18. Chapter 19
Mara
The arena is so loud I can feel it in my back teeth.
I'm supposed to be tracking player fatigue levels.
I haven't looked at my notes in forty minutes.
Dane is everywhere.
That's the only way to describe it. Every time we clear a zone, he's the one doing it.
Every time their opponents set up in the offensive end, he's already there, reading the play before it happens, shutting down angles with that quiet, brutal efficiency that makes reporters write things like generational defender in all caps.
He's not playing angry tonight.
That's what's different.
Every other game I've watched this season, there's been an edge to him. A controlled violence underneath everything. Like he was managing himself the same way he manages everything. By force.
Tonight he looks settled.
One of the assistant coaches bumps my shoulder and points at the Jumbotron.
My own face stares back at me from fifty feet up.
The camera caught me mid-exhale, watching the ice, completely unaware. My jaw goes tight. The crowd noise shifts slightly. A ripple of recognition, people turning to look. I keep my expression neutral and my eyes straight ahead.
This is the second time tonight.
The broadcast team knows exactly what they're doing.
My father is behind the bench twelve feet away. I saw him glance up at the Jumbotron. His posture doesn't change. His clipboard doesn't move. He just stands there, watching his team, and I stand here watching his team, and neither of us says a word.
It's progress. I think.
The horn sounds. Third period ends.
Overtime hockey is a specific kind of suffering.
Sudden death. One goal. The whole season hinging on one bad bounce or one perfect read. I've watched my father coach through three OT losses this season and I know what it does to him.
I don't want that for him tonight.
But I also watch Dane take the ice for the OT period and I think: he's not going to let that happen.
He wins the first puck battle in the corner. Feeds it up the right side to Harlow. The play collapses and cycles back, but he's already moving, reading the reset before it forms, positioning himself between two forwards with the kind of calm that makes it look easy.
It's not easy. I know that now.
I know how much work goes into making anything look that effortless.
The second shift, Dane takes a hit along the boards. Hard, direct, the kind that would have made me flinch two months ago. He absorbs it, keeps his feet, shakes it off in two seconds flat, and calls for the puck like nothing happened.
Three minutes into overtime, their defenseman pinches and leaves a seam up the middle. Dane sees it. He doesn't yell, doesn't signal. He just goes, full stride, taking the outlet pass in open ice from Muller, driving toward the net.
He doesn't score.
But the rebound kicks out to their right wing and Gibbins steals it, passes to Harlow then buries it before anyone can react.
The horn screams.
The bench erupts.
The scoreboard flashes. We're in.
I'm not thinking about optics when I jump up and down. I'm not thinking about cameras or blog posts or conduct clauses.
I'm just clapping, loud and real, and when Dane turns from the pile of bodies at center ice and finds me through the glass, sweat drenched jersey, dark eyes, chest heaving, I don't look away.
Neither does he.
The locker room celebrations are loud enough to hear from the staff corridor.
I'm packing up my notes, running through the post-game protocol in my head, when footsteps come fast around the corner and then stop.
I turn.
Dane.
His jersey, shoulder pads, helmet and skates are off, hair soaked, his face split open with something I've never seen on him before. Not quite a smile. More like relief. Like a fist he's been holding for months finally came open.
"Hey." That's all he says.
"Hey." I match him.
He's breathing hard. Adrenaline still running. I can see it in the way he's standing. Coiled, electric, not quite down from the game yet.
"You saw the pass," he says.
"I saw the pass."
"Didn't score."
"Didn't matter."
Something in his expression shifts. Quieter now. He takes one step toward me and stops. Waiting. He's always waiting, making sure I'm the one who decides.
I close the remaining distance myself.
His hand hits the wall beside my head as I reach up and pull him down by the back of his neck, and then his mouth is on mine and I stop thinking about anything at all.
He kisses me like the game is still going. Intense. Focused. All of it aimed exactly at me.
I grab a fistful of his spandex undershirt. He makes a low sound against my mouth and then his forehead drops to mine and we're both breathing too fast.
“Everybody is occupied in the locker room” he says. Low. "Meet me in the Laundry room. It locks."
I nod. Really not thinking about being professional right now.
He gets the door closed and I'm already pulling down his suspenders, before the door latch clicks. His pants hit the floor. His hands find my jacket and strip it off my shoulders in one pull.
"We have maybe ten minutes," I manage.
"I know." His hands slide under the hem of my shirt, palms flat against my ribs.
He exhales against my neck like I've undone him, and then he lifts me and I wrap my legs around him, and he pins me against the wall with his full weight. I feel how much he wants me before anything else.
His mouth finds my collarbone, my jaw, the soft place below my ear that makes my fingers curl into his hair.
"Dane."
"Come on?"
"Don't stop."
"I’m won’t."
He gets a hand between us, slow and deliberate despite everything, and I tip my head back against the concrete and just breathe through it. His eyes stay on my face the entire time. Dark, focused, watching every flicker of expression like he's cataloging them. Like he's keeping them.
"Look at me," he says quietly.
I do.
He keeps his eyes on mine while his hand moves and I stop being able to hold still. My nails dig into his shoulders through the fabric of his undershirt and he makes a low sound of satisfaction that I feel more than hear.
"There," he murmurs.
When I finally break apart, it's with my face pressed against his chest, my breath completely gone, his arms locked around me like I might float away. He gives me exactly four seconds to come back to myself.
Then he lifts my chin up with two fingers.
"Mara"
"Do me."
We don’t have much time. What comes next is less careful.
His hands gripping my hips, mine pulling at his collar.
I open up and feel him slowly press in. We’re moving together in the dim light with the muffled noise of the celebration bleeding through the walls.
He’s let’s out a groan letting me know he came, it's quick and heated and absolutely, thoroughly mutual.
The whole building could be on fire.
I would not move.
When it's over, we stay there for a moment. My forehead against his shoulder, his arms still around me, the distant crowd noise filtering through like it belongs to a different world entirely.
He presses his mouth to my temple once.
Just once.
I close my eyes.
We straighten up in silence, the easy kind. He hands me my jacket. I fix my hair. He reassembles his pants with the practiced efficiency of someone who's done it ten thousand times.
"Your eye is doing the thing," he says.
"What thing."
"The thinking thing. Left eye twitches when you're running calculations."
I didn't know he'd noticed that. I should probably be annoyed.
I'm not annoyed.
He pulls the door open and I step through first, back into the main corridor. The noise hits again. Music from the locker room, the distant crowd still filtering out through the arena.
I take three steps.
Then I stop.
My father is standing at the end of the hall.
Arms crossed. Jacket still on. He must have come from the ice level exit, taking the back route. He probably noticed Dane wasn’t in the locker room. I can’t believe he’s there.
He's not moving.
He looks at me. Then past me, to Dane stepping out behind me. Then back to my face.
I wait for the anger.
It doesn't come.
What comes instead is something quieter and harder to hold. He looks tired. His shoulders have dropped, and his arms are crossed more like a man bracing against cold than a man building a wall. He looks at me with eyes that have stopped arguing.
Resigned. That's the word.
Like a man who's finally stopped fighting something he can't change.
He holds my gaze for a long moment.
Then he turns and walks away without a word.