30. Jax
Chapter thirty
Jax
Riley’s office. Eight AM.
She’s already there when I walk in. Notebook open, coffee untouched. I take the chair beside her.
Riley clocks it. Doesn’t comment.
Forty minutes later, everyone in the room wants the same thing: clean lines, contained damage, language that doesn’t invite more questions.
My PR rep wants the hockey angle. Nova’s editor wants the journalist angle. Riley wants something she can keep from turning into a wildfire.
Separate statements. Separate positions. Separate problems.
Nova and I don’t give them that.
We agree to one thing.
No apology. No distance.
We nod. We stand. We leave.
Shoulder to shoulder.
Not because everything’s fine.
Because it isn’t.
Brody finds me at practice.
“Hey.” He falls into step beside me in the hall. “So I was thinking—”
“Don’t.”
“Hear me out—”
“Brody.”
“What if I just like — break Carson Webb’s nose. Fully and completely. As a gift.”
For half a second, I consider it.
Not because I need Brody doing my dirty work.
Because there is a very real part of me that would like to put Carson Webb through a fucking wall and spend five uninterrupted minutes making sure he understands exactly how badly he crossed the line.
Then I remember cameras exist.
And lawyers.
And playoffs.
And Nova doesn’t need me making myself the headline.
“No,” I say.
“Aiden’s in. Sebastian’s a maybe.”
“Brody.”
“Fine. Fine. Just let me know.”
He walks with me the rest of the way to the ice anyway. Doesn’t say anything else. Just walks beside me the way he walks into a puck battle — committed, no hesitation, fully present.
Liam passes us on the ice two minutes later. Looks at me. Two words.
“She good?”
From Liam that’s a full emotional check-in.
“She’s good,” I say.
He nods. Skates away.
Sebastian and Caleb are on opposite sides of something by lunch. I don’t ask. Don’t want to know.
After practice, I’m taping my stick in the equipment room when Katarina appears in the doorway with two coffees.
She offers me one.
“How is she?”
“Holding.”
“Yeah,” she says. “She does that.” She sips her coffee. “She’s scared, Jax. Some people just have better posture about it.”
She leaves me with the coffee and the question still sitting in the room after her.
I finish the tape job. Look at the wall. Think about posture.
Run the accounting.
Same way I run a bad game — start at the beginning, follow every read, find where the wrong call happened and correct it.
No drama.
No excuses.
Just the tape.
She sat there and told me the ugliest thing she had.
Not because she had a plan.
Because she finally ran out of places to carry it alone.
That matters.
I don’t know if I want it to yet, but it does.
She came to me before someone else did.
Late.
But she came.
Not her editor. Not legal. Not the room full of people who would have known how to package it.
Me.
That matters too.
And she didn’t come here as V. North. She came here as Nova Shaw and tried, every day, to be better.
I know the difference.
I’ve spent my whole career getting judged by the worst few seconds of a game. One bad read. One bad angle. One shot I should have had.
People love reducing you to the moment you missed.
I hate that.
So I can’t do it to her and pretend I’m being fair.
She was trying to make it right.
Not just fix it.
I can count all of that.
But I can count the other shit too.
She shut me out.
She let me stand there with my hands open while she decided, over and over, not to put the truth in them.
And I’m still pissed.
Game 3.
The ritual runs — same route, same steps, same tape — and the ghost doesn’t rise in warmups. What’s different is the building.
Twenty thousand people who’ve spent the last eighteen hours reading my girlfriend’s pen name and my save percentage in the same breath.
They roar when I come out. Loud.
But there’s a hitch in it.
A half-second where the building decides whether it still believes me. I hear it. I hear it from the tunnel and I hear it during anthem and I hear it on the opening faceoff and I’m a goalie. I hear everything.
Second period. Power play. Their top line. The center gets a clean look at the top of the circle — I’ve seen this shot a hundred times, I know this shot, I know exactly where it’s going. I move.
A fraction late.
The ghost is back.
Not a whisper. Not a half-inch of hesitation. Loud — louder than it’s been since before she named it, like it was saving up, like it knew the door was open again and came home.
The puck crosses the line.
4–1 final.
I let in three.
The locker room empties.
Brody — hand on my shoulder, no words, just there for a second, then gone. Aiden last, door held, eyes asking. I shake my head. The door closes.
I sit in the empty locker room with my gear still on and I run the second period on a loop. The read was right. The move was right. Everything was right except the fraction of a second.
The ghost came back when the room got loud.
I’m not going to pretend it didn’t.
My gear bag is on the bench.
I open it for my phone and the Post-it is right there on top.
Her handwriting — small, slightly slanted, the handwriting of someone who writes fast and doesn’t worry about it.
A drawing of Brick looking judgmental. His actual face.
Somehow she got his actual face — the half-closed eyes, the considering tilt of the head. And underneath it: acceptable.
I stare at it.
Three weeks.
I’ve been carrying this for three weeks without noticing. Through two playoff series and a Conference Final and every practice in between and it was just — there.
She drew this for me three weeks ago.
Didn’t hand it to me.
Didn’t make it a thing.
Just left it where I’d find it eventually.
The anger doesn’t leave. But it shifts.
I find her in the tunnel.
Same equipment crate. Same spot. She’s been here long enough that the postgame noise has gone muffled above us and she’s got that specific stillness of someone who has run out of arguments with herself for one day.
I sit down next to her.
I put the Post-it on the crate between us.
She looks at it and closes her eyes for a second.
“I forgot I drew that.”
“I know.”
A little quiet sits there.
Then she says, “You let in three.”
“Yeah.”
“That wasn’t all because of me.”
I look at the Post-it. Then at her.
“Not all of it,” I say.
She winces.
“I’m not doing this if you’re going to be careful with me.”
“I’m not being careful. I’m being accurate.”
That gets her to look at me.
“You shut me out,” I say. “That was real.”
“I know.”
“I’m still pissed.”
“I know,” she says, quieter.
I pick up the Post-it. Turn it over. Set it back down.
“But I was measuring the wrong thing.”
She doesn’t move.
“You came to me before it broke. You chose me when you could’ve kept running. And I wasn’t seeing that.”
The tunnel stays quiet.
“I don’t know how to stay,” she says. “I know how to pack. I know how to leave before it gets hard. I know how to handle things alone and call it being useful.” She looks down at her hands. “I’ve been doing it since I was eight years old and I am very good at it.”
I wait.
She keeps going.
“And I’m scared I’m going to do it again. That it’s going to get hard and my first instinct is going to be the same one because it always is.” She stops. Starts again. “I don’t want to leave this one.”
My hand goes still on the Post-it.
She says it again, quieter.
“I don’t want to leave this one.”
“I know that,” I say.
“You can’t just know things.”
“I’ve been watching you for months.”
That shuts her up for a second.
Good.
She looks at the Post-it on the crate between us.
“What don’t you know, then.”
I look at her.
“Whether you’re going to let me be in it with you the next time it gets hard.”
She lets that sit.
“That’s a lot, Jax.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
I hold my hand out. Not dramatic. Not a test. Just there.
She looks at it.
Then puts hers in it.
Two wins left.
I sit in the tunnel with her hand in mine and the Post-it on the crate and don’t say anything else. The ghost came back tonight because the room got loud. I know what to do with that.
What I don’t know is what comes after. After the story settles. After the world stops having opinions about us.
What she decides when there’s nothing left to manage.
That’s the part I can’t read yet.
But she’s still here.
So am I.