Chapter Twenty-Five The Kingsmen
HADLEY
The game is aggressive from the second the puck drops.
The Kingsmen come out hard and fast, like they’ve spent the entire offseason stewing over the last two years.
Hits slam into the boards hard enough to rattle the glass in front of us, the sound sharp and violent through the arena.
Their passes are tighter than I remember, cleaner too, and there’s a recklessness underneath it all that makes the entire rink feel tense.
Like one wrong move could turn the game into a fight. Julian and the guys aren’t the type of team to lead with violence, but they’re not afraid to get rough when necessary. It doesn’t seem like the Kingsmen are the same. They’re not just playing to win…they’re out for blood.
“They picked up new players,” Grace mutters beside me, leaning forward in her seat. “Look at that line.”
I follow her gaze. Two players cut across the ice together, moving almost perfectly in sync. One drives forward aggressively. The other hangs back just enough to anticipate the next move before it happens. They don’t even need to look at each other.
“They’re the Winthrop twins,” Grace explains. “Ledger and Asher. Got recruited together from Toronto, and there’s been a crazy amount of buzz about them.”
“Are they really that good?” Sutton asks, glancing over.
“On the ice? Vicious,” Rylee says, nodding.
“Off the ice? They’re a public relations nightmare.
ICON has been practically begging them for a cover feature for The Athlete’s Edit for months, and they keep denying us.
They deny everyone. Apparently, they've shot down massive modeling contracts too, which is a tragedy because, honestly? They are staggeringly gorgeous in a dark, brooding, villainous sort of way.” Rylee shrugs, flashing a loyal smile.
“I mean, obviously they don’t hold a candle to Zander, but still. The league is obsessed with them.”
I can understand why.
The Kingsmen used to rely heavily on their captain and goalie, Riot Forbes, to carry games when things got tight, but now, the twins add speed and aggression in a way that changes the entire rhythm of the team.
They push the pace constantly, forcing pressure every time the Night Hawks touch the puck.
The first hit of the game comes less than two minutes in.
Ledger drives Jensen hard into the boards near center ice, and the crowd erupts into a deafening mix of booing and cheering.
Jensen shoves back, but the refs step in before it escalates.
“Jesus,” Grace mutters.
“Right?” Skyler chips in, adjusting her glasses with a look of professional appreciation. “Pretty sure Ledger just hit him with a fully charged heavy attack. If Jensen had a health bar floating over his head right now, it would be blinking red, and a disembodied voice would be yelling, Finish him.”
The Night Hawks don’t lose structure, thankfully. Even when the Kingsmen try to drag things into chaos, the Night Hawks stay controlled. They reset quickly, communicate constantly, and shift together across the ice like a unit.
Still, the Kingsmen keep pushing. Every possession turns into a battle. Every shot is contested, and every clean play challenged before it can fully develop.
Julian is different tonight, too. I notice it right away. He’s as sharp and focused as ever, but there’s something unusually restless in the way he moves. His skating is more aggressive. Every shift feels like he’s one step away from losing control of himself.
And he also keeps looking at me.
The first time happens midway through the opening period after a whistle stops play near center ice. He skates backward toward the bench, pulling his helmet off just enough to drag a hand through damp hair. His eyes lift straight to me.
Even from a distance, I see the shift in his expression. His jaw tightens, and his gaze darkens.
A prickle of anxiety rears its head in my mind. Did I do something wrong? Is he overwhelmed? Is he upset that I wore his jersey? Or came to the game at all?
But even as those worried thoughts swirl, my body betrays me.
A sudden, deep wave of heat floods straight down to my core, leaving me breathless.
I clutch the fabric of my coat in my lap, utterly baffled by what is happening to me.
Why can’t I seem to control the way my body reacts around him?
It defies all logic. Even when I’m terrified that he might be upset with me, a secret, rebellious part of me just wants more.
More of the heat. More of him looking at me like I'm the only person there.
He looks away after only two seconds, skating toward the bench to rotate out.
“Oh my God,” Grace whispers beside me, following the direction of his stare. She has her phone raised, recording video content for the team’s official social media accounts, and she leans slightly past the edge of the boards to get a clearer, unobstructed shot of the bench. “Hadley. Look at him.”
“What?” I ask.
“He looks like he wants to kill someone,” Grace murmurs, keeping her lens locked tight on number eighteen. “No, seriously. That man is having a full-blown crisis right now.”
My stomach completely plummets. I stare through the glass, my pulse racing. A heavy wave of guilt washes over me.
“Oh no,” I breathe, turning frantically toward the girls. “You really think he’s mad? I didn't want him to be upset. What if I'm distracting him? I don't want him playing badly or getting hurt because of me and this jersey.”
Skyler lets out a dry, low chuckle from my other side, adjusting her glasses as she watches Julian’s rigid posture on the screen of Grace's phone.
“Girl,” Skyler drawls, a knowing smirk playing on her lips. “'Mad' is definitely not the word I would use for the way he's looking at you.”
Biting my lip as I think over what Skyler means, I watch as Julian steps back onto the ice and immediately steals the puck near the blue line before driving hard into the offensive zone.
One of the Kingsmen players tries to cut him off, and Julian shoulders past him hard enough that the crowd reacts instantly.
The Kingsmen push back harder after that.
The twins are relentless, creating openings where there shouldn’t be any, forcing the Night Hawks defense to collapse tighter around the net. Their captain scores late in the first period after a brutal rebound scramble in front of the crease.
The arena explodes and the Kingsmen bench slams against the boards in celebration.
For the first time all night, the Night Hawks look briefly shaken.
The second period is worse and much more physical. It is brutal, suffocatingly physical, and the ice feels less like a hockey rink and more like a battleground.
“Jesus, Zander is completely seeing red,” Rylee mutters, tracking her husband as he shoves a Kingsmen forward away from the crease. “I haven't seen him this pissed off since…damn, I don’t know when.”
“Jensen too,” Grace adds, her knuckles white as she grips her phone. “He’s skating like he wants to tear someone apart.”
The refs start calling more and more penalties, trying to rein all the players in, but the teams shove each other after whistles, tempers snapping and flaring.
Julian switches out again with Theo, who throws himself into the fray without hesitation.
Then, right in front of our section of the glass, the line crosses.
Theo is skating hard after a loose puck when Asher Winthrop delivers a vicious, blind-sided hit from behind, sending the rookie crashing face-first into the boards.
An illegal check. Cruel and entirely uncalled for.
Theo snaps, pushing himself up and dropping one of his gloves, ready to throw down right there. Before a full fight can break out, Theo is called back to the bench, and Julian goes back out.
Halfway through the second, he scores.
The entire sequence happens so fast, I almost miss part of it. Jensen steals the puck along the boards and flips it across the ice to Owen, who redirects it immediately toward center. Julian catches it without breaking stride and finds himself one-on-one with the defenseman.
He fakes left, cuts right, and then snaps the puck toward the net with all his considerable strength.
Riot Forbes reacts with inhuman, lightning-fast speed, his glove flashing out to steal the goal. The puck deflects off the very edge of his leather mitt with a sharp clack, but the sheer velocity of Julian's shot carries it past, sending it tucking right into the top shelf of the net.
The red light flashes and the arena erupts.
“Holy shit,” Skyler breathes, leaning forward with wide eyes as the replay flashes across the jumbotron. “I don't think I've ever seen a goalie as good as Carson before tonight, but Riot almost had that. I didn't even see the puck, and he still managed to get a piece of it.”
Julian doesn’t seem to pay attention to any of it as he looks back up at me. His chest rises hard as he stares up into the stands, eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that almost makes me forget how to breathe.
For the past two periods, his dark expressions have made me panic.
I’ve spent the whole night worrying that he was angry with me, or that I was ruining his game, or that I was causing a dangerous distraction.
But thinking about Skyler’s comment and looking at him now, with the arena screaming around us and the red goal light still reflecting in his eyes, the truth finally hits me.
He isn't angry at all. He never was.
It’s just intensity. An overwhelming intensity directed entirely at me.
Heat curls low in my belly.
The game ties again before the end of the period with the Kingsmen refusing to back down. The twins keep creating problems every shift they’re on the ice, and even Grandpa looks more tense than usual behind the bench.
But by the time third starts, our guys seem to have pulled it together. Their passing sharpens again, and communication picks up. Their defensive coverage closes faster, and they stop reacting emotionally and start forcing the Kingsmen into mistakes instead. That’s when the momentum shifts.
Zander scores first off a rebound scramble that sends the Night Hawks bench into chaos.
Then late in the third, Julian assists on another goal after fighting the puck free along the boards despite the twins trying to pin him there.
The Kingsmen get desperate after that, which makes them even more aggressive.
A fight nearly breaks out with less than three minutes left after Owen takes a late hit near the net.
Instantly, players from both teams crowd together into a chaotic mass of navy and crimson. Julian gets right into the middle of it, dropping his stick and grabbing a Kingsmen jersey by the collar. For a second, his face is twisted in pure fury, and he looks genuinely ready to swing.
But the Kingsmen don't back down and swarm like a pack of wolves.
Ledger and Asher Winthrop dive into the melee together with terrifying, synchronized speed, their dark eyes flashing as they shove Julian back.
Riot Forbes skates straight out of his net, throwing his massive frame right into the center of the pileup, his blockers raised as he locks eyes with Julian.
The referees struggle frantically, throwing themselves between the giants and screaming into their whistles.
Thankfully, Julian manages to pull back before a glove is fully dropped.
The refs finally manage to tear the teams apart, but the lethal energy radiating from the Kingsmen trio leaves the entire arena breathless.
The final buzzer sounds not long after, and the Night Hawks win. It’s by the skin of their teeth. The team spills over the boards, exhausted and adrenaline-high as the crowd roars around them.
“Whoooo, that was crazy!” Grace shouts over the deafening noise, dropping her phone into her lap as she lets out a massive breath she looks like she’s been holding all period.
She watches the two teams glance back at each other with lingering, tense glares before heading to their locker rooms. “I think we just saw the start of a huge new rivalry. This season is going to be a bloodbath.”
Before he skates off the ice toward the tunnel, Julian looks up at me once more.
The intense heat of his gaze is completely overwhelming, sending a frantic flutter straight through my chest, but this time, I don’t look away.
Catching his eye, I lift a hand and give him a small smile and deliberate wave, letting the gold stripes of his own jersey flash in the arena lights.
Julian freezes for a fraction of a second, his dark eyes widening, then a slow deep smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth, his chest expanding with a proud breath before he turns and disappears down the tunnel.