Chapter 47
Chapter Forty-Seven
Creed
Now . . .
We’re going to lose this game. I just know it.
Monty is on the net.
That is the entire problem.
Alberto Montoya Navarro Wade is doing what he does best, which is reading the play three seconds before any of us know we’re running it.
He stops Mihalik’s wrist shot at three-oh-eight.
He stops mine at four-fifty-two.
He stops the kid we called up from Hartford two weeks ago at six-thirteen, on a one-timer the kid should’ve buried. And the kid skates back to the bench, shaking his head the way young guys shake their heads when they’ve just learned what a real league goalie looks like from eight feet away.
I tap the kid’s helmet on his way past me.
“He read it before you shot it.”
“I didn’t know.”
“That’s not on you.”
“I know.”
“It’s a little on you.”
The kid laughs, breathless and pissed, which is the right reaction. If you can’t laugh after Monty robs you, you’ll spend the rest of the night skating around with your feelings hanging out, and nobody needs that on national television.
Mihalik drops onto the bench beside me and squirts water into his mouth. “Your brother-in-law is being annoying tonight.”
I roll my eyes. “The asshole is always annoying.”
“Tonight moreso.”
“Tonight he has a reason.”
“What reason?”
“He played at the Olympics with our backup. Hasn’t forgiven him for the third-period goal in the semifinal.”
Mihalik stares at me. “That was nine years ago.”
I shrug. “Monty Wade has the longest memory of any man in this league.”
“Goalies.”
“Exactly.”
Mihalik shakes his head like that explains every strange thing he has ever seen a goalie do, which, honestly, it does.
Across the ice, Monty is crouched in his crease, mask tilted down, eyes already tracking the next thing before the next thing exists.
He looks impossible in that net. Big, patient, irritatingly calm.
The puck goes behind him, and he doesn’t chase it because he knows where it’s going.
He knows where everyone is going. He knows where we want to go before we’ve earned the right to get there.
That’s Monty.
That’s why I hate playing against him.
That’s why I love him when he’s not standing between me and a game-tying goal.
Halston is in the box behind the bench.
Liv is beside him.
They’re in matching team caps and my jersey.
That should not hit me as hard as it does. It’s fabric. A number. A name across their backs that the league has printed a thousand times and sold to strangers in concourses from here to Boston.
But on them, it feels different.
On Halston, the jersey looks almost indecent because he’s still Halston under it. Perfect posture. Beautiful face. Contained, watchful, too elegant for a hockey arena, and still somehow more dangerous than half the men on the ice.
He’s watching the game like he watches everything now, taking in movement, exits, patterns, the way the crowd shifts when a hit comes late.
He’s better. Not fine. Better. There are parts of him still learning how to live outside survival, but he’s here, in Portland, in my jersey, with my family close enough to see him.
Liv is beside him, wearing my cap too low because she claims it gives her “sporting mystery,” which is something she said with a completely serious face and no right to be that cute.
She has her hands around a paper cup of coffee, which she probably hates because arena coffee tastes like burned regret.
She is watching me with that intense, overly-invested face she makes when she’s pretending she understands a defensive zone shift but mostly wants to yell at anyone who touches me.
They don’t usually travel with me.
This time, they did.
Because the Night Hawks were playing in Portland, and they’re officially meeting the Lafontaines.
Because after everything we’re doing, this is the most terrifying thing left. We’re letting ordinary people love us in daylight.
Luther is here, which is surprising since he only lives and breathes hockey. Thankfully, he had the day off and he lives close by. He’s been with the Seattle Sasquatch for four years, which means he’ll pretend the drive was nothing even though he hates traffic and will complain relentlessly.
Vesper lives here in Portland with her husbands, Monty and Callaway.
Vienna, their baby daughter, is one of my favorite people in the world.
She is also possibly the only person alive who can bully Monty Wade into wearing a plastic crown at breakfast and survive. Monty and Cally will do anything for their daughter.
Dad is here too.
Dad, who has been asking about “your people” in his careful, yet loving Lafontaine way for a couple of months.
Your people.
As if Hal and Liv are a team I’m bringing home instead of the two people I plan to spend the rest of my life choosing.
This is my last season.
I haven’t said it publicly. Not yet. I’ve said it to them. I’ve said it in therapy. I’ve said it to Fitz, who told me not to announce anything until he could manage the contractual consequences, because apparently, retirement is not an emotional event; it’s a multi-page strategy memo.
After this season, I need to decide.
We need to decide.
New York is full of history and ghosts. Florence has pieces of Liv.
Halston still has obligations that follow him like men in dark suits.
The West Coast could be a good option. Portland.
Seattle. Somewhere with rain and coffee and family close enough that our future doesn’t feel like a private island we have to defend.
They have to meet the Lafontaines before I can make my case, though.
Which means I have to play a hockey game against my brothers-in-law, who have decided tonight is a personal attack.
The first goal is theirs.
Of course it is.
Callaway gets it halfway through the first on a net-front scramble that should’ve been cleared twice.
I see him before the puck gets to him. I see him slide into the pocket behind our D, stick low, eyes already up.
Callaway doesn’t waste motion. He has that quiet, infuriating intelligence, the sort of player who doesn’t look dangerous until the puck is already behind your goalie.
He tips it in.
The Orcas crowd erupts.
Callaway skates past our bench with his mouth completely flat, which is worse than celebrating because he knows I can see him.
I point at him with my stick. “That was ugly.”
He doesn’t turn his head. “Counts the same.”
Mihalik snorts beside me. “Your family is annoying.”
I groan. “You have no idea.”
When I glance toward the box, Liv is on her feet, clapping because she likes Callaway, and apparently, loyalty becomes “nuanced” when my extended family scores on my team.
Halston is still seated.
He looks amused.
Traitor.
The second period is grinding, tight, mean hockey.
We start getting bodies to the net because if Monty can see it, he’ll stop it, and if he can’t see it, he’ll still probably stop it just to make a point.
Our D starts shooting low for pads. Monty kicks everything into corners.
Their D clears the crease. I take a cross-check to the ribs in front of the net and consider making it a whole legal matter because I’m married to a lawyer and I should use my resources.
Instead, I get up.
Monty taps my shin pad with his stick as the play moves out.
“You good?”
“I hate you.”
“Not an answer.”
“I’m fine.”
“Also not believable.”
“Play the puck, Wade.”
He does.
Perfectly.
Asshole.
During the media timeout, I look up again.
Liv’s eyes find mine right away.
There she is.
My wife, my impossible woman, leaning forward with both hands around her coffee, watching me like the whole arena is only a detail she has agreed to tolerate. She lifts her fingers once. Not a wave. Not quite. A tiny touch to the inside of her left wrist.
The trinity knot.
I feel mine under my tape and glove.
Halston sees her do it.
He touches his too—for me.
The noise drops away for half a second.
Then the whistle blows, and the game drags me back by the collar.
The third period is goaltending.
Monty stops everything we send at him.
Our second unit gets three shots on a power play, and Monty stops three shots on a fucking power play.
The Hartford kid gets a breakaway with four minutes left: finally reads the lane correctly, finally gets Monty moving, finally pulls him just far enough to open space on the blocker side.
Monty fishes the puck out of his glove and flips it to his defenseman like he’s been waiting for the kid to try exactly that since warmups.
The kid comes back to the bench breathing hard and staring at the ice.
I tap his shoulder.
“Better.”
“He stopped it.”
“Yeah. He’s a bastard. But it was better.”
Mihalik gets a slap shot from the point with ninety seconds left that should’ve been a goal. It’s screened. It’s hard. It changes direction off somebody’s pants.
Monty turns his shoulder a quarter inch.
A quarter fucking inch.
The puck goes into the netting behind the goal.
Mihalik puts both hands on top of his helmet.
I skate by Monty on the reset. “You’re making this personal.”
He looks at me through the cage. “It’s always personal when my woman is watching—and my in-laws are judging.” The asshole smirks.
The linesman skates between us before I can say more.
I get it with thirty-eight seconds left, on a play that starts at the blue line and turns into a scramble low. Their D overloaded on the wall, our winger throwing it toward the slot because sometimes the ugliest play is the one that saves you.
The rebound kicks out.
Nobody sees it.
I do.
I’m alone in the slot with a puck the Orcas’ D hasn’t located.
For half a breath, there is no crowd.
No family.
No last season.
No future waiting for me to make a case.
Only puck, net, goalie.
I shoot.
Monty has located it.
Of course, he has.
His glove comes across his body without his head moving, which is the thing he does that has been getting him on highlight reels since he was twenty-three years old. The puck disappears into leather.
The whistle blows.
The building roars.