Chapter 24
twenty-four
MAINE
The fluorescent lights in the locker room feel like spotlights burning into my retinas.
My hands won’t stop shaking as I tape my stick, a routine that should be automatic.
But my mind is swimming with those three words that changed everything, and the fact that I choked on my response like a fucking coward.
I need you.
The words echo in my skull, bouncing around with all the things I didn’t say back. Couldn’t say back. Because how do you tell someone you love them when you’re actively lying to their face and your teammates have money riding on whether you can make her fall for you or not?
When the whole thing started as a bet you can’t afford to lose but now can’t bear to win?
“You good?” Mike’s voice cuts through my spiral, and I look up to find him watching me with a concerned expression.
“Never better,” I force out, flashing the signature grin that feels like wearing a Halloween mask made of broken glass.
Around me, the team goes through their pre-game rituals. Schmidt meticulously arranges his gear. Kellerman bounces nervously on his toes. Cooper sits motionless, staring at nothing, probably running chemical equations in his head or whatever the fuck he does to stay so eerily calm.
And I’m sitting here feeling like my chest cavity has been scooped out.
The memory of Maya’s body pressed against mine last night won’t leave me alone.
The way she looked at me with those dark eyes full of trust and something deeper, something that made me want to confess how completely fucking gone I am for her.
But instead, I kept my mouth shut and kicked the can again.
“Let’s go, boys!” Coach Pearson’s voice booms through the locker room. “This is our house! Our ice! Let’s show them what Pine Barren hockey feels like!”
The team erupts in their usual pre-game roar, and I join in because that’s what I do. I’m the loud one. The performer. The guy who gets everyone pumped up. But the sound that comes out of my throat feels hollow, like an echo in an empty room.
We file out toward the tunnel, every step feeling like walking toward my own execution. Because I know she’s out there, sitting in the stands with Sophie, expecting to see the Maine Show—the star left-wing, the clutch player, the guy who thrives under pressure.
What she’s about to see is the truth.
I’m a desperate, hopelessly in love fool with no way out of a self-made prison.
The roar hits us the second we step onto the ice. Thousands on their feet, screaming our names, waving signs, believing in us and believing in me. It should give me a rush and help clear my head, but it just makes the weight on my shoulders feel even heavier.
I go through the warm-up motions—stretches, passes, shots—but my body feels disconnected from my brain.
Every movement is just slightly off, like I’m operating myself with an Xbox controller with input lag.
I fire a practice shot that goes wide by three feet, and Rook gives me a look from his crease.
“The fuck was that?” he calls out, with that usual joking tone.
“Just giving you false confidence,” I shoot back, but the words taste like ash.
That’s when I make the mistake of looking up at the stands.
She’s there, leaning forward, eyes locked on me. Third row behind our bench, wearing… shit… she’s wearing one of my old Pine Barren Hockey hoodies, because of course she doesn’t have any of her own team gear. The realization, on top of her words last night, is like a punch to the gut.
She came, and she’s decked herself out, possessively, in something that’s mine .
And I couldn’t even manage a few simple words in return.
I need you too.
They’re right there, lodged in my throat like a hockey puck, choking me.
The warm-up ends, and we head back to the bench for final instructions.
Coach is saying something about their defensive scheme, about keeping our heads up in the neutral zone, but his voice sounds like it’s coming through water.
All I can focus on is the weight of Maya’s gaze, the expectation in it.
Christ, what have I done?
I take the ice.
The puck drops.
And everything goes to shit.
Schmidt wins the faceoff and passes my way, but the puck bounces off like my stick is made of fucking rubber. It’s a simple receive, something I’ve done ten thousand times, but my hands aren’t working right. They’re too tight, too tense, operating on a half-second delay.
The opposing defender scoops up the loose puck and they’re off on a rush, even as I’m backchecking, trying to make up for the turnover. But by the time I catch up to the play, they’ve already gotten a shot off. Rook makes the save, but the rebound goes right to their forward.
Goal.
Thirty seconds in, and I’ve already gift-wrapped them a goal.
The crowd’s roar turns to groans, that particular sound of disappointment that feels like fingernails on my soul.
I skate to the bench for the line change, and Coach doesn’t even look at me, the guy who’s usually supportive of everyone just looking disappointed.
And that’s worse than getting screamed at.
“Shake it off,” Mike mutters as he hops over the boards for his shift. “Fluke.”
But it’s not a fluke.
It’s just the beginning.
The next shift, I’m in perfect position for a one-timer from the point. The pass is perfect, right on my tape. This is my shot, the one I’ve scored on fifty times. I wind up, visualizing the top corner, and completely screw it up. Not just miss—I don’t even contact the puck.
The crowd goes silent. That awful, suffocating silence that’s worse than boos.
I can feel my teammates’ eyes on me. Feel their confusion, their concern, and their growing frustration. But worse than all of that is knowing Maya is watching this disaster unfold. Watching me reveal myself as the absolute mess I’ve been hiding behind jokes and charm and borrowed confidence.
Third shift. I’m trying too hard now, gripping my stick like I’m trying to strangle it. Their defender steps up at the blue line and I try to deke around him, but my edges catch wrong, my ankle rolls, and I go down like I’ve been shot. The puck squirts free and they’re off on another odd-man rush.
This time when they score, I’m still on my ass at center ice.
Coach calls for a line change. I pick myself up, each movement feeling like it’s being broadcast in slow-motion on the Jumbotron. The skate to the bench is excruciating. I can hear the murmur of the crowd, that low rumble of confused disappointment. I overhear someone asking what’s wrong with me.
Everything. Everything is wrong with me.
I collapse onto the bench, trying to shrink into my gear, to become invisible. But there’s no hiding from this. No joke to deflect with, no charm to smooth it over. This is me, stripped of all pretense, failing at the one thing I’m supposed to be good at.
“Hamilton!” Coach’s voice cuts through my spiral. “You hurt?”
I shake my head because what am I supposed to say?
That I’m fine physically but shattered mentally?
That I can’t stop thinking about the girl in the stands and the money I owe but can’t afford if I say the words I desperately want to say?
That being honest about having deceived her would be just as bad?
“Then get your head in the game!” he barks before turning back to the ice.
I risk another glance up at Maya. She’s leaning toward Sophie, who’s obviously explaining something, probably why the player she came to watch is playing like he’s never seen ice before.
Maya’s brow is furrowed, that little crease between her eyebrows that appears when she’s trying to figure something out.
Please don’t figure this out. Please don’t see what a fraud I am.
Fourth shift. Coach must be giving me a chance at redemption because he puts me out on the power play.
But it’s no good. The puck comes around the boards to me in the corner.
I’ve got time, space, and options. Mike is open in the slot.
I have three different plays I could make, all of them good ones.
Instead, I try to force something that isn’t there.
The puck gets intercepted easily.
The guy dekes Rook out of his jockstrap and scores.
They scored a short-handed goal, on our power play, and I directly caused it. As the visitors celebrate, the arena erupts in boos. Not disappointed silence, not frustrated murmurs, but actual vocal boos. They’re booing me, and I’ve never felt smaller in my entire life.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Rook shouts from his crease, his voice carrying over the crowd noise. He’s pissed at me, and has cause. “What are you doing out there?”
I don’t have an answer. I can’t tell him that every time I touch the puck, I think about Maya watching. That every mistake feels like confirmation of what I’ve always feared—that without the performance, without the jokes and the charm, I’m just a guy who can’t deliver when it matters.
The period mercifully ends with us down 3-0. All three my fault.
The walk to the locker room is a death march. My teammates give me a wide berth, like failure might be contagious. I can hear the crowd buzzing, probably discussing whether I’m drunk or high or just having the worst game of my until now pretty solid collegiate career.
Spoiler alert: it’s the third one, and it’s about to get worse.
In the locker room, Coach’s face is the color of a ripe tomato. He’s trying to contain himself, to be strategic rather than emotional, but I can see the effort it’s taking. And that tells me plenty, because Coach Pearson isn’t usually the get-on-your-ass type.
“Hamilton,” he says, his voice deadly quiet. “I don’t know what’s going on with you tonight, but you need to pull your head out of your ass. This is embarrassing.”
Every word lands like a slap, and all I can manage in response is a small nod and a mumbled apology. “Sorry, Coach,” I say.
“I don’t want sorry,” he snaps. “I want you to play like you give a shit. Can you do that?”
I nod, and he moves on, but his words hang over me like a death sentence even as I take the ice for the second period.
I tell myself it’ll be different. I compartmentalize, lock away thoughts of Maya and the bet, and focus on the ice.
For about thirty seconds, it works. I make a clean pass, start to feel like myself…
Then I catch a glimpse of her in my peripheral vision…
The puck is on my stick in the offensive zone. I’ve got space to work with. I could make the safe play, cycle it to the corner, and maintain possession. But I’m desperate now, desperate to prove I’m not a complete fuck-up, desperate to be the player she came to see.
Desperate to give her something when I can’t give her those words.
So I try to split the defense, to make the highlight-reel play that’ll erase all my mistakes. I push forward, threading between two defenders, and for a second I think I’ve got it. Then their third defender steps up, catches me with my head down, and absolutely destroys me.
It’s a clean hit, but it sends me cartwheeling to the ice.
I land hard, my helmet bouncing off the ice, stars exploding across my vision.
The crowd makes that collective “ooh” sound that accompanies particularly brutal hits, the kind everyone says they’re concerned about removing from the game but secretly love.
I lie there for a moment, not because I’m hurt—though my bell is definitely rung—but because I don’t want to get up. I want the ice to open up and swallow me whole. Take me down to whatever hockey hell exists for players who forget how to play.
“Are you OK?” The referee is leaning over me, concern on his face.
I wave him off and struggle to my feet. The crowd gives me a pity applause, that patronizing clap they give when someone manages to leave under their own power, and I make it to the bench just as Coach is about to send someone over the boards in my place.
“You’re done,” he says, not even looking at me.
“Coach, I?—“
“You’re done. Sit your ass down until the game is over.”
The finality in his voice is absolute.
I’m being benched.
The ultimate humiliation for a player of my caliber.