28. Jax
Chapter twenty-eight
Jax
Seven to one against us.
I read all of it.
A smile creeps up the corner of my mouth.
I’ve been the underdog my whole career. Every camp. Every team. Every season in this city when nobody was coming to the games and the league talked about us like a footnote. I know exactly what to do with people who write you off.
You bring it on the ice.
I tape the spread inside my locker.
She’s at the counter when I come back out.
My shirt. Her coffee. Brick between her feet doing the weaving thing he does when he wants something and knows exactly how to get it.
“Seven to one,” she says without looking up from her phone.
“Yeah.”
“Hendricks and Cole said you’re a liability in high-pressure situations.”
“I know.”
“They said it twice.”
“Goes in the folder.”
She looks up. “You added a Cup Final folder.”
“Separate folder. Bigger font.”
The corner of her mouth. “That’s unhinged.”
“It’s working.”
She looks at me for a second. That look — the one where she’s decided something and hasn’t said it yet. She’s been carrying it. I’ve been watching it. I haven’t pushed.
She’ll say it when she’s ready.
And today isn’t the day to make her — today is Cup Final Game 1, and my head needs to be exactly one place.
“You’re going to destroy them,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“The folder speech was surprisingly motivational.”
“Keep it.”
She almost smiles. Goes back to her phone. I go get my gear.
By the time I pull into the arena lot, the spread is still sitting in my head.
Seven to one.
Fine.
Then I see him before I’m even out of the car.
Griffin Novak.
Standing near the players’ entrance like he belongs there. Long drive for a man with a game tonight.
I get out.
He sees me coming and doesn’t move.
“Mercer.”
“Novak.” I stop in front of him. “What the fuck are you doing at the players’ entrance?”
His mouth moves. Not a smile. Something uglier.
“Dropping something off.”
“For Kat?”
He lifts one shoulder. “She forgot it at Christmas.”
It’s June.
“If you’re here for Katarina, that entrance is over there.”
His eyes flick over me. “Saw the post.”
I don’t move.
“You and… Nova,” he says, like he’s testing whether it fits in his mouth.
My jaw tightens.
His lip curls. “She always did need someone to clean up her messes.”
“Careful.”
“Good luck trusting that one.”
Something in me goes feral. He sees it. Likes it.
I step closer. “Say her fucking name again.”
His face changes. Not much. Enough.
I have a game to play, and I’m not letting Griffin Novak drag his bullshit into my crease.
I shove past him.
Inside, I put him where I put everything that doesn’t get to touch the game.
Away.
The ritual starts at noon.
Same route from the locker room to the ice I’ve run since Year 1 of this franchise.
Same turns, same steps — I could do it blind and have, basically, on the bad nights when the lights felt too loud and I needed something that didn’t require thinking.
Twelve steps from the locker room door. Left at the equipment room.
Past the trainer’s office. The smell of the ice hits at the second turn — that specific cold that means something is about to happen.
One earbud in. Same track since juniors. I’m not telling anyone what it is.
I get to my stall.
The spread is taped inside my locker door. Seven to one against. I look at it once.
That’s enough.
The tape. Left to right. Thirteen wraps.
Same as always. Same as the first game I ever played in this building when we had four thousand people in the stands and half of them were there by accident.
Same as every game since. The number doesn’t change.
The order doesn’t change. It’s not superstition — it’s structure.
Something that holds when everything else is noise.
I’ve built everything from this crease. This city. This team. These men behind me who decided to believe in something the league didn’t take seriously until we made them.
Blocker last.
I pick it up. Turn it over. Run my thumb along the tape job.
The ghost doesn’t rise.
Quiet.
She named it for me in a tunnel and apparently that was what it took. Two seasons of managing it, hiding it, taping around it — and she sat down next to me without a recorder and said that was the ghost and something settled that I didn’t know was unsettled.
I retape the blocker anyway. Not because it needs it. Because this is the ritual and the ritual holds.
I go to my crease.
I’m ready.