Chapter 29 Brad
"Wilder, you with us?" Coach grabbed my shoulder, his eyes searching mine for the focus that had abandoned me.
"I'm here."
"No, you're not. But fake it for sixty minutes."
The opening faceoff came at me in slow motion.
Carolina's Steve—six-foot-five giant—won it clean, driving the puck back to their defense.
First shift, I tried to pivot left to pressure their winger.
My knee folded like origami. I caught myself on my stick, but Steve had already blown past me, forcing Martinez to scramble.
"You okay?" Theo hissed during the change.
"Peachy."
But I wasn't. Every stride felt like grinding broken glass in my joint.
Carolina smelled blood—they started running every play at me, forcing me to turn on the bad knee.
Aiden danced around me like I was a traffic cone.
Troy treated me like a turnstile. By the ten-minute mark, I'd been on ice for two grade-A chances against.
"You okay?" Theo hissed during the change.
"Fine."
"She's watching." He didn't look at me, eyes tracking the play. "Maria texted. They're at Serena's place, watching together."
Something unknotted in my chest. Not gone. Just... away.
The first period ended scoreless, but the shot count told the story: Carolina 14, Colorado 6. I'd been on for eight of those shots against. In the room, Dr. Patricia shot my knee full of something that made everything go numb from hip to ankle—lidocaine mixed with cortisone mixed with prayer.
"This is temporary," she warned, her hand lingering on my thigh as she pulled the needle away. "When it wears off, you're going to be in agony. You know that, right?"
"Just make it last twenty more minutes."
She shook her head. "You're such a fool, Brad. A stubborn fool."
Second period, we came out desperate. Derek went full video game mode, splitting their defense and roofing a backhand that had no business going in. 1-0 us. The building exploded. On the bench, I caught myself looking for Serena in the suite, forgetting she wasn't there.
Carolina answered four minutes later, and it was my fault. Their forecheck forced me to reverse behind our net, but my knee locked mid-turn. The puck squirted free. Steve pounced, banking it off our goalie's skate. 1-1. I slammed my stick against the boards hard enough to crack it.
"Hey." Theo grabbed my jersey. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself. We need you."
"You need someone who can actually skate."
"We need our captain."
Captain. The C on my jersey felt heavier than usual, weighted with responsibility I wasn't meeting. In the stands, Finn held his inhaler to his mouth, his little shoulders working too hard. Stress trigger—watching his dad fall apart on ice.
Between periods, I sat in my stall and closed my eyes, trying to find the zone that had carried me through hundreds of games. Instead, I found Serena's voice from this morning: "I can't do this." Neither could I, apparently. But I had to. For twenty more minutes, I had to.
Third period became french warfare. Every shift was a battle for inches.
Carolina trapped us in our zone for a two-minute stretch that felt like hours.
I blocked three shots—one with my face that opened a cut above my eye, painting my white jersey red.
The crowd loved it. Blood and hockey—America's real pastime.
With five minutes left, still tied, Troy caught me flat-footed again. He burned down the wing while I limped after him like a three-legged dog. His shot beat our goalie clean, but the post saved us—that beautiful, musical ping that means you're still alive.
Coach shortened my shifts—thirty seconds max, just enough to win a faceoff or clear a puck. But even that was agony. The numbing agent was wearing off, and every stride sent lightning from my ankle to my hip.
One minute left. Coach called timeout.
"We survive, we get overtime," he said, but his eyes were on me. "Wilder, you're done."
"Coach—"
"That's what they want you to think. That you're a liability. But I don't give a damn about what they think. Your teammates don't give a damn about what they think." He gestured toward the huddle. "Look around at your teammates—they need you, they believe in you."
He was right. But being right didn't make it easier to watch my team struggle because of my knee. From the bench, I could see everything—how they covered for my absence, Theo playing both wings, our defense stepping up.
The horn sounded. Overtime.
"Brad." Coach's hand landed on my shoulder. "One shift. Opening faceoff. This is your last game, your last chance to prove everyone wrong who doesn't believe in you."
One shift. One last dance with the game that had defined me.
The crowd was standing, eighteen thousand people screaming themselves hoarse. I saw Finn on the jumbotron, holding that sign—"MY DAD IS A WARRIOR"—tears streaming down his face. Sarah's mother had her arm around him, but he looked lost, incomplete.
Then I saw her. Serena stood at the tunnel entrance, chest heaving like she'd run there. Security was trying to stop her, but she wasn't backing down. Our eyes met across the ice. She pressed her hand to her stomach—a gesture so quick I almost missed it—then mouthed: "I'm sorry."
The puck dropped.
Overtime is binary. Win or die. No middle ground. At 8:47, after both teams had traded chances that stopped hearts, their defenseman—a rookie, nervous in his first Game 7—tried to sauce a pass through the neutral zone.
Bad decision.
The puck hit Theo's shin pad and bounced toward their zone. Everyone was changing, exhausted from the long shift. Everyone except me, because I'd been floating, conserving what little I had left.
The puck was mine.
I couldn't accelerate—my knee wouldn't allow it—but gravity and desperation created momentum. The breakaway opened before me like destiny. Their goalie—Andy, six-foot-four of Danish determination—came out to challenge.
Time crystallized. I could hear Finn's wheeze from a hundred feet away. Could see Serena pushing past security. Could feel every eye in the building willing the puck forward.
Andy expected speed I didn't have. He cheated forward, anticipating a deke. Instead, I did the only thing my body would allow—a simple snapshot, no fancy moves, just precision. The puck caught the microscopic gap between his pad and the post.
Red light. Horn. Pandemonium.
I collapsed more than celebrated, my knee finally admitting defeat. My teammates piled on, a mass of sweaty joy and disbelief. Through the chaos, I searched for them.
When I saw them coming—Serena in heels she couldn't run in, slipping on the ice, Finn being passed over the glass by security—nothing else existed.
Not the Cup waiting to be lifted, not the cameras tracking every move, not the twenty thousand people losing their minds.
Just this: the woman who'd left me gutted three hours ago and the boy who'd asked six times where she'd gone.
"You came." The words scraped out raw, accusatory and grateful simultaneously.
She crashed into me, her momentum nearly taking us both down on my destroyed knee. "I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry, I was at Maria's watching and you could barely skate and Finn kept using his inhaler and—"
"You left." I couldn't keep the hurt out of my voice, even with cameras recording every word.
"I know. I know. I'm—" She pulled back, mascara streaking down her face in rivers, hands shaking as they gripped my jersey. "Brad, I need to tell you something."
"Now? Here?" Commissioner was literally standing ten feet away with the Cup, waiting for his moment.
"I'm pregnant."
The arena noise became white static. My brain stopped processing language. Pregnant. Serena. Baby. The words wouldn't combine into meaning.
"Six weeks," she continued in a rush, like if she stopped talking she'd lose courage.
"Found out this morning at 7:23 AM. That's why I panicked with Finn's medication.
My brain was just—broken. And I thought if I can't handle one kid having an asthma attack, how can I handle two?
What if the baby has respiratory issues? What if—"
I kissed her. Not a movie kiss—messy and desperate, tasting tears and fear and hope. When I pulled back, we were both gasping.
"We're having a baby," I said, testing the words.
"You're not angry?"
"I'm everything. Angry, terrified, ecstatic, confused—" I pressed my forehead to hers. "But mostly just glad you're here."
"Wait, WHAT?" Finn's voice cut through our bubble. He stood beside us, inhaler in one hand, eyes cartoon-wide. "There's a BABY? In Serena? RIGHT NOW?"
The jumbotron had caught everything. Twenty thousand people now knew our business. The crowd's roar shifted, taking on a different quality—celebration mixed with gossip-hungry delight.
"Yeah, buddy," I managed, pulling him into our huddle. "A baby."
"But—" His face scrunched in seven-year-old calculation. "But Miss Serena left. She had a bag. Theo said she went to think."
Serena dropped to her knees on the ice, her dress soaking through immediately. "Finn, baby, I'm so sorry. I got scared. Really, really scared."
"Like when I can't breathe scared?"
"Exactly like that." She took his hands, inhaler and all. "I was scared I'd mess up. That I wouldn't be good enough for you or the baby."
"That's dumb," Finn said flatly. "You're already my mom."
The simple certainty of it destroyed her. She pulled him against her, sobbing into his hair while he patted her back like she was the child.
Commissioner cleared his throat. The entire hockey world was waiting. But Brad Wilder, Stanley Cup Champion, stayed on his knees on the ice, holding his complicated, expanding family.
"I need you both to promise," I said, including Finn in this. "No more running. From any of us. We're going to be scared —about the baby, about breathing, about everything. But we stay. We figure it out together."
"Pinky promise?" Finn extended his small finger, so serious it broke my heart.