Chapter 12
twelve
Dani
This was the second time I was watching Luke play. I couldn't have been more excited. The first time, I had no idea if he'd even get off the bench. I came to cheer him on even if he wasn't starting.
But tonight was different. He was starting. And I was trying not to think about our dinner plans.
"Why'd he do that?" Lily tugged my sleeve, pointing at the ice. "Why'd he throw it on the ground?"
"I don't know, baby."
"But you're a nurse. You're supposed to know everything."
"Not hockey, sweetheart. Uncle Luke and Auntie Maya might be able to help you with that."
Maya leaned across the empty seat between us, phone still in one hand.
"It's called a faceoff. Two players square up, and whoever wins it gets the puck first. It's like a coin flip, except you actually have to fight for it."
Lily considered this with the seriousness of a five-year-old evaluating new information.
"Who's going to win?"
"Depends who's faster." Maya smiled and tucked a strand of Lily's hair behind her ear. "Watch. You'll see."
I mouthed a thank-you over Lily's head. Maya had gotten us seats three rows off the glass, close enough that I could feel the cold coming off the ice even from here.
I scanned the ice without meaning to. I told myself I was just taking in the atmosphere, the size of the building, the noise already building even during warm-ups. But my eyes kept snagging on the far end, where the goalies were taking shots to loosen up.
There.
Number thirty. Luke, dropping into a butterfly, gloving a shot clean out of the air like it was nothing. Popping back up. Doing it again.
Something in my chest pulled tight as I watched him.
He looked different out here than he had in Eli's guest room, pale and disoriented, or when he teased me, or in the pool with his hair slicked back and his eyes soft in the moonlight.
Out here, he looked exactly like what he was.
A professional athlete.
I thought about all the hours that got him here. The discipline I'd watched up close and had come to respect. The quiet, stubborn work of a man determined to prove he belonged.
Then the anthem finished. The lights came up, and the building roared. The game started almost instantly.
I understood almost none of the specifics—the offside calls, the icing, why one whistle meant something different from another. But I understood effort.
I understood two teams throwing themselves at each other with a kind of controlled violence that made my stomach flip every time bodies collided against the boards, especially when it came to Luke.
The medical part of me thought of all the things that could go wrong with even the slightest mistake, but I held on.
Wyatt skated past the crease after a big save and tapped his stick against Luke's pads. He said something to Luke. Luke nodded once and set himself for the next play.
A few minutes later, it was Roz, leaning in during a stoppage, his hand on Luke's shoulder like he was checking on him between shifts. Luke said something back. Roz laughed, shook his head, and skated to his position.
They kept doing that to Luke. Little check-ins. A tap of the stick. A word before a faceoff. It was almost like a rhythm.
"They really like him," I whispered.
Maya glanced over.
"Who?"
"Luke." I nodded toward the ice. "It feels like everyone on the team is checking on him."
"Well, it's Luke. Besides the fact that he's the sweetest guy I know, it's also how it works when a goalie's playing well.
" Maya shrugged. "It was the same with Bryan.
Once they start trusting a goalie, it becomes this whole...
" She waved a hand, searching for the word.
"...loop. He makes a save, they play harder for him.
He makes another save because he doesn't want to let them down.
It builds trust, and everyone starts looking out for him on the ice. "
It started making sense.
I watched Luke shift his angle a half-second before the shot came, his glove already rising before the puck left the stick.
It all boiled down to one thing.
Trust.
I wondered if whatever was building between us worked the same way. If trust just kept compounding, quietly, until one day you looked up and realized how much weight it was carrying.
The thought scared me more than it should have. By the middle of the third period, the scoreboard read 4-1.
The building had shifted into a frenzy. Twenty thousand people on their feet for stretches at a time, chanting things I didn't know the words to but found myself mouthing along with anyway.
Somewhere behind us, a group of men in Leopards jerseys had been screaming the same four-syllable chant since the second intermission.
Coach Greaves paced behind the bench like a man conducting an orchestra. Every stoppage, he had his players' full attention, gesturing at something on the ice I couldn't see.
"They're going to tie the series," Maya said, checking her phone. “Two apiece. If they hold this.”
"Is it a good thing?"
"It's really good."
Lily, who had lost interest in the score roughly forty minutes ago, tugged on Maya's sleeve instead.
"How's my best dragon guard doing?"
Maya choked on her tea and started coughing into her fist. Instincts kicked in as I thumped her back to help her. It worked, and within seconds she was all right.
"Sorry—" Maya wheezed, eyes watering. "Sorry, sweetie, what?"
"The dragon guard." Lily pointed toward the far net with total confidence. "Uncle Luke. He's guarding the castle from the dragons, right? That's why he wears all that armor."
I bit back a laugh.
"Right," Maya arched her eyebrows while her gaze was pinned on me. "Yes. Luke's had an incredible night defending the castle. He's only let one dragon through the whole game."
"Only one?"
"Only one. And honestly, that wasn't even his fault." Maya's face went completely serious, committing fully to the bit. "One of the other knights left his post. Missed his assignment. Left a whole opening in the wall. There was nothing Luke could've done about it."
Lily nodded before she turned back to watch the action with renewed investment. I looked at Maya over Lily's head.
“Dragon guard? How come I didn't know Luke had that nickname?” Maya grinned, and I shrugged.
“Trust me, that's between Lily and Luke.”
Maya's smile widened and she returned her attention to the game. She took another sip of her tea, more careful this time.
I settled back into my seat and focused on the game. I drowned in all of it. The noise, the cold air off the ice, Lily's small warm body pressed against my side, Maya close enough to laugh with. And most importantly, Luke.
I let myself imagine, just for a moment, what it would feel like if this was simply how things were. If every few months I didn't have to explain to Lily why we were moving again.
If there was a version of my life that included a sister down the street and a five-year-old who got to grow up knowing the same people. I pushed the thought down as fast as it came. This wasn't some romance movie where everything was perfect.
If Luke won tonight and started climbing up his career to becoming the exact player he had dreamed of being, we would be worlds apart. What would that mean for us?
Success had a gravity of its own. I'd watched it pull men away before. Watched Lily's father walk out a different door, promising he'd call, promising things would settle down once the season ended, promising and promising until the promises just stopped.
I looked at Luke, gloving another shot clean, popping up with that same coiled readiness. He isn't anything like Steven. I repeated it like a mantra.
The horn sounded. Leopards ball—no, puck, I corrected myself. Whatever it was, the crowd roared again.
I checked the clock. Ninety seconds left in the third.
"We should go," I said, gathering Lily's jacket off the back of her seat. "We need to beat the traffic."
Maya raised an eyebrow. "It's basically over. You'd miss the handshake line."
"Lily needs to eat and get to bed. And I've got—" I glanced at Lily, who was fully engrossed in the ice again, and lowered my voice. "This thing. Tonight."
Maya's expression shifted instantly, all mock innocence and barely-contained delight. "This thing."
"Maya."
"I still have absolutely no idea what thing you're referring to, Dani."
"You're still on for tonight, right? Watching her?"
"Obviously I'm watching her." Maya leaned in, grinning so wide it was almost alarming. "What time should I expect you back? Or should I expect you back tonight?"
"Maya!"
"I'm just asking logical questions. As your sister. Who is babysitting."
Lily looked up, catching the shift in tone even if she didn't understand the words. "What thing?"
"Nothing, baby." I zipped her jacket, focused very hard on the zipper. "Mommy just has a meeting tonight. Some grown-up stuff to talk through."
"A meeting," Maya repeated, between a laugh and a cough, her cheeks puffing out like she was fighting off a full-body cackle. She turned it into an actual cough at the last second, thumping her own chest.
"You okay?" I asked, deadpan.
"Fine." Cough. "Something in my throat."
"Uh huh."
"Very dry here. All the—"cough"—cheering."
"Nicely played, sis," I said, low enough that only she could hear, and steered Lily toward the aisle.
Behind me, I heard Maya mime zipping her lips shut, and when I glanced back she was holding an imaginary key up to the light before tossing it dramatically over her shoulder into the crowd.
Lily, oblivious, was already narrating an entirely new dragon-guard scenario to nobody in particular as we made our way up the stairs.
I looked back once more before we hit the concourse. Down on the ice, the clock ticked toward zero, and the Leopards bench was already starting to lean forward, sensing it, sensing the win closing in.
Luke stood in his crease, mask up now, sweat-soaked hair plastered to his forehead, watching the final seconds bleed off the clock with the same locked-in stillness he'd had all night.
I couldn't hear him from up here. Couldn't see his face clearly enough to read anything in it.
But something in the way he held himself made my chest go warm and unsteady at the same time.
Four to one.
The horn sounded before we made it out of the tunnel, and the whole building detonated behind us, a wall of sound so total I felt it in the floor beneath my shoes.
Lily jumped, startled, then grinned and started clapping along with everyone else, not even sure what she was celebrating.
I pulled out my phone. No new messages yet. I knew that for the next hour he would be buried in interviews and hugs, especially after a win like that in his first full game.
But somewhere under all of it, in a few hours, there would be a reservation with our name on it. A dress hanging in my closet I hadn't worn since before Lily was born.
I pushed all my fears back and I let myself feel something dangerously close to hope.