12. The Game
CHAPTER TWELVE
the game
Chicago is cold in a way that has nothing to do with the weather.
I love it here already.
The Ice Vortex has a machine of a team. I watched the tape on the flight.
Their captain, Malachi Monroe, is everything Callahan described when he drew up the game plan last night—a center who controls tempo like he invented the concept.
His brother, the goalie, is a different animal.
Michael Monroe moves in the net like the puck owes him something personal.
And Moretti. Left wing, number 11. The man skates like he was born without a speed limit.
I know my job tonight. I’m not here to score. I’m here to make sure Jaxon Monroe can do his job without someone rearranging his face. I’m here to stand between my team and the thing that wants to hurt them. Same job I’ve always had. New Jersey. Same blood.
I run my tape before warm-ups. White athletic tape, left hand first, then right—the ritual. The locker room is loud around me—music, equipment clanging, Harrison barking at someone about their edge work—and I sit in the middle of it like a stone in a river. The noise goes around me.
Petrov drops onto the bench beside me, watching my hands.
"Still with the tape," he says.
"Always with the tape."
He nods like this is the most reasonable thing he’s ever heard.
We take the ice for warm-ups. The Vortex is already out there, Monroe running a tight passing drill at the far end. I watch him without watching him—peripheral, the way you track something you might need to fight later.
Number 44, Grayson Kline. Their defenseman. He’s been flagged in my notes as the guy most likely to go looking for trouble tonight. He’s big, he’s got a mean streak, and he plays the boards like personal property.
I make note of him and let it go.
The game opens fast. Malachi Monroe wins the face-off, and the Vortex controls the first three minutes like we don’t exist. Clean, patient, suffocating hockey. Their left wing, number 11—Moretti—gets the puck on the rush and cuts through two of our defensemen like they’re suggestions.
Jaxon Monroe answers on our next shift. He’s not fancy. He’s decisive. He takes a feed from Carter Jensen on the right side and fires a wrister that catches the post and goes wide, but the message is delivered: we’re here, we’re not leaving, and the next one might go in.
I rotate in on the third shift.
The ice feels different when you’re playing instead of watching. Bigger. Louder. The crowd is a physical thing—twenty thousand heartbeats pressed against the glass. I find my position, track the puck, and let the game tell me where I need to be.
Kline finds me first.
He catches me along the left boards—not with a check, just with his shoulder, the casual assertion of a man who owns the corner. It’s a message. I received it.
I don’t answer it. Not yet.
Two shifts later, Kline takes a run at Jaxon Monroe in the neutral zone. It’s late, it’s high, and Monroe sees it coming but can’t get out of the way in time. The hit isn’t dirty enough for a penalty, and both of them know it.
I’m over the boards before Callahan finishes the line change call.
Kline is still crowing at Monroe when I arrive. He sees me coming, and his expression changes—the arrogance compresses into something more careful. He’s big. He’s not afraid. But he recognizes something in my face that gives him a moment’s pause.
Good. A moment is all I need.
I don’t throw the first punch. I just get close enough that he knows the next thing that happens is my choice, not his. The refs are watching. Kline holds eye contact for three full seconds, then turns and skates away.
The crowd boos. They wanted a fight.
I skate back to position. Jaxon Monroe falls into stride beside me for a half second.
"Appreciate it," he says. Low. Just to me.
"That’s the job," I say.
He nods and peels off toward the bench.
We go to the second period tied one-one. During the intermission, I sit in my stall and re-tape my right hand, where the wrap loosened after a collision with the boards—the locker room hums. Callahan’s voice is calm, surgical. He doesn’t yell. He identifies. He corrects.
Harrison catches my eye from across the room. He gives me one of those short nods—the kind that means something without requiring words. I give it back.
In the third period, the Vortex pushes hard.
Moretti is everywhere—he seems to have more energy in the third than he did in the first, which shouldn’t be physically possible, and yet.
Their center, Sinclair, number 69, comes in on a shift change and immediately changes the game’s tempo. Fast. Creative. Uncomfortable.
We hold them.
The final buzzer sounds with us up two-one—Jaxon Monroe’s goal in the second, Harrison’s in the third off a Petrov setup. I don’t have a point on the board. I don’t need one.
In the handshake line, Malachi Monroe looks at me when we pass. He’s got the eyes of a man who doesn’t lose often and is already filing tonight away as data for next time.
"Good game," he says.
"Yeah," I say.
Kline doesn’t look at me. That’s fine. I’ll see him next time.
In the locker room, I peel the tape off my hands. It comes away in the same bloody strips it always does—stiff with old glue and violence, the skin underneath raw and mapped with damage. The ritual of the unmaking. The quiet dismantling of the weapon.
But this time, when I look at the tape ball in my hand, I don’t see a tumor.
I see proof.
I survived the mountain. I survived the shack, the cold, the hunger, the wolves, and the dark. I survived the worst thing I could imagine, and I came out the other side with a number on my back and a team that knows what I am and wants me anyway.
I am number 18 of the LA Gladiators.
I throw the tape in the trash. It lands with a wet thud.
Same as always.
Everything else is different.