Chapter 28
Cillian
Game one of the Stanley Cup Final, on our home ice, and the building is already a vibrating sea of black and gold before the warmups even wrap. I do my laps and take my shots, but my gaze keeps drifting near the net, toward the third row.
Her seat is empty.
Traffic, I tell myself, circling back to the dot for another puck.
The Solstice fundraiser likely ran late, the bridge is always a car park on game nights, and she'll probably come rushing in during the middle of the first period.
I fire another shot and skate another lap and look again, but the space is still vacant.
The anthem comes and goes. Still nothing.
Then the puck hits the ice, and there's no more room in my head for anything else, because Liam Brennan spends the entire first period showing our building exactly why he's been running his mouth all spring.
He's good. I've been tracking his game all season and I knew he'd improved, but he's even more elite than when I played him last year. The man is pure speed. He weaves past our defense, finding lanes that shouldn't exist.
An early goal from them silences the crowd, but we punch back and find one of our own a few minutes later.
We're trading hits and chances over and over, the game turning into a proper knife fight.
By the time we head for the room, we're exhausted.
Jonesy looks wrecked, but Brennan and his squad are clearly struggling just as much as we are.
The crowd thumps and roars throughout the second, the energy in the building nearly tactile as we grind through every shift. Betts shoots me a look as we skate past the bench, an unspoken what the hell passing between us, but at least we're giving as good as we're getting.
I circle back toward the neutral zone during a whistle, and I steal one more glance up at the stands. Her seat is still empty.
Worry begins to bleed through me, a cold spike of anxiety that hits harder than any check I've taken all night.
She said an act of God couldn't keep her away.
So either something's happened to her, or something's happened to us, and there is not one thing I can do about either option from inside this glass bowl for the next hour.
Brennan reads it on me. Of course he does. Men like him hunt for soft spots the way the rest of us hunt for open ice.
We line up for a faceoff late in the period, tied game, and he settles in across from me with that grin already working.
"Rough night, O'Rourke." Low, just for me. "Whole city shows up for you, and your own girl doesn't bother. She figure out what you are before the rest of?—"
The whistle's barely gone for the offside when I put both hands into his chest and send him into the ice. He goes down theatrically, arms out, playing to every camera in the building, and the referee's arm is up before I've finished regretting it.
The crowd howls. I skate to the penalty box with my pulse slamming and my own voice in my head, flat and disgusted: a full year of learning to play cold, and he found the one match you had left.
They score eleven seconds before my penalty ends. I watch it happen from the box, close enough to hear their bench celebrate, and there's no worse seat in the world than the one you bought yourself.
I'm quiet at the intermission. Whelan doesn't yell at me, which is worse than if he had. He just looks at me on his way past, one long look, and says, "Done?"
"Done," I say, and I mean it.
On the bench before the third starts, I catch myself doing Margot's ridiculous blowfish breathing, cheeks puffed out like an absolute eejit, and some camera has surely got it, and I don't care. It works. That's the part I'd never tell her fast enough: it works.
The third period is the best hockey I play all season.
Clean, hard, furious in the only direction that helps.
We tilt the whole ice toward their net and their goalie starts robbing us like it's personal, glove save after glove save, and the building gets louder with every one because everyone in here can feel it coming, the tying goal, it's coming, it has to be coming.
It comes to me. Final minute, our goalie pulled for the extra man, and the puck lands flat on my blade with half a net showing and the whole season narrowing down to one swing of my arms.
Their goalie gets a glove on it. I still don't know how.
The horn goes. Their bench pours over the boards at the far end, and I stand there in the noise-turned-quiet with my hands on my knees, one goal short, staring at a patch of glass three rows up where nobody's been sitting all night.
The room after is careful. Long series, one game, we were right there. All of it true and none of it landing.
"The penalty's mine," I say to the room, loud enough to be heard. "It won't happen again."
Nobody argues, which is fair enough.
Press is short and ugly. Someone asks if tonight proves the old temper is still in there, and I give the boring answer through my teeth while thinking that the honest one is none of your business. And then I'm finally at my stall, tie half done, and I dig my phone out of my bag.
A missed call from Margot, logged early in the second. Then one text, an hour old.
I'm so sorry. I’m waiting for you by the tunnel exit.
I snag my gear and bolt.
She's still dressed for the fundraiser, in her cocktail dress and heels, looking out of place against the cold concrete of the tunnel where the players' lot meets the building, a sweater yanked over her shoulders for warmth.
The fluorescents overhead hum and flicker with a rhythmic, annoying buzz, and behind me the arena is finally starting to empty out, the muffled roar of engines and voices fading into the night air.
She looks up the second she sees me, and the relief that hits me nearly takes my legs out from under me. Then I get close enough to see her face properly in the harsh light. She's clearly been crying, and my mind immediately starts sprinting through a dozen different tragedies.
"Cillian," she says, her voice trembling. "I'm so sorry. I know how much tonight meant, and I wanted to be in that seat so badly."
I close the last few feet between us, searching her face for answers. "What happened? Are you alright?"
"I..." She bites her lower lip and looks toward the shadows. "I just... I had a panic attack and bolted from the party. I was driving here, but then my nerve just vanished and I went the other way. I'm so sorry. There's no excuse for it."
I drag a hand down my face, a massive weight lifting from my gut. A panic attack I can handle; at least nobody’s in a hospital bed.
"Are you mad?" she asks, looking up at me with wide, shimmering eyes.
"What?" I let out a short breath. "No, fuck, Margot, I'm not mad at all."
I pull her in tight and she melts against me, tucking her head under my chin, and my heart aches for her, knowing she's been out here spiraling and thinking I'd be pissed at her over something like this. I pull back slightly to look at her, wiping a few stray tears from her cheek.
“I thought you'd be upset, and you'd have every right.” She sniffles. "I missed something so huge for you. And I really, really did want to be here."
"It doesn't matter. I'm just glad you're okay. I started thinking something horrible might have happened to you." I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "What caused the panic attack?"
“At the fundraiser, I ran into Jason. My ex.” She takes a step back as she says it.
Rage flares in my gut at the mention of the man. A sharp, bitter jealousy that the prick ever had a claim on her, or that he was anywhere near her this evening. I tamp it down to stay focused on her.
"And I don't know," she continues. "He was being his usual, exhausting self, and I'd been building toward a break all week anyway. The media circus, those vile comments. He was just the final straw. I snapped."
"I'm so sorry, Ace." I nod slowly and run my hand down her arm. "I should've been there."
"No, it isn't your fault," she says. "I just feel... so out of control."
"Okay. Then we handle it together." I pull her hand into mine. "And you don't need to come to these games if it's too much right now. I didn't mean to push you if you felt like they were..."
"No, it isn't the games." She shakes her head and her eyes slide away from mine, off into the dark where the lot ends. "But I need to tell you..."
A cold knot of dread settles in my gut. Whatever she's about to say, I already know I don't want to hear it.
"Cillian, I think I need a little stretch of time to myself," she says. "I'm not saying this is a breakup, or at least I really don't want it to be. But you're in the most important part of your career, and I feel like I'm... like I'm just going to poison everything."
She pulls her hand back out of mine, and the loss of it lands like something physical. Just an hour ago I would have staked my life on us, on the idea that two souls this intertwined couldn't be separated by anything.
"You're not poisoning anything," I get out, my voice rough. "What are you talking about? If you're having a hard time, then for fuck's sake, let me be there for you."
"No. I have to find my own footing." She shakes her head, fresh tears welling. "I know how to do this, Cillian. I've done it before, plenty of times. I can get myself out of it. But I have to actually do it, and you have a Cup to win. So let me handle this."
"And how exactly am I meant to focus?" I take a step toward her. "If you're up in Napa going through hell, I'll be thinking about you every single second anyway. At least let me be with you in it."
She gives me a sad little smile then, one that breaks my heart clean in two.
"Trust me, being in it with me is worse than worrying from a distance.
I've gotten through these before, and I always pull myself out.
It just takes time, and I can't be one more thing you're carrying right now.
" Her voice wavers. "I'm so sorry about the timing.
I wish I could shove it down. I don't know what's wrong with me. "
"There is nothing wrong with you, Ace. Nothing." The words come out fierce enough that she blinks. "There's nothing wrong with having a hard time, and I don't give a single fuck about the timing. I just want you okay."
"I know." Her voice goes soft, and somehow that's worse than the tears. "But this is for the best. I really believe that."
This is for the best. People say that when they're leaving. The thought lands cold and keeps spreading.
"Ace. I know what you said. But I need to hear it plain." I make myself ask. "Is this space, or are you breaking up with me?"
"No. God, no, I don't want to break up. I don't want to lose you." Her voice cracks apart on it. "But I'm starting to spiral, Cillian. I can feel the old darkness moving back in. And it's best if you just focus on the Cup."
"Fuck the Cup if it costs me you," I snap, words the old me would have never said, yet they're truer than anything I've ever felt.
"I won't be the reason you lose all of that.
" And that's when the tears finally break loose, spilling down her cheeks faster than she can wipe them away.
"I love you so much, Cillian, and I'm so incredibly proud of you.
And I'm sorry, because I'm drowning right now, and I know I'm hurting you, and I hate it. I just don't know what else to do."
She swipes at her eyes with a frustrated sound, and I stand there, wrecked by the sight of her pale face and that trembling lower lip.
Every instinct I possess is screaming at me to fix this. If it were logistics, I could handle the organization. If it were a broken gutter, I could find the tools. When a drunk put his hands on her, I could go over the glass and end it.
But there's nothing to swing at here, no enemy to fight, no heavy lifting I can do to make it right.
The thing hurting her is her own mind, and I can't take the hit for her.
I can't even help her if she won't let me in.
I can't do a single useful thing except stand here and watch it happen, and I've never felt so helpless in my life.
"You don't have to face this alone. You're allowed to lean on me, Margot.
" I rasp, taking a step toward her. She flinches back, and the few inches she puts between us might as well be the width of the Atlantic.
"You don't get to hide yourself away and do the repair work in secret and only come back when you're 'well' enough not to be a burden. That's not how this works."
She stares up at me, and for a moment I think she's going to agree. I can see it, her wanting to reach out, her resolve flickering as she considers letting me in. But then she starts shaking her head, slowly, more to herself than to me, and I know I've fucking lost her.
"No," she says, her voice thick as she turns away. "I can't think straight when I'm around you; you pull me in so much it's like I can't resist. I have to do this. Maybe after the Final, we can find a way. But it'll be better for both of us if I'm just... away for a while."
I stare at her, trying to understand how a panic attack at a party became this. An hour ago my biggest problem was a face-off percentage. Now the best thing that's ever happened to me is standing in a parking lot talking herself out of us.
"I meant what I said." She looks up, wiping her cheek with the heel of her hand. "I don't want this to be the end. But I know I'm not being fair to you, so I'd understand if you... if you'd rather I not contact you at all."
"Margot." It's out of me before she finishes the sentence. "There is no version of this where I don't want to hear from you."
"Okay." She exhales, lips trembling, and nods. "I should go. I'll be okay, I promise. I just need to get myself sorted. And you, you lock in and win the whole damn thing. We'll talk when it's over."
I step closer, and this time she holds her ground. It takes everything I have not to wrap her up and refuse to let go, as if I could hold the two of us together through sheer stubbornness.
"I love you, Margot," I say, and my voice doesn't waver, because it's the one thing left I'm certain of.
"I want you, every part of you, for the rest of my life.
I'm not scared of the dark parts, none of it.
And I know you love me too. You can't talk me out of that, because we're meant to be together.
So take the time if you need it. But you're not losing me.
I'm not worried about how this ends, Ace. I already know."
She stares at me for a long moment, and something moves across her face that looks almost like belief.
"I love you too," she whispers, and steps back before I can reach for her.
She wipes a final tear, turns on her heel, and hurries across the lot, and I stand there under the flickering fluorescents and watch my entire world drive away into the dark.