56 - Haven
HAVEN
The house was already shaking by the time I got there.
Not metaphorically.
Actually shaking.
Bass thumped through the floorboards, rattling the crooked picture frames in the hallway and making the loose stair rail hum like it might finally give up and collapse under the weight of it all.
Voices layered over voices — shouting, laughing, someone absolutely butchering the lyrics to a song that was loud and fast and completely unrecognizable.
The Reavers didn’t just celebrate. They took over.
And tonight?
They’d earned it.
I stepped inside and immediately got swallowed whole.
“MAXWELL!”
I didn’t even see who it was before a beer got shoved into my hand, and someone spun me halfway around. Jackson — right, that was Jackson — grinning like he’d just personally scored all three goals.
“You see that last play?” he shouted over the music.
“I was there,” I shot back.
“Yeah, but did you see it?” he laughed, already turning to yell at someone else.
I barely had time to answer before Riley clapped a hand on my shoulder. Boone right behind him, shaking his head like he still couldn’t believe it.
“Kid fed him that pass like he was reading from a script,” Boone muttered. “Didn’t even look surprised.”
“That’s because he wasn’t,” I said, before I could stop myself.
Boone’s eyes shifted to mine, assessing me almost exactly like he had in the grocery store. Then he nodded once.
“Yeah,” he said. “I believe that.”
It came back to me in flashes. The locker room. The noise, the heat, the way everything felt way too big to fit inside those walls.
Sticks slamming against the floor, shoulder pads getting thrown. Sebastian laughing like he’d just robbed a bank and gotten away with it, as Ares paced — high on adrenaline — like he still had hits to give.
And Grayson—
Steady. Introspective.
Like the game hadn’t so much ended, as shifted into something else.
He’d seen it. The change in Carter Sutherland. The distraction. The way their goalie had taken himself out of the game before the first puck even dropped.
This was the one piece he didn’t have. The only part he couldn’t control.
The part I did.
He didn’t know it yet. I hadn’t told him.
I would.
Just not tonight.
Right now it was time to celebrate, and the whole house knew it.
The living room was a full-blown war zone of empty cans, half-eaten food, and bodies packed too close together to make sense.
Music blasted from multiple directions at once.
The couch had been pushed into the hallway to create an impromptu dance floor, and someone had set Sir-Cleans-a-Lot in the middle of it, spinning in circles while draped with a Reavers jersey.
Zack was at the center of everything. As usual.
“IT WAS ALL PART OF THE PLAN!” he was yelling, arms wide, like he was about to take credit for the entire season.
“You didn’t even touch the puck in the first period!” someone shouted back.
“DECOY!” Zack fired back instantly.
Sebastian spit beer from his nose, laughing, and Sir-Cleans-a-Lot spun right over it, dragging the jersey with him. Ares just shook his head, one corner of his mouth twitching like he was trying — and failing — not to smile.
Grayson stood behind me, dangerously close, fighting the urge to slip his arm around my waist. I knew because he’d leaned in and told me as much, in the short silence between songs.
“You started this,” I called back over my shoulder, as he leaned in.
“Started what?”
I gestured vaguely to the chaos around us. “This.”
He glanced once around the room, then back at me.
“No,” he said. “They did.”
A beat. Then—
“I just stopped getting in the way.”
He couldn’t see the smile I had, but it stretched from ear to ear. I felt warm inside. Fuzzy…
A sudden bang on the front door caused everyone to turn. The music cut out so suddenly, it was like someone had yanked all the air from the room.
And then suddenly there he was.
Mercer.
Standing just inside the doorway, like he’d been there the whole time.
Nobody spoke. Even Sir-Cleans-a-Lot, caught up in his jersey, beeped twice and stopped spinning.
The coach stepped forward with slow, measured steps. His eyes moved across the house, scanning everything like he was taking inventory.
Jackson straightened. Caleb dropped his drink hand to his side for the first time all night. Even Zack lowered his arms, like he suddenly remembered he was, in fact, on a professional hockey team.
Mercer stopped somewhere near the center of the crowd. He looked around once more.
Then—
“You’re in the playoffs,” he said, matter-of-factly.
That was it.
The silence shattered like glass.
A roar went up, louder than anything I’d ever heard, even at the rink, even when I was playing myself. Mercer didn’t react. He didn’t smile. He didn’t even blink.
“Enjoy it,” he added over the noise. “Tonight.”
Another beat.
“Then we get back to work.”
He turned to leave, paused, then reached out and snatched a whiskey glass straight out of Boone’s hand, without so much as a glance—
And knocked it back in one smooth motion.
Mercer didn’t say anything. He just handed the glass back and walked out.
The door shut behind him.
Silence hung there for half a second. All eyes were on Boone, who was now looking down into his empty glass.
“Did that just happen?” he asked.
And the house absolutely lost it.
The music slammed back on, louder than before, and the walls began vibrating again. This time, it felt like the house itself had decided to celebrate.
I laughed without meaning to, caught up in it, in them, in everything that had been building for weeks. All of it finally breaking loose at once.
This.
This is what it felt like.
To finally belong.
The revelry rolled on for a long time before it eventually slowed down. At some point, the edges softened. The noise blurred into something warmer, easier, and the sharp edge of unspent adrenaline smoothed into something mellow.
I didn’t realize I’d been pulled toward the back of the house until the music dulled behind us. Ares led the way. Sebastian was right behind him, still grinning, still riding the high he’d been on since the second period.
Grayson walked beside me, close enough to feel. We reached the back porch, where a few guys were already milling around.
It was quieter out here. More contained. Like this was where the real conversations happened.
The truest moments.
Dorian had his hand on the hot house door. He stopped, turned, and looked back at me.
“You ever been in?” he asked.
I almost laughed. It took every ounce of willpower not to glance over at Ares, or Grayson, or Sebastian.
“No,” I lied through my teeth. “It’s player only.”
The group standing around the door looked at each other for a long moment. Caleb. Asher. Zack.
“No, Maxwell,” Dorian shook his head. “It’s team only.”
He swung open the door. A blast of heat flowed out, hitting us like a punch.
“And you’re a Reaver.”
A warm rush flooded my chest, growing into a fierce, aching pride. They were all watching me now. Waiting, but not pushing.
Leaving a space open… just for me.
I looked at the door.
At them.
At everything this had become.
Then I reached down, grabbed one of the towels folded on the bench—
— and stepped forward without hesitation.