuts.
"How does it feel?" she asked.
"Strong."
"Any tightness on the wind-up?"
"No."
She smoothed the last strip flat and stepped back. "Good. You're ready."
I caught her hand before she could move away.
She looked up at me.
There were things I wanted to say — about the season, about her, about what it had meant to have her here through all of it. But words felt insufficient and we were both operating on a frequency that didn't need them right now.
So I just held her hand for a moment.
She squeezed back.
That was enough.
My parents arrived in the afternoon.
My mom walked through the door and went straight to Finn, who received this with the practiced ease of a child who had gotten used to being loved by grandparents.
My dad found me in the kitchen.
He didn't say much. Just put his hand on my shoulder — the good one — and looked at me with the expression he'd had at every important moment of my life. The one that said: I see you. I'm here. I'm proud.
"Ready?" he said.
"Yeah."
"We'll be there. Right behind the bench."
"I know."
He hugged me once, brief and solid.
"Go make history," he said.
I left for the arena.
The drive through the city was surreal — flags on every building, jerseys on every street corner, the whole of St. Louis wearing its heart on its sleeve in the way it only did when something mattered completely.
In the locker room I went through my ritual. Shoulder wrap. Ankle. Stick tape. Jersey.
Number 17.
I smoothed it down and thought about a drawing in crayon. A hockey player with the number carefully written on the jersey by a five-year-old who'd been drawing his father long before he met him.
That drawing was on our refrigerator.
Tonight I was going to earn it.
Carter sat down beside me. "You good?"
"Yeah."
"How's the shoulder?"
"Anne's work. It'll hold."
He was quiet for a moment. "Last time we're doing this, you know. As teammates without a Cup."
"Next time we do it we'll have one."
He grinned. "That's the right answer."
He stood, tapped my shoulder pad, and moved to his own stall.
I closed my eyes.
For Finn. For Anne. For everyone in that building who believed when it was hard to believe.
The arena was unlike anything I'd experienced in twenty years of hockey.
Eighteen thousand people who had been waiting all season for this exact moment, all of them on their feet before we even hit the ice, the noise hitting like a physical thing when we came through the tunnel.
I skated out and looked up at the family section.
Anne. Finn. Jess. Justin. My parents. All of them in Blaze jerseys, all of them already screaming.
Finn was jumping up and down with his fists in the air.
I tapped the glass.
He pressed both hands flat against it from the other side.
I held mine up to meet his.
One second.
Then I skated to the blue line for warmups and put everything else away.
First period.
Both teams cautious, feeling the weight of the moment. Carolina had been here before — young and loose and dangerous — and they weren't going to fold just because the city was shaking.
Neither were we.
Carter scored first. Slot, one-timer, the play we'd been running since October. The building detonated.
Carolina answered. Deflection off our defenseman. 1-1.
We went to the second tied.
Second period.
Power play. My spot at the half-wall.
The puck moved — point to point, back to Carter, to me.
I loaded up.
The lane was there. The goalie had his weight on his left. The glove side was half an inch open, which was all I needed.
I fired.
Bar down.
2-1.
I pointed to the family section before I even finished my follow-through. I saw Anne on her feet. Saw Finn — both arms up, mouth open in a scream I couldn't hear but felt.
I turned back to center ice.
One more period.
Third period was the longest twenty minutes of my life.
Carolina pressed. They were a good team and they were not going to let this go without a fight. Shots from everywhere. Scrambles in front of our net. Our goalie making saves that I'd be watching on replays for the rest of my life.
We held.
With ten minutes left, Jensen got loose on a breakaway and buried it.
3-1.
The building was shaking.
Carolina pulled their goalie late. Threw everything. Our defense blocked shots, sacrificed bodies, gave everything they had left.
The clock ticked.
Two minutes.
One minute.
I was on the ice for the final shift.
Thirty seconds.
I looked up at the family section one more time.
Finn had stopped jumping. He was completely still, both hands pressed against the glass, watching.
Watching me.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
The crowd counting down together.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
The buzzer.
The sound that came from eighteen thousand people at that moment was something I will never be able to describe to anyone who wasn't in that building.
I dropped to my knees on the ice.
We'd done it.
The St. Louis Blaze were Stanley Cup Champions.
Everything happened at once and also in slow motion.
Sticks flying. Helmets thrown. Guys piling on our goalie, then on each other, then on anyone within reach. Carter found me and we crashed together and held on, both of us saying things that made no sense.
The Cup came onto the ice.
Our captain lifted it first, skating a lap with it over his head, the crowd noise going to a register I didn't know existed.
Then it moved down the line.
Carter lifted it. Jensen. The defensemen. Our goalie.
And then it was in my hands.
Heavier than I remembered from the times I'd held it at charity events. Real in a way those times hadn't been. I raised it over my head and skated, the crowd screaming my name, and I thought: this is real, this is actually real, we actually did this.
I skated to the boards.
Anne was there, holding Finn, and security opened the gate.
Finn came onto the ice in his sneakers, slipping immediately, grabbing my arm.
I put him up on my shoulders — still holding the Cup with one hand, his weight balanced above me — and skated a slow lap.
He was screaming something. I couldn't hear it over the noise. It didn't matter. I understood every word.
The cameras found us and stayed.
A man and his son and the Stanley Cup.
I would find out later that it was the photograph on the front page of every sports section in the country the next morning.
Right now I just skated, my son on my shoulders, the Cup in my hand, the city losing its mind around us.
They pulled me aside for the post-game interview while the celebration was still full chaos on the ice.
"Liam O'Connell. Stanley Cup Champion. What are you feeling right now?"
I looked at the reporter. Looked at the Cup sitting on the ice beside me. Looked up at the family section where Anne was standing with my parents, her hand over her mouth, tears streaming.
"I don't have words," I said honestly. "This team — these guys fought back from 0-2 in the second round, we went to Game 7, and then we came here and did this. I'm so proud to be part of this group."
"Your son was on the ice with you just now. What does that mean to you?"
I looked over at Finn, who was crouched on the ice touching the Cup with one careful finger like it might disappear if he pressed too hard.
"Everything," I said. "He's been in the stands all playoffs believing we were going to win this. Kid never doubted for a second." My voice went rough. "This one's for him. Everything this season has been for him."
"Congratulations, Liam. Stanley Cup Champion."
I shook the reporter's hand and went back to my son.
The locker room was champagne and music and the specific chaos of twenty men who had just achieved the thing they'd been working toward their entire lives.
Coach let it go for a while.
Then he turned off the music.
The room went quiet.
"I'm proud of every single one of you," he said.
"This wasn't supposed to happen. Nobody picked us.
Nobody gave us a chance after Game 2 against Colorado.
" He looked around. "You earned this. Every shift, every blocked shot, every morning skate in December when it would have been easier to stay in bed.
You earned it." He paused. "Now go celebrate with your families. You deserve every minute of it."
The music came back on louder than before.
I found Anne outside.
She walked straight into me without saying anything, and I held her with both arms, champagne still dripping from my hair, and neither of us spoke for a moment.
"We did it," I said finally.
"You did it." She pulled back. Her eyes were still wet. "Liam. You did it."
My mom appeared and pulled me into a hug, and my dad shook my hand and then abandoned the handshake for something that was much more obviously a hug, and Finn was somewhere in the middle of all of it demanding to know when he could touch the Cup again.
Carter emerged from the crowd and went directly to Jess.
He said something I couldn't hear.
She laughed and shook her head.
He said something else.
She stopped laughing and looked at him.
Then she said something back.
Whatever it was, Carter's whole face changed.
Anne squeezed my arm. "Did you see that?"
"I saw."
"What do you think he said?"
"I have no idea. But I think it worked."
My parents took both boys for the night — Finn going with them in the full confidence of a child who had no concerns about this arrangement, the Cup replica tucked under his arm.
And then it was just us.
We went to dinner — me, Anne, Carter, Jess. The best restaurant still open, champagne that cost more than my first car, all four of us still running on the particular high of a night that nothing could have prepared us for.
Carter and Jess sat close together and talked the way people talked when they were already deciding something.
Anne watched them with the expression of someone who had arranged exactly this without technically arranging anything.
"You're very pleased with yourself," I said quietly.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
We got home late.
The apartment was quiet — my parents had the boys, the city was still celebrating somewhere in the distance, and here it was just us.
I closed the door.
Anne turned to look at me.
"Stanley Cup Champion," she said.
"Stanley Cup Champion."
She crossed the room and kissed me — slow and certain, both hands on my face — and I kissed her back the same way and thought about everything this year had been.
The injury and the training room and the almost-kiss and the reveal and Chicago and the playoffs and all the impossible things that had somehow become the life I was actually living.
We made our way to the bedroom.
I laid her down and took my time — properly, thoroughly, no shoulder tape to worry about for the first time in months, nowhere to be, no early skate, no game tape.
Just her.
Just this.
Just the two of us on the other side of everything.
She was beautiful in the low light, and I told her so, and she pulled me down and said she loved me, and I said it back, and we found each other slowly and stayed there for a long time.
Afterward, in the dark, she rested her head on my chest.
"I have something to say," I said.
She lifted her head.
"Not tonight," I said. "I'll say it properly. When the time is right." I looked at her. "But I want you to know it's coming."
She studied my face.
Something shifted in her expression — understanding, and then something softer than that.
"Okay," she said quietly.
"Okay."
She lay back down.
I held her close and stared at the ceiling and thought about a small box I'd been carrying in my jacket pocket for two weeks, waiting for the right moment.
The right moment was coming.
But tonight — tonight was already everything.