Chapter 36 Atlas #2
Shift over. I hop the boards. Kael claps my shoulder once without looking. Finn bumps my hip. I don’t hear what they say. I hear Wren.
“You’re breathing too fast,” she says, like she doesn’t realize I’m built like a forge.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re always fine,” she says, and there’s something in her voice that makes the fine feel seen. She pops the top on a bottle and hands it up. Our fingers don’t touch. I feel it anyway. “Sip.”
I do because I’m trainable when she tells me to be. The water tastes like plastic and cold. The way her eyes flick to my face to check that my color is coming back tastes like something I shouldn’t try to name in the middle of a game.
We’re protecting a one-goal lead with eight and change.
This is the part where you find out who knows how to be boring.
Boring wins. We push pucks in deep. We eat rims. We flip out to the neutral zone and force them to spend fifteen seconds getting it back so we can spend five taking it away again.
It’s a clinic when it’s ugly and a poem when it works. Tonight it’s both.
They pull the goalie with one-twenty left.
I’m on. Six on five. That’s when the ice starts to feel smaller and bigger at the same time.
Kael points once—where he wants me for the chip if it comes rim-to-wall.
Finn cheats for the empty-net lane but not enough to get burned.
We play rope and anchor. Their best guy gets a look in the slot and whiffs because he’s thinking about how heavy my hit felt seven minutes ago and you can’t shoot when you’re thinking about getting hit.
Fifty-six seconds. Dump. Win one battle.
Lose one. Puck squirts to the blue. I get there first, jelly legs and all, and do the simple thing: toss it out to neutral so their D has to turn and go get it.
The crowd groans because groans don’t know the beauty of simple, and then the groans turn to cheers because Finn picks it off at their line and slides it into the yawning net with one hand like a show-off.
The building goes feral. I don’t smile. I exhale.
Bench mob; gloves slap; horns scream; my chest finally lets the wire go slack. I look left again even though I shouldn’t.
Wren’s laughing.
Not big. Not loud. Enough to make her throw her head a little. Enough to make me believe in stupid things like good nights and luck and doors that open from both sides.
The last twenty seconds are victory math. Kael doesn’t give up a foot. I don’t give up an inch. Finn tries not to chirp in a way that would earn him a handshake line punch. The clock hits zero.
The horn hits me like a wave I’ve been holding my breath under all period. I don’t give into the urge to sprint the bench gate. I take the lap, tap gloves, shake hands where I have to. Then I go.
Wren steps back into the shadow again before I get there. Not hiding. Habit. I put myself in the light again and wait for the noise to drop enough that my voice will reach her without forcing her to meet it.
“You did good,” I say.
Her mouth does the almost-smile it does when she doesn’t know what to do with praise. “You did better.”
Finn blows past, panting, grin big enough to warm a city. He leans his forearms on the boards, helmet askew. “Tell me I’m pretty.”
“You’re insufferable,” I say.
He winks at Wren. “She thinks I’m pretty.”
“Sometimes,” she says, and he clutches his chest like she shot him.
Kael slides in behind them both, not laughing, not scowling, his version of pleased—which is to say the corners of his mouth move one millimeter. “Bus in fifteen,” he says to me, to Finn. To her: “You want a golf cart back to the lot or you walking with us?”
“Walking,” she says.
“Copy.”
We move as a clump through the tunnel—players peeling into the room, staff peeling off to jobs, the air changing from game to aftermath.
I keep Wren between me and the wall because that’s where she likes to be when halls are crowded.
Finn keeps her talking about the stupid play he pulled on that defender in the second because he knows talking raises her head.
Kael keeps an ear on the radio because he likes knowing things before other people do.
At the mouth of the corridor that opens to the concourse, the noise swells again—fans leaving, vendors wheeling away popcorn carts, ushers stacking signs. Kael’s radio hisses. He pauses, listens, nods once.
“Ops swept 118 at the final,” he says. “No cap, no coat, no match. Cameras are being pulled to review before exit release. We’ll get a packet in the morning.”
Wren’s face shifts—relief wanting to be belief and not quite making it. “Okay,” she says.
“Okay,” I echo, meaning it differently: okay I will not sleep; okay I will memorize faces at the lot; okay I will do the small boring things that keep danger away because the big exciting things are just violence with worse odds.
We step out into the concourse river. People flow around us. A teenager in a Reapers jersey sees Finn and yelps; he signs the back with a Sharpie he produces like a magician. Kael thanks an usher by name because he knows those, too. I scan, scan, scan.
At the top of the ramp, Wren looks up—just once, quick—to Section 118. It’s empty now. Seats flipped. A forgotten drink sweating on the concrete. Nothing menacing about vacancy. It still makes my neck itch.
We hit the players’ lot. Security waves us through. Cold air bites the sweat on my neck and makes me feel human again. The bus idles with its lights on; it smells like rubber and leather and a season that’s longer than my patience.
Wren tugs her sweatshirt sleeves over her hands and turns her face to the night like she’s testing if the air will hurt. It doesn’t. She smiles a little to herself.
Finn bumps her shoulder with his. “Steak tips after?” he asks, like it’s a plan and not a wish.
Kael glances at me; my face says don’t leave her out here alone long enough to count it. He nods like I said it. “Yeah,” he answers for all of us. “After we debrief.”
Wren looks between us. “I’m okay.”
“You’re better,” I say, and the way her mouth softens tells me she hears what I mean: better is real. Better counts. Better isn’t alone.
I watch her climb the bus steps and choose a seat near the front where the light is good and the windows show reflections instead of dark. Finn follows, chattering about toe drags to a rookie who wants to be him. Kael lingers at the curb, eyes on the lot, doing his quiet captain math.
He looks at me without turning his head. “You good?”
“No,” I say. “But I’m steady.”
He grunts; that’s yes in Kael. “We’ll pull video tonight.”
“I know.”
He boards. I take one last scan of the lot—cars, faces, shadows that mean nothing—and climb after them.
Inside, Wren’s eyes meet mine for a half-second, and something in me finally settles enough to breathe all the way down. Not victory. Not peace. Just a place to put the part of me that’s been pacing since the second period.
I sit across the aisle and one row back, where she can see me without having to look for me and where I can see the door without having to leave my seat.
The bus lurches. The arena falls away. My heartbeat returns to normal by degrees.
He might have been there. He might not have.
Either way, he didn’t get to take the night.
Not this one.