Chapter 19
Nineteen
Beckett
In my whole career as a professional hockey player, I’ve never once gotten jitters. Until tonight.
The tunnel smells like cold rubber and ice treatment.
My skin chills, the rink at game temperature.
The sound of cheering echoes off the concrete, the crowds calling.
That used to feed me, set me on fire. I felt like a caged animal on the bench, everything inside me breaking free when I hit the ice.
Not tonight. Tonight, I’m equal parts anxious, afraid, and hopeful.
The blinding lights of the arena pour over me as I emerge from the tunnel. My eyes travel up to the Blue Ox players’ family box.
Empty.
I close my eyes, tempering my disappointment. She didn’t come.
“Come on, Beck,” Wyatt says behind me. He drops a hand on my shoulder as he passes by. “Get in the zone.”
I let out a breath. “Yeah, all right.” I step out onto the ice.
Warm-ups are supposed to be mechanical. Muscle memory on a loop—edges, transitions, shooting practice, keep the body warm and the mind empty. I’ve done these three hundred thousand times. My body knows the sequence the way it knows breathing.
Tonight, every pass up the ice doubles as an excuse to look at the box.
First lap: three women. Some of the Blue Ox girls.
Candy’s girlfriend, Chloe, in her Kane jersey.
Conrad’s girl, Penny, watching with those eagle eyes—the investigative journalist in her catching every move and mistake.
And Coco, Wyatt’s wife, a computer-wizard hacking genius—so I’ve been told. And between them, an empty seat.
Second lap: still empty.
Third: empty.
I peel off toward the net, take a shot from the circle. It goes wide. Tyler retrieves it without comment, which means he’s noticed I’m off and has decided, in the particular mercy of a man who has known me for six years, not to say so yet.
Warm-ups wind down. The lights shift. The pregame hum ascends to a roar.
We line up for the face-off, Tyler takes center. I take my position near the blue line.
The puck drops.
For the first thirty seconds I play clean, disciplined hockey. Feet moving, stick down, head up. Reading the plays the way I’ve read plays since I was eleven years old—not hunting the puck but understanding where it’s going, the geometry that lives between now and two seconds from now.
Their winger cuts wide. I stay with him, mirroring, keeping my body between him and the net.
This is my job. Sure, I score goals—long-range shots—and I’ll join a rush, but my main job is to prevent goals.
(Although, yes, I’m on the points board.
Please.) I am the last line between the puck and Wyatt, and I stop the puck by reading the ice early enough that I’m never late.
Conrad wins possession in the corner and kicks it back to me at the point.
I look up. Quick scan—Vasquez driving the net, defender on his back. Blade streaking down the left side, half a step ahead of his check. The goalie’s cheating right.
I fire low. Hard. Screen pass, not a shot—the kind of point shot that’s meant to be redirected.
Vasquez tips it toward the goal.
It skips wide of the post by eight inches.
Close. Not close enough.
I get back in position. And then—because I’m an idiot—I glance at the box.
Empty.
I’m looking at the box when their center picks off Conrad’s clearing attempt at the red line. I’m looking at the box when he feeds it wide to the winger. I’m looking at the box when the winger cuts inside and the lane I’m supposed to be closing is wide open because I’m not in it.
The shot gets through.
Wyatt stops it—pad hitting the ice, freezing the puck. The whistle blows and I shake it off, trying to pull myself back into the game.
“Benson.” Coach Jacobsen’s voice from the bench. No other words.
I know. I skate to the bench for the line change.
Second shift, I drop onto the ice, head in the game. The box doesn’t exist. There are three periods of hockey to play, and I’m going to play them with my whole brain.
Their top line faces off against ours. Their center is good—likes to work off the half wall. But I’ve spent the last week watching the tape. I know his tendencies the way I know my own.
He sets up left of the circle. I drive him into the corner as he receives the pass, all my weight behind it, and for a few seconds it’s just two men in a wall, battling for the puck, sticks tangled, skates churning for purchase on the ice.
His elbow finds my ribs, mine finds his, and I’ve got sixty pounds on him.
I win it.
Conrad is already coming off the wall. I hit him with a short pass, he pivots, and we’re moving the other way—a clean breakaway, three on two, Vasquez and Candy pushing the wings.
I follow the play up ice, just inside the blue line, controlling the gap. If this breaks down, I need to be back. If it doesn’t—
Candy shoots. Goalie’s glove.
The puck comes back out to the point. To me.
A one-timer.
I wind up before their goalie’s had a chance to reset. The lane is there. I can see it and—and I look at the box.
What? Stop it!
One second. Less than one second.
The lane closes.
I shoot anyway. The goalie gets a piece of it. The puck deflects wide and into the corner, and the chance is gone.
Conrad slides onto the bench beside me at line change, sweat dripping down his temple. He squirts water into his mouth, eyes on the game, and then: “You’re distracted.”
“I’m on it.”
He hands me the water. I don’t look at the box.
Coach waves us in.
“Get it together,” King Con says as he tosses a leg over the boards and hops back on the ice. I follow.
Third shift. I wind up in the penalty box after boarding an opposing winger. Two minutes in the box watching my team try to fight off the power play.
Fourth shift, I get hit back. The boards come up hard.
My shoulder hits the glass, and my helmet cracks back against the boards above the door, and the puck is gone.
I stand against the boards for a second longer than I should, getting my bearings, while their winger celebrates the takeaway and Coach’s clipboard comes down on the bench with a sound like a gavel.
Not a dirty hit. A completely clean, perfectly read check on a distracted defenseman who was not looking at a box seat but maybe thinking about it instead of his zone coverage.
I peel myself off the boards. Shake it out. Skate to the bench.
Coach looks at me for a long, specific second. The look that has been building all period. Then he nods once—we’ll talk later—and turns back to the ice.
I sit.
Conrad chuckles as he takes his seat beside me again. I know what he’s going to say.
“I’ll get it together.”
Conrad raises a brow, smirking. He nods toward the box. “You’d better. Look who showed up.”
I look up.
Four women.
Blue Ox sweater, hair piled in a messy bun that seems to tumble down around her face, eyes searching the ice. Looking for me.
Everly’s gaze finds mine. And I can’t help it, something inside me short-circuits, losing all cool. I wink at her.
“All right, all right, lover boy. Do you think you could play some real hockey for us now?” Con says. “’Cause we’re in.”
EVERLY
I really thought I was going to miss the game.
Frankly, it was a possibility I don’t know how to come to terms with after sitting for the last thirty-seven minutes in a complete traffic standstill on 35E.
All I could think was, greatest romantic moment of my life—Beckett waiting for me to show up—and I’m stuck in traffic.
Ha ha, God. You got me.
For your benefit, let’s replay the quiet unraveling of my heart.
Okay, maybe not so quiet. But there I am, in the car, and I turn on the radio as we inch forward another foot and then go back to a full stop. The announcer’s voice fills the car, and my head drops to the steering wheel.
“—and we are underway here at the Xcel Energy Center, folks. What a night to be a Blue Ox fan—” I turn the volume up, my heart breaking a little.
No, a lot. “—puck drops, and it’s Benson with the first touch!
He feeds it up to Kingston on the right side.
Kingston cycling low, looking for Vasquez—oh, and that’s a clean takeaway by number twenty-two. Vasquez is not happy about that—”
I start to look at the shoulder, wondering what the fine is for driving in the ditch.
“—Blue Ox regroup at the line, Benson back at the point—he fires, Vasquez tips it—oh, just wide, and I mean just, folks. That puck kissed the post on the way by—”
The car in front of me moves four feet. And all I can think is, I should have left yesterday, right after getting his letter.
“—Now here’s something interesting, color me curious, because Benson has been off tonight. Not bad, but there’s a hesitation we don’t usually see from him, a half-beat delay on his reads—you catching that, Dave?”
“Oh, absolutely, Mike. He’s playing like a man with something on his mind. Which, given the week he’s had, is not entirely surprising. The Benson story has been everywhere, the mall incident, the press conference—but on the ice, that’s not somewhere you can afford to be somewhere else mentally.”
“Right, right, and there it is again—oh, and the shot gets through, Wyatt freezes the puck, and Coach Jacobsen is not pleased, you can see it from here. Looks like a shift change.”
I turn the volume up another notch.
Another few minutes pass while my heart thunders in my throat as I listen to the announcers. And all I can think is, Beckett’s off his game, he’s distracted…because he’s looking for me.
“Come on!” Yes, I’m shouting.
“—oh, and Benson is in the box, folks—boarding call, two minutes—and that is a penalty, there’s no disputing it. He drove that winger hard into the boards. Blue Ox are going to have to kill this off—”
“He’s been chippy all period, Mike. Lots of energy looking for somewhere to go.”
“Fair point. Now let’s see if Reyes and Kingston can hold the fort—”