Twenty-Six #2
Phones shoot up, creating a sea of recording eyes.
“Real hockey isn’t played in VIP booths. It’s played in the corners, where nobody’s watching, where you take the hit anyway because that’s the job.” I point past the windows, out toward the street. “There’s a place two blocks from here that bleeds it. First night I walked in, I called it a dive.”
“Gabriel.” Teeth barely apart, smile intact. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Something I should’ve done years ago.”
“Don’t do this. You have no idea what you’re stepping into.”
“No. You just realized I do.”
“Ladies and gentlemen.” Westfield leans in and swipes the mic out of my hand. “Let’s all take a breath. Maybe a bit too much champagne, eh, Gabriel?”
He laughs. Nobody goes with him.
I take it back. No wind-up, no lunge—a stick lift and a half step, the way you strip a puck off a guy who’s admiring it. It’s in my hand before he finishes turning his head.
“Last thing.” The speakers catch the rasp in it. “This isn’t the first time I’ve stood in a room and told a story that made me look better than I was.” I close my fist around the notecard. It gives with almost no sound. “It cost somebody. It never cost me.”
I lift the crushed ball of paper and uncurl my fingers.
“I’m done being a mascot.”
I let it drop. Dead weight. Marty’s flinch is barely there, but I catch it before he goes still as a statue.
Then he sees her.
Ivy, cutting a lane through the bodies with sharp-hipped efficiency, chin up, not waiting to be invited. The color drains out of Westfield’s face.
“Stop her!” he snaps at a security guard who looks like he just graduated high school.
The guard shifts into motion. Another security guard joins him, both dropping their shoulders to cut a lane to the stage.
Holt steps into the aisle. He plants himself there, arms crossing over his chest. O’Neill slides in on one side. Andersson on the other.
The first guard gets a hand on Holt’s shoulder. Holt doesn’t move.
“Touch me again,” he dares, his voice carrying even without a mic. The guard drops his hand.
A ring light catches a flash of dark red hair, tucked between and behind the guards’ shoulders.
“Let her through,” Holt orders.
The guards hesitate, eyes flicking toward the stage, waiting for an order Westfield is too slow to give.
It’s enough.
Ivy walks past them.
She climbs the stairs, each heel striking the stage like a puck off the boards. She doesn’t look at the crowd. She looks at me. My mouth parches watching her. I swallow.
I hold the mic out to her before she’s finished the last step. It’s the only apology I can offer that matters right now.
Ivy takes the mic. Her fingers brush mine—cold against hot—and she steps into the spotlight.
I stand half a step behind her, far enough that I don’t steal an inch of her space.
A ring light swings up from the front row, stripping the room’s warm glow.
My deltoids spasm, fighting the muscle memory to drop a shoulder, clear the lane, put my body between her and the lenses eating up her face. Protect the crease. Take the hit.
The mic squeals. Feedback bites down on the room until Ivy shifts her grip, thumb rolling over the switch like she’s adjusting the blade on a skate. Click. The squeal dies.
“Good evening, everyone. My name is Ivy Hayes. I own The Penalty Box.”
The light catches the red in her hair, almost making it look like it’s on fire.
Chin high. Shoulders squared. She turns stillness into a weapon; the kind of controlled power I’ve spent my career faking.
I lock my knees, force my hands to hang loose, anchoring her blind spot without blocking her view.
My body is her shield; my presence, her proof.
I’ve spent weeks telling myself I was here to pay a debt. That this was penance. That if I got her to the stage and kept Westfield off her back, we’d be square and I could stop thinking about her.
Looking at her now, I know that’s a lie.
I’m in love with her.
She didn’t ask me to save her. She just needed me to clear the lane. So I plant my feet and let her take the shot.
“Most of you know my bar. Some of you have sat in my booths and eaten my food.” She lifts her chin towards the crowd. “But before I owned a bar, I played hockey. I was seventeen. Hockey Canada pipeline. Colleges calling. A camp away from pulling on the maple leaf for real.”
She pauses.
“And then a rumor ended it.”
Westfield’s smile cracks. He makes a gesture at the security manning the emergency exit.
One of the guards leaps onto the stage, his hand landing on Ivy’s shoulder. Every muscle in my body locks. My fists close at my sides. Slow, deliberate. The violence is right there, right at the surface, hot enough to burn through the suit.
Before I can take a step forward, Ivy glances at me. One look. Don’t.
My eyes narrow at security. Fine. I drop my shoulder and cut the guard’s angle without touching him, forcing him to drop his hand.
“Ma’am, I need you to—”
The guard’s fingers twitch towards her. Nobody moves, but phones hover, a glowing constellation across still faces.
Ivy tilts her head just enough, showing the long nape of her neck. “Security removing a woman mid-statement at a Wolves event.” She pauses, her lips flicking into a quick smile. “Go ahead. Make the clip.”
Someone in the crowd laughs—short, nervous. The guard looks at Westfield.
“Miss Hayes, this isn’t the place—” Westfield says, his voice thin.
“It’s exactly the place,” she states. “For years, I thought Gabriel Castellano made that recording. Said the thing that finished my career. And Gabriel did say those words. Every one of them. He stood in a hotel suite and told a story about me that never happened—invented it, start to finish, to save face in front of the wrong people.”
I stand there and take it. I deserved that.
“He was eighteen, drunk, and cruel, and he’s spent this last month finding out exactly what that cost. But he didn’t tape it. And he didn’t post it.”
Air punches out of my lungs. I don’t move. Can’t. I lock my knees and force air through my nose. Half the weight I’ve carried for a month is lifting in real time—and the half that stays is the half that was always mine.
In my periphery, I catch movement: Braxton Hicks is cutting through the crowd toward the AV booth, shoulders dropped, moving fast.
Ivy turns her body a fraction, angling towards me. She glances at me once. Behind us, the projector screen flickers. The Sin Bin’s dark, glossy logo disappears.
Westfield’s head doesn’t go to the screen first. It goes to me. One second, maybe less—just long enough to check whether I’m surprised too. And then he’s barking into his earpiece: “Kill the screen and mic. Now.”
I glance toward the AV booth. Delilah is there, hands on the board, watching the wall like she’s been waiting for this longer than tonight. I look back as the new screen loads.
A browser window fills the wall, blinding white.
Two Reddit profiles side by side.
HockeyGOD93. HockeyG0D93.
Same avatar. Same bio. One character off.
I read it twice before the typo registers.
They posted it as me. My handle. Close enough to pass at a glance, careful enough to fool the public who had no reason to look twice.
Eight weeks ago I sat in the dark and read that handle and called it mine.
Mine’s got a zero—HockeyG0D93, made at twelve, back when swapping a letter for a number felt like a personality.
The one who posted this has a regular O.
I looked right at the difference and didn’t clock it, because nobody proofreads their own username.
Across the room, Braxton’s still cutting toward the booth. Now I know why he’s running.
Ice moves through my veins.
That laugh earlier—wet, rough, too close. I’ve heard it before, compressed and tinny, riding under my own recorded voice. “So c’mon, Cas. The Hayes girl.”
He didn’t just post it. He asked the question. He stood at my shoulder, held the phone steady, and fed me the rope.
The screen scrolls. Archived post. Timestamp. A Calgary tournament roster, with one number circled in red.
Eighty-two.
I already know what that number means. I knew it back when it didn’t matter—a backup who never should’ve dressed for half those games, propped up by money nobody talked about out loud. I just never connected it to anything that mattered until right now.
The donation photo loads next. Westfield, younger, grinning, an oversized cheque in his hands. The Hicks family standing beside him like they’d always belonged in that frame.
The rage arrives so fast it whites out the relief. The suit pulls taut across my back. My hands close at my sides, knuckles pressing into my palms, because the cameras are still running and I will not give Braxton Hicks the satisfaction of watching me lose it while Ivy holds the stage.
By the time I look back, Hicks halts, stumbling on the polished floor. He stands frozen three feet from the board. Staring up at his photo on the wall. He starts edging toward the side corridor like he can slip away, making it three steps.
Thompson is already beside him. I can’t read his face from here, but I know what it means when he goes that still—I’ve played beside him long enough. He plants himself without touching anything. Forsberg slides in on one side, Petrov on the other.
Nobody told them to do that. They just did.
Braxton’s cowardice infuriates me. If the boys weren’t already blocking him, I’d cross this stage and take him off his feet.
Ivy turns back to the room. The screen is still up behind her, both handles burning white against the dark.
“The person who posted it?” She points once, clean. “Martin Westfield’s Media Director: Braxton Hicks.”
A ripple goes through the room—confusion first, then recognition.
Braxton’s face drains. He tries to play it off with a laugh. “This is—come on. What is this supposed to—”
“Say it louder for the cameras,” Ivy says.
Braxton’s mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
Ivy turns from him like he’s already done and reaches into her clutch.
Pulls out a folded document.