Chapter 32 #2
The doc had eyes on the bench, just off the tunnel. I caught his expression once through my binoculars — calm, focused, calculating. He’d check every player post-game, just like he had the night before. But if Roan couldn’t keep his range, I knew the choice might be taken out of his hands.
And I didn’t know what that would do to us. Or to me.
Because I was running hot tonight.
Overclocked. Wired.
The tight bun I’d worn to keep things professional was already coming loose.
My blazer had come off after the second period when the temperature in the suite climbed with the energy of the crowd.
There was a crackle in my blood, like static, and every breath I took had to be slow and deliberate.
I wasn’t in heat, not even close, but I wasn’t not feeling something.
I caught one of the league execs watching me out of the corner of his eye.
Not the time, buddy.
A hard whistle pulled my focus back to the ice just in time to see Rhett stop a breakaway cold and kick the rebound to Jay, who swung it to Roan.
He shot across the blue line like a missile.
The goal was dirty — scrappy and wild, with two defenders on him and one clinging to his jersey — but it counted.
2–1, Howlers.
The crowd lost its mind.
I didn’t cheer.
I breathed.
They were back on the ice less than a minute later.
Still fighting. Still leading.
And I couldn’t stop watching the way his shoulder moved.
When the buzzer finally blared and the game ended with a narrow win, my heart was hammering. We had the victory — barely — and as the team moved toward the handshake line, I pulled out my phone.
Texted one word to the group thread that had become a quiet lifeline:
Status?
Roan responded first.
Roan:
Functional. Mostly pissed.
Jay:
No dislocations. No new bruises. No sense of self-preservation. So, same.
Rhett:
Can confirm. Would still hit.
My snort surprised the people near me.
I smiled anyway. Let them wonder.
Because my boys weren’t broken.
Tomorrow, we’d fight again.
I’d thought I knew what tension felt like.
I’d walked through scandal, through the storm of Rylan’s bullshit, fielded reporters like landmines, turned press releases into weapons, and spun narratives with a smile.
I’d held my own in boardrooms full of alphas and billionaires.
I’d even walked into heat with three of the most powerful men I’d ever known and come out the other side still standing.
But this?
This was different.
This was war.
From the moment puck dropped in the third game, the ice was a battlefield. Not a game. Not a match. A grudge. Our lead in the series had the other team frothing, and the strategy was clear: hit hard, hit fast, hit dirty.
Roan knew it. He read it in the first thirty seconds and adjusted accordingly, but there was only so much a captain could do.
Jay played smart. He was fast, fluid, always one step ahead.
And Rhett, god help him, was the chaos we needed when the tempo threatened to stall.
But the danger was pulsing under the surface, waiting.
From the box, I could feel it coming. The way the crowd leaned forward. The shift in the rhythm of the plays. The brutal hit Roan took in the corner that didn’t even draw a whistle.
The look on Jay’s face when he snapped something low to one of the refs under his breath, and the way the ref didn’t respond.
Something was off.
And then… it happened.
Jay had the puck on the rush, slicing through neutral ice like he was born there. Roan was wide, ready. And even from across the rink, I could feel Rhett’s focus in the crease, locked on the play like he was already bracing for fallout. The play was fluid, beautiful—until it wasn’t.
From the blind side, a defender launched.
Full body. High elbow.
Time slowed.
I couldn’t even scream. The sound caught in my throat as Jay’s head snapped back, his body went limp mid-air, and he crashed to the ice like a broken marionette.
The crowd sucked in a breath.
Then silence.
Then chaos.
Rhett was out of the crease and on the guy who hit him before the whistle even blew. Roan was there a second later, fists clenched, fury barely contained. The other player was dragged back by two teammates and a ref, but Rhett wasn’t backing off — not until Roan shoved him hard and pointed to Jay.
Jay.
He hadn’t moved.
I didn’t remember standing. Didn’t remember the way I must’ve shoved past someone in the box—a sponsor, maybe one of the owners—didn’t hear Marchand bark my name. All I knew was that I had to get down there. My body was moving before my brain caught up.
But the med team was already on the ice.
One checking Jay’s vitals. Another stabilizing his neck.
I stopped just short of the glass, my palm flat against the cold as they lifted him onto the stretcher. The whole arena was a vacuum. Thirty thousand people and not one of them made a sound.
Except for Rhett.
He stood frozen in the crease, chest heaving, like the net was the only thing keeping him from going feral all over again.
Roan stood near the bench, his knuckles white where they curled over the top of the boards.
Jay disappeared down the tunnel taking what felt like half of my lungs with him. When I finally turned back, Marchand had stepped beside me. His mouth was tight, his jaw clenched, and for once, the CEO mask had cracked.
“Medical team’s on it,” he said. “We’ll get you updates the second they know.”
I nodded, even if the motion didn’t feel real. I was aware of too many things at once — the hush in the box behind me, the murmur of the crowd, the buzz of my phone in my coat pocket.
The referee skated to center ice. Five-minute major for the hit. Ejection.
Not enough.
Nothing would be enough.
Roan skated back into position. Rhett didn’t move, not even when the ref waved him back into the crease. He just stood there, shaking with restrained violence, like the net itself was the only thing keeping him from tearing someone apart.
The game resumed, but it wasn’t a game anymore. No, it was a reckoning, and they’d united the whole team in wanting to take them down.
If the league didn’t do something after this, I’d burn the whole damn system down myself.