Chapter 11
Logan
The tunnel at the United Center in Chicago is narrow and cold.
We're lined up single file, helmets on, sticks taped, waiting for our cue. Cole is at the front, and I’m right behind him.
The noise from the arena above us is a deep, rolling thunder that vibrates through the floor and up through my skates.
Twenty-four hours ago, I was on a plane with a dead engine descending into Pittsburgh, gripping Blake's hand. Now I'm standing in a tunnel about to play a hockey game, and I’ve never felt more alive in my life.
The horn sounds and we hit the ice. The roar from the crowd is enormous. Eighteen thousand Chicago Chargers fans on their feet, not booing, not jeering, but applauding. The arena announcer's voice booms through the building.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the United Center and the Chicago Chargers organization would like to welcome the New York Renegades. We are grateful that all players, coaches, and staff are safe following yesterday's emergency landing in Pittsburgh. Let's show them how Chicago welcomes its guests.”
The ovation lasts a full minute. The Chargers players tap their sticks on the boards. Their captain skates over to Cole at center ice and shakes his hand, and the crowd gets louder.
Hockey is a brutal sport. We hit each other, fight each other, and talk shit about each other's mothers. But in moments like this, we're all the same. We're all men who go home to the people we love, and yesterday we were reminded that none of that is guaranteed.
When the puck drops, I’m flying.
My legs feel ten years younger, and every read I make is half a second faster than it should be. I close gaps before the Chargers forwards can think about entering the zone.
I step up at the blue line and strip their center clean and transition the puck to Liam in one motion. I lay out their power forward with a clean open-ice hit that sends him sliding into the boards, and the crowd groans.
Blake and I are in sync the way we are on our best nights, moving without speaking, covering each other's blind spots, switching seamlessly on zone entries.
In the second period, I take a point shot through traffic that deflects off a Chargers defenseman and trickles past the goalie. The red light goes off. My first goal in fourteen games.
The boys mob me against the glass. Liam jumps on my back and screams in my ear. Jake is yelling something about buying me a drink, and Torres, the rookie who was praying on the plane yesterday, is grinning so wide his mouth guard is falling out.
I skate back to the bench and sit down. The arena is loud and hostile, but I don't care. Jasmine loves me. Every single thing about this night feels like a second chance I don't deserve, but I'm taking anyway.
Third period, we lock it down. Cole scores on the power play, and Liam adds an insurance goal late. The Chargers push hard in the last five minutes, but our goalie is a wall, and Blake and I kill off a penalty with two minutes left by blocking everything Chicago throws at us.
Final score 4-2. The buzzer sounds, and the team pours off the bench. The celebration is louder than usual because every Renegades man knows that twenty=-four hours ago, we weren't sure we'd play this game.
In the locker room, the music is blasting, and Liam is standing on a bench conducting an invisible orchestra. Torres is FaceTiming his mother, who is crying and laughing at the same time. Theo is on the phone with Olivia, holding up the phone so Maya can hear the noise.
Cole finds me at my stall. “Hell of a game, Shaw. That goal was big.”
“Felt good.”
“You look different out there tonight. Lighter.”
“Almost dying will do that to you.”
Later, we head gather in the private dining room the hotel has reserved for us on the second floor.
I sit between Blake and Theo with a plate of steak and potatoes and a beer I'm nursing slowly.
The room is loud and warm, full of men who are happy to be alive and happy to have won and processing both of those things in the way hockey players process everything — by giving each other shit.
“I'm just saying, when the captain tells you to stay calm, you stay calm,” Jake says, pointing his fork at Torres. “You were over there saying Hail Marys.”
“I was praying for all of us,” Torres says. “You're welcome.”
“I was calm,” Liam says. “I was perfectly calm.”
“You grabbed my arm so hard you left a bruise,” Jake says, pulling up his sleeve.
“That was a reflex. I was reaching for the armrest.”
“My arm is not an armrest, Novak.”
“It was the closest thing available.”
I pull out my phone under the table and open the family group chat. It's been going all day. Mom sent fourteen messages yesterday, each one more frantic than the last, and Dad sent one that said, Glad you're safe. Call when you can.
Dom sent a string of texts and then a voice note that I listened to this morning. “Don't ever do that to us again,” he said, and Sarah's voice in the background shouting, “We love you, Logan!”
Nolan's messages are the most Nolan thing possible. Bro if you died I would have had to be the favorite son and I'm not ready for that kind of pressure.
I type into the group chat: Won tonight. 4-2. Scored a goal. Everyone's good. Heading home tomorrow morning.
Mom responds immediately: So proud of you sweetheart. Please fly safe tomorrow. I love you so much.
Dad: Good win. I'll watch the replay tomorrow. Your positioning on that goal was textbook.
Even after his son was on a plane with a dead engine. The man cannot help himself.
Dom: Nice goal bro. Sarah says hi. Get home safe.
Nolan: Scored against the Chargers? Cool. I scored a hat trick against them last month. Just saying.
I close the family chat and open my messages with Jasmine.
Me: Just finished dinner with the team. Flying home tomorrow morning. Should be back in New York by noon.
Her reply comes fast: How was the game?
We won 4-2. First goal in fourteen games. Felt overdue.
I wish I could have seen it in person.
Next home game. Family section. I want you there.
There's a pause before her reply and I can picture her on her couch in her sweats, holding her phone with both hands the way she does.
I'll be there.
I can't wait to see you tomorrow.
Me either. Now go celebrate with your team.
I glance to my left. Blake is eating his steak and staring straight ahead, but the corner of his mouth is turned up.
“Tell Jasmine I said hi,” he says without looking at me.
“I'm not texting Jasmine.”
“You've been smiling at your phone for five minutes. You don't smile at your phone for your mother.”
I put my phone away and finish my beer. I order another one and the night rolls on. Liam starts telling the story of the emergency landing from his perspective, which involves significantly more heroism and calm than anyone else on the plane remembers.
By midnight, the group thins out. Blake and I are the last two at the table. He finishes his beer and stands up. “Can’t wait to get back home,” he says.
“Yeah, me too.”
The flight home is smooth and uneventful. Every man on the plane is quietly grateful for both.
We land at Teterboro just before noon and bus back to MSG. The bus is quiet; most of the guys are sleeping or scrolling their phones, the adrenaline of the last two days finally wearing off.
Coach Mercer stands up at the front of the bus as we pull into the arena parking lot. He's not a speeches guy. He gives instructions, corrections, and tactical adjustments. He doesn't do inspirational.
Today is different.
“Listen up,” he says, and the bus goes quiet. “I'm not going to stand here and give you a motivational talk because you don't need one. What happened on that plane was real and it was serious and every man on this bus knows it.
“We got lucky. We got another chance.” He pauses and looks down the aisle and makes eye contact with every player one by one.
“Don't waste it. Play every game like it matters because it does.
Call your families tonight. Tell the people you love that you love them.
And show up Monday ready to work because we've got a season to finish.”
The bus rolls to a stop and the doors open and the guys file out into the cold New York afternoon.
I grab my bag from the luggage compartment and walk to my car in the players' lot. I toss the bag in the back seat, sit behind the wheel, and pull out my phone.
I just landed. I'm coming to you.
Jasmine: Door's open.
I start the car and pull out of the parking lot. I'm halfway down Eighth Avenue before it hits me. I have no idea where she lives. She said West Village at the End Zone, but that's a neighborhood, not an address.
I've been so focused on getting to her that I skipped the part where I figure out where I'm actually going.
I text her at a red light. I don't know where you live.
Her reply comes with a laughing emoji and a pin of her address. Then a second text.
We skipped that detail somewhere between the emergency landing and the love confessions.
I type back: Minor oversight.
Jasmine: Just get here, Shaw.
The drive to the West Village takes twenty-five minutes, and I make it in twenty. I find parking on her street, and I don't bother grabbing my bag from the back seat.
I walk into her building and take the elevator to the fourth floor. The hallway is quiet, and her door is at the end.
I knock.
The door opens seconds later, and she's standing there in a cream sweater and leggings with her hair down around her shoulders and no makeup and her feet bare on the hardwood floor.
She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.
She just looks at me, and I can’t tear my eyes off her, my heart going a million miles a minute, and neither of us speaks.
Then she steps forward, wraps her arms around me and presses her face into my chest. I pull her against me and hold her so tight her feet leave the ground.
We stand in her doorway holding each other. Her heart hammers against my chest, and mine is hammering back. The whole world narrows to the woman in my arms, the smell of her hair, and the warmth of her body against mine.
I pull back just enough to see her face. Her eyes are wet, and she's looking at me with ten years of walls crumbled to nothing.
I kiss her.
My mouth covers hers, and her hands grip the back of my neck. She pulls me inside the apartment and I kick the door shut behind us. I press her against the wall of her hallway and kiss her like I'm drowning and she's the first breath of air.
Her mouth is warm, and she tastes like coffee and mint. Her tongue slides against mine, and I groan against her lips. Her fingers rake through my hair, and her body arches against me, and I grip her waist with both hands and pull her hips flush against mine.
“I’ve missed this,” I confess against her lips, breathless.
She pulls me further into her apartment, both our steps clumsy. “Me too.”