34. Jax
Chapter thirty-four
Jax
She’s in the kitchen when I come out.
Wearing my hoodie.
The gray one she stole three weeks ago and hasn’t given back. The one I haven’t asked for, because watching her wear it is way better than having it.
She has coffee in one hand, her camera bag by the door, and Brick doing his supervisory loop between her feet like the morning requires his approval before it’s allowed to continue.
It all looks too normal.
That’s the thing that gets me.
Not the Cup Final. Not the arena waiting for me. Not the fact that in a few hours, everything I’ve spent four seasons working toward could either come together or fall apart.
Her.
In my kitchen.
Looking like she’s always going to be here.
I stare a second longer.
“Damn.” I hook a finger through the sleeve of the hoodie and give it a small tug. “You look good in that.”
She goes red the way she always goes red — like she didn’t see it coming even though I say it every time.
“Go win the Cup, Mercer.”
Something in my chest goes quiet.
The good kind.
The kind that’s been getting louder for months.
“Yeah.” That’s certain. I pick up my gear bag. “Nova.”
“Yeah?”
“Keep the hoodie.”
She’s still red when I walk out.
The whole drive to the arena, I’m already thinking about coming home.
Same route.
Twelve steps from the locker room door. Left at the equipment room. The smell of ice at the second turn — that specific cold that’s been there every game for four seasons, the one that means something is about to happen.
Same song. One earbud. Not telling anyone.
I get to my stall.
The locker door is empty where the folder used to be.
I stand there for a second and look at the space.
Seven to one against us. Expert panels unanimous.
Hendricks and Cole. Every analyst who wrote us off before Game 1.
I don’t need the paper anymore. I know what it says.
I’ve always known what it says. The folder served its purpose and now it’s in my bag and the door is empty and I’m still here.
The Cyclones are still here. One more game.
The tape. Thirteen wraps. Left to right. Blocker last.
I pick it up. Roll my right shoulder. Check the ghost.
Quiet.
For the first time in two seasons — completely, genuinely quiet. Not managed. Not held. Just quiet. I know where it lives. Someone named it for me in a tunnel and I’ve known where it lives ever since and tonight it doesn’t move.
I go to my crease.
I’m ready.
The building’s different for Game 6.
I’ve played in loud buildings. Playoff buildings.
Buildings where a sold-out crowd needs something from you and the noise is the pressure you perform under.
But this is home ice and this is the Cup Final and this city has been waiting since before the franchise existed, and the noise is something else entirely — it enters the body before the brain has a chance to process it. Sits in the sternum. Changes the air.
The glass is vibrating.
I stand in my crease and I let it in.
My team behind me.
Aiden — who stayed when he could’ve gone somewhere easier, who believed in this city before the city believed in itself.
Liam — who joined because he saw something worth building and hasn’t said more than ten words about it since.
Brody — irreplaceable, ridiculous, cries at every win and never once acknowledges it, and I would go to war for that man without a second thought.
Sebastian and Caleb. Coach Barnes, who has been running the same system for four seasons and never once flinched.
Every man who showed up when it was hard.
Four seasons. Everything we built from nothing.
I face the ice.
Everything outside the crease is noise.
First period.
The Reapers come at me early and hard. Their top line on the ice inside thirty seconds, moving fast, trying to establish something before we find our footing.
I stop it.
Aiden scores at 11:42 — the kind of goal that looks inevitable in replay, a shot off a rebound that he read before the rebound happened. Their power forward answers at 14:09. Clean shot, good angle, I had it and it caught the post wrong.
1-1.
I stop twelve shots. The ghost doesn’t come up once.
Second period.
Liam. Shorthanded.
Their defenseman pinches at the wrong moment — one second too slow getting back — and Liam reads it the way Liam reads everything: before it happens, quietly, with complete certainty.
He takes the puck the other way, one defenseman between him and the goalie, and puts it top shelf so clean it barely makes a sound going in.
He planned it from the face-off. That is exactly who Liam Steele is and has always been and I’ve never been more grateful for him than I am right now.
2-1 going into the third.
I stop nine more. The wall holds.
Third period. Nine minutes left.
The Reapers pull everything — line changes every thirty seconds, their best scorer touching the puck every shift. I stop four shots in a row. The building gets louder with every save, the arithmetic getting better with every second that comes off the clock.
Six minutes left.
Whistle. Scrum at the top of my crease — sticks down, jerseys grabbed, the standard post-whistle bullshit that everyone does to remind everyone else they’re there.
Griffin’s in it.
Of course he’s in it.
He’s saying something to Brody. Brody’s not engaging, which is restraint I didn’t know Brody had. Then Griffin tilts his head a quarter inch toward me and says something else and I don’t catch all of it but I catch the syllable.
V.
Loud enough I can hear it through the helmet. Just loud enough.
He’s looking at me when he says it.
My blocker hits the ice.
I don’t think about it. I’m halfway out of my crease before my brain registers the decision...
and by then it doesn’t matter because the building has already heard it — that frequency change, the gasp that’s not a gasp, the whole place realizing at once that goalies don’t do this, I don’t do this, I haven’t been out of my crease in four seasons except to celebrate something one of my guys did.
The linesman’s already moving.
Griffin’s already smiling.
I get one in.
Right hand, no glove, clean — the way I’ve taped it for eight years. His head goes back and the spray is real and the crowd hits a frequency I have literally never heard in this building in four seasons of playing here.
The linesman’s on me before I can swing again. Two of them, actually. They’ve got me by the arms and I’m not fighting them.
I got what I came for.
The whole building is on its feet.
On its feet.
The whole building standing for a goalie who just left his crease.
The ref points at me.
Two minutes. Roughing.
Brody is already cursing his way to the box to serve it for me.
Of course he is.
“Worth it,” he shouts across the ice.
“Shut up,” I call back.
He grins like an idiot and disappears behind the glass.
Camera’s on me the whole time. I know it is. I don’t look up.
I skate back to my crease.
Their power play sets up. Nineteen seconds in, their captain finds a seam and puts it past me clean.
2-2.
The arena goes quiet.
That one’s mine.
I gave them that goal.
I’m getting it back.
Not panicked. Not defeated. Just absorbing it. The whole building taking a breath together and deciding not to stop now.
The penalty ends. Brody comes out of the box and skates straight past me.
“Still worth it,” he says.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You literally did.”
“Not the thing I’m gonna say later.”
“Don’t say it later either.”
“Wasn’t gonna.”
He skates off.
I look at the clock.
Four minutes.
I look at the press box.
She’s there. Camera up. Doing her job.
I face the ice.
Overtime.
Aurora in the family section with both hands over her mouth.
Aiden’s name on her back, her belly under both elbows, the baby who’s going to know their whole life that they were here for this.
The bench — Liam still, the way he goes still when something is real.
Brody at the other end talking to himself.
Sebastian and Caleb shoulder to shoulder.
The entire building on its feet.
I’m in my crease.
I have been ready my whole career for exactly this.
Their best scorer gets the puck at the top of the circle.
Fifty-two seconds into overtime. Clean look. Full speed. No defenseman between him and me.
I know this shot.
I’ve watched the tape every morning for two weeks. I know his release point — high glove side, always, when he has time and space he goes high glove. He has time. He has space.
The ghost rises.
Right there in my blocker hand — the half-inch, the hesitation, the thing that lived in my right hand for two seasons before someone sat down next to me in a tunnel and named it for me. It rises.
I don’t flinch. I know where it lives.
I read the shot all the way in. Every second of it. The lean, the weight transfer, the shoulder telling me exactly where the puck is going before it leaves the tape. Glove hand up.
The puck hits leather.
Stays there.
The arena exhales all at once — one massive release of sound — and I just stand there in my crease and look at my glove.
The puck is in my hand.
Yeah.
Forty-one seconds later Aiden puts one top shelf on a two-on-one.
I hear the horn from my crease. I hear the building come apart. I hear Brody somewhere behind me making a sound I’ve never heard a human being make before. I hear a city that showed up before it was reasonable getting to be right.
I hear four seasons.
The pile finds me. Aiden first, then Liam, then Brody — arms around all of us, face completely wet, not acknowledging any of it — then Sebastian and Caleb and Coach Barnes and everyone, everyone, everyone.
I let it happen.
All of it.
Every single second.
Brody’s arms. Aiden’s voice saying something I can’t hear over the noise. Liam — who never does this, who has never once in four seasons been the one to reach first — gets his hand on the back of my neck and just holds it there for a second.
That’s the one that gets me.
I surface from the pile. Look up.
Through the crowd, through the chaos, through the building still losing its mind — through all of it — I find the press box.
She’s lowering the camera. Already looking at me.
One look across the whole arena.
That’s everything.