25. Jax
Chapter twenty-five
Jax
Conference Final, games three through five.
The ghost is quiet.
Not gone — I know better than that. It lives in the right hand, in the blocker, in the half-inch that cost us Game 1. But it’s quiet now in a way it hasn’t been in two seasons. Someone named it for me in a tunnel and that — apparently — was what it took.
I’m playing the best hockey of my career.
I know this the way I know reads in the crease — not from the stats, not from the media, just from the inside of it.
The way everything slows down and clarifies.
The way I know where the puck is going before it gets there.
The way thirty-one feels exactly right on my back and the crease feels exactly right under my skates and the wall holds.
Game 3 — shutout. Thirty saves. The ghost doesn’t show up once.
Game 4 — two goals against. Both flukes, both situations where I read it right and the puck found a way anyway. Neither the hand. I know the difference now. Nova named it for me and now I know the difference.
Game 5 — one goal against in overtime. Bad bounce. Wrong angle. We lose. I know the difference between the ghost and hockey being hockey. Series is 3-2.
Three games with the ghost quiet. Game 5 was just hockey.
I stop telling myself it won’t last and start letting it just be true.
I call the Enforcers back on the morning of Game 6. Short conversation. They ask if I’ve given it thought. I tell them yeah. They ask where I landed. I tell them I’m staying.
Pause on their end.
Then: Understood. Good luck tonight.
I hang up.
Look at thirty-one on my jersey hanging in my locker.
Four seasons in this building.
Yeah.
I notice the specific week Nova becomes part of this team.
Week three of the Conference Final. Tuesday practice.
Brody waves her over to a team dinner like she’s been coming for years.
Nobody questions it. Katarina texts her recovery protocol ideas for Caleb’s hip — I find this out from Katarina mentioning it like it’s normal, which apparently it is.
Aurora sends her ultrasound photos. Nova sends back a voice memo that makes Aurora laugh so hard Aiden comes to check on her.
Liam nods at her in the hallway.
From Liam that’s a full social interaction.
I don’t say anything about it.
Game 6 morning.
My phone goes off at seven.
Nova:
expert panels this morning. unanimous. nobody picking the cyclones.
Me:
I know.
Nova:
you have a folder.
Me:
Getting bigger.
Nova:
can I see it after you win.
I look at it.
Me:
Yeah.
Nova:
also brody told me you eat the same breakfast every game day and I have opinions.
Me:
Don’t.
Nova:
eggs and plain toast jax. you could at least—
Me:
Don’t.
Nova:
fine. go win.
Nova:
seriously though. the folder thing is either the most unhinged or most disciplined thing I’ve ever heard.
Me:
Both.
Nova:
LOL…ok go win.
I put the phone down and go make eggs with plain toast.
She’s right about the power play. But I’m not going to tell her that.
The building’s different tonight. I feel it in the tunnel before warmups — that specific frequency, the one that means something has shifted in the city. Four seasons of building toward this. People showing up before it was reasonable. Believing before there was proof.
Now here.
I tape thirty-one on.
Thirteen wraps. Left to right.
Roll my right shoulder.
The ghost is quiet.
Good.
We win 4-2.
I stop thirty-one shots. The ghost doesn’t show up once. Not a whisper. Not a half-inch. Just me and the crease and the wall holding exactly the way it’s supposed to hold.
Aiden gets two. Liam gets one. Brody gets one on a shot that has no business going in and absolutely goes in and he celebrates like he engineered the whole thing from the beginning, which he did not, but I love this guy.
Final buzzer.
Cyclones are going to the Cup Final.
The locker room is loud in a way I’ve never heard it.
I’ve been in loud locker rooms. Playoff wins, series clinchers, the overtime win in Round 1 last year that had Brody crying into Aiden’s shoulder for six solid minutes. I know what loud looks like in here.
This is different.
This is four seasons of something finally arriving.
Liam calls us in before anyone gets too far into the champagne. The room goes quiet the way it always goes quiet for Liam — fast, complete, no exceptions. Even Brody stops mid-celebration, which is saying something.
Five sentences.
He talks about year one. What this city was before we got here. What people believed in before there was proof. He doesn’t dress it up. He just says it.
You gave them the reason. Go finish it.
Four seconds of silence.
Brody’s stick hits the boards.
Then Aiden’s. Then the whole room, one after another, until it sounds like the building is coming apart from the inside.
Brody is crying.
He does not acknowledge this.
Aiden sprays champagne at Coach Barnes — direct hit, Barnes doesn’t move, has been prepared for this exact moment since we made the Conference Final and takes it with complete dignity.
Sebastian and Caleb are doing something inadvisable in the corner that I photograph mentally for future reference.
Liam stands in the middle of all of it watching his team come apart at the seams.
I stand there too.
My team. My building. My city.
Four seasons in this room and it’s never felt like this.
My body goes to the press area before my brain decides to.
She’s across the room.
Camera down.
She’s been crying a little — I can see it, that brightness in her eyes she’d never admit to, the way she’s holding herself slightly too still. She sees me coming.
Doesn’t move.
I walk through the noise, the champagne, the cameras, Riley making notes in the corner, Brody yelling something I don’t hear. None of it.
I get to her.
I cup her face.
Her eyes on mine.
Then I kiss her.
Right there.
In front of every camera in the arena.
She makes a sound against my mouth and her hands come up to my jersey and she holds on and I hold her and the whole arena keeps celebrating and neither of us does anything about that for a long time.
When I pull back she’s looking at me.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” I say.
Brody, from approximately three feet away: “FINALLY.”
Aiden, not looking up from the champagne bottle he’s aiming at Coach Barnes: “Took him long enough.”
I ignore both of them.
She’s laughing now — the real one, the one that takes over her whole face. Her hair’s come loose. Eyes bright. She looks —
She looks good.
“You kissed me in front of Riley,” she says.
“And half the hockey world.”
“Jax—”
“You’re going to be on every sports channel in the country by morning.”
She stares at me. “Is that — are you bragging?”
“Little bit.” I look at her. “Damn, you look good.”
She goes red.
“I’ve been crying,” she says.
“I know.”
She doesn’t have anything to say to that. I don’t take it back.
I stay right where I am because there is nowhere else I want to be.
Her phone goes off.
She looks at it. Something moves across her face — the press conference smile going up for half a second before she gets it under control. She looks at me.
“I have to take this.”
“Take it.”
She steps away.
I watch her from across the room. The way she holds the phone — shoulders back, chin up, the specific posture of someone who knows exactly what they’re about to do.
Her free hand moves while she talks, the way it always moves when she’s thinking.
She goes very still when whatever they’re saying lands.
Then she stands up straighter.
There she is.
She comes back.
Stands in front of me.
“We need to talk,” she says.
“Okay.”
“Not here.”
“Okay.”
She looks at me. “You’re not going to ask what it is.”
“You’ll tell me.”
“What if it’s bad.”
I look at her. “Is it?”
She thinks about it. “I don’t know yet.”
“Then we’ll figure it out.”
Something moves across her face. Not the press conference smile. The real one — the one that means something.
“Okay,” she says.
We find a corner.
She tells me about the offer. Documentary series. Full season. Personal angle included — the journalist and the goalie, it writes itself, the network’s words not hers.
I listen.
All of it.
“What do you want to do,” I say.
“I want to write the real story.”
“Which is.”
“The team. The Cup run. The city. The people who built this from nothing.” She holds my eyes. “That’s the story worth telling.”
“And us.”
She doesn’t flinch.
“That’s not the network’s story.”
“What is it.”
“Mine.”
Then, quieter, “Ours. If that’s—yeah.”
I look at her.
She looks back.
“They can have the team,” she says. “The city. The Cup run. They don’t get you that way.”
Something in my chest goes very still.
“That’s a lot to say in four words,” I say.
“Five.”
“Yeah.” I take her hand. “Five.”
She calls her editor from the hall.
I stay close enough to hear but not close enough to crowd her. She’s calm on the phone — professional, direct, the specific Nova Shaw who knows exactly what she’s doing. She declines the personal angle. Takes the team documentary. Hangs up.
Turns around.
I’m already looking at her.
She looks — different. Lighter maybe. Like she put something down.
But she looks good like that too.
“Terrified?” I say.
She thinks about it. “Right kind of terrified.”
I nod once.
She’s still looking at me. That specific look — the one where she’s figured something out and decided not to say it yet. I’ve learned that look. I could pick it out of any crowd.
I could pick her out of any crowd.
“Four days,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“Cup Final.”
“Yeah.”
“The Reapers.”
“Yeah.”
She takes a breath. Lets it out. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
She texts me at 12:07 AM.
Nova:
my lips are still tingling.
Me:
I know another set of lips I’d like to make tingle.
Nova:
shut up jax you’re a pig.
Nova:
no seriously, did you see it. the kiss is everywhere. Cyclones goalie and the journalist embedded with the team.
Me:
We’re famous?
Nova:
yeah…LOL
I open Twitter.
The photo’s everywhere — her hands on my jersey, mine on her face, the whole arena behind us still going. Aurora took it. Of course she did.
I look at it.
A smile creeps up the corner of my mouth.
Yeah. That’s us.
Somewhere in Tampa Griffin Novak is looking at the same photo right now.
I know that fucker is chomping at the bit.
Four days until Game 1.
Good.
Let him see it coming.