38. Mackie
MACKIE
A last-minute round trip to Miami is nine hundred and forty-seven dollars, but my fingers don’t even pause as I type in my mom’s credit card number, hit confirm, and watch the email drop into my inbox.
My dad was explicit about banning me from the arena.
He didn’t, however, specify which city’s arena.
It’s pure lawyer logic. It’s the kind of loophole reasoning that would make Kara call me an absolute genius, but I don’t call her. Speaking the plan aloud makes it real, and if it’s real, I might realize how insane it is and talk myself out of it. I can’t let that happen. Not tonight.
I leave a note on the kitchen island—staying at Kara’s tonight—and hate myself a little for the lie. But I’ve spent the last four days slowly losing my mind on my parents’ couch, watching the man I love play the worst series of his career. I physically cannot sit there for one more game.
By 4:30 AM I’m at the airport, and by 6:00 I’ve cleared security.
The TSA agent gave the box a long look through the X-ray machine before shrugging and pushing it through.
Now I’m curled up at the gate, knees pulled to my chest, Zach’s cap pulled low over my eyes as I finally text him.
It’s 9 AM in Miami which means he’s either at breakfast or warming up.
Me
what’s your hotel room number
Zach
319
why
Me
no reason
question
if someone were to show up at room 319 around noon today
hypothetically
would the door be open
Zach
Mackie
are you at the airport
Me
I’m at a gate
there’s a plane
I’m going to be on it
Zach
your dad said
Me
my dad said a lot of things
my dad said I’m not allowed near the arena
he didn’t say anything about hotels
Zach
the door will be open
The gate agent calls boarding. I put my headphones in, tuck the box under the seat in front of me, and watch the ground drop away.
I land at 11:40 and text Rodriguez from the Uber.
Me
I’m here. What floor is my dad on
Rodriguez
4. Do NOT go to 4. His room is right by the elevator
Use the side entrance by the pool
Me
you’re a good person Romeo Rodriguez
Rodriguez
I prefer accomplice
Zach pulls the door open before I can even lift my hand to knock. I had a whole bit prepared for this moment—something casual like room service or did someone order a fugitive, lines I’d rehearsed just to break the tension.
I don’t need it. The second I see him, the words evaporate.
I drop my bag and launch myself at him. My hands tangle in his hair as I push up onto my toes, but he’s already lifting me, his arms wrapping tight around my waist before my mouth even reaches his. He drags me into the room and the heavy hotel door clicks shut behind us, sealing us in.
“Take your pants off,” I whisper frantically against his jaw, my hands scrambling to pull the hem of his shirt up over his chest.
“Mackie, what the hell? You got here five seconds ago.”
“I know. And I haven’t touched you since Game 1. I’m going crazy.”
He looks down at me with that expression I’ll probably never get used to. “Fuck, I can’t believe you flew out here,” he breathes, a disbelieving laugh shaking his chest.
Then he dumps me backward onto the mattress. The frantic energy takes over, a clumsy, desperate scramble as we shove our clothes aside. His hands pin my hips to the sheets, heavy and grounding, and the moment his mouth is on me I forget every word I’ve ever spoken.
“God—” I cry out, arching into him, and his head snaps up immediately.
“Who in this hotel do you want to know you’re here, Mack?” he asks, his voice a low, rough murmur.
“No one will know it’s me,” I manage to gasp out, my fingers curling into the blanket. “They’ll just think one of the other guys has a girl over.”
“We’re not supposed to have anyone over. That’s the point.”
He shifts his weight, his hand coming up to cover my mouth.
I bite down playfully on the pad of his thumb.
He retaliates instantly with a gentle bite against the inside of my thigh that makes my hips buck violently upward.
The sound I make against his palm would have absolutely carried through the wall if he hadn’t smothered it.
His fingers find me, and I forget how to breathe.
He doesn’t let up—his hand firmly over my mouth, his fingers working me until I’m fisting the sheets and gripping his wrist to hold him tighter. Everything inside me pulls tight, bowing upward, and then the tension snaps.
“You’re insane,” he says as he crawls up my body and settles between my thighs. “How much was the ticket?”
“Like a thousand dollars, almost.”
He laughs quietly, but I would buy that ticket a million times over if it meant getting back to this bed.
When he pushes into me, the world stops. We both go completely still, his forehead dropping against mine. I feel the sudden catch of his breath, as if the reality of us being together finally hit him all at once.
“Fuck,” he breathes out. It’s barely a word, just an exhale of relief. I wrap my legs around his waist, anchoring him to me, and pull him closer.
It’s fast at first. It has to be. It’s the desperate, messy collision of four days apart, a three-game losing streak, and the crushing weight of a secret that’s suffocating us both.
I don’t care about the consequences anymore.
The entire universe is trying to keep us in separate orbits, and right now, it’s failing spectacularly.
I don’t know which one of us slows down first. Maybe it’s him.
He catches my wrist to press my hand into the pillow beside my head, threading his larger fingers through mine.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, and the intensity in his eyes overwhelms me.
I can’t deflect. I can’t make a joke. He’s looking at me like I’m the center of his world.
“I love you, Mackie,” he says softly. And my breath catches in my throat. My eyes fill with tears.
“I love you too,” I whisper.
He buries his face in my neck and shakes apart inside me, muffling a groan into my hair.
This is the version of us that I want to remember. The one that no one will ever see that only exists in hotel rooms and is worth every dollar and every lie and every risk I will ever take to get here.
We stay tangled up for a while. I never want to move from this bed, but my stomach has other plans. It growls loud enough that Zach lifts his head off the pillow and looks at me.
“I’ve been awake since four in the morning,” I say. “I had a coffee and half a bag of pretzels. I am running on fumes and adrenaline. If you don’t feed me, I’m going to eat you.”
“We can’t leave the room.”
“I know we can’t leave the room. That’s why God invented room service.” I sit up and grab the menu off the nightstand and flip it open. “Also I brought you something but you can’t have it until I eat.”
He orders us both burgers and fries. I eat half of mine in about ninety seconds. He watches me with this expression that’s somewhere between amused and horrified. I point a fry at him and say, “Don’t judge me, I earned this.” Then I place the box on his lap.
“Is it a cake?” he asks.
“It’s not a cake.” I laugh. “Open it.”
He pulls the lid off and goes still.
The mask is white with blue and green, team colors in the base design, but that’s not what he’s looking at.
The helmet artist worked all of them in—fifteen kids’ drawings from the youth center painted onto the mask in bright colors.
He picks it up and turns it in his hands, tracing the artwork with his thumb.
“I called the youth center where you learned to play,” I say. “And asked if the kids in the program could draw some hockey pictures. Barrett got them to your helmet artist. I wanted you to have something from before. From where it started.”
He sets the mask down carefully on the bed next to him and pulls me against his chest. His breathing catches once.
His hand comes up to the back of my head and stays there.
I don’t move. After a while he pulls back.
I don’t say anything about how he’s definitely tearing up.
I have good instincts about exactly one thing in my life, and it’s this.
“I’m wearing this tomorrow,” he says.
“That’s the idea.”
I wake up to him lacing his shoes in the dark. 6:35. The mask is already in his bag.
“Section 342,” I say from the bed. “Row 12.”
He turns. “Upper deck?”
“I bought cheap seats. I’m not made of money.”
“You flew all the way to Miami and bought cheap seats.”
“The tickets are expensive! It’s not easy to get potentially elimination game tickets the day before!”
He crosses back to the bed and kisses me, his hand on my jaw, and it’s not a goodbye kiss, it’s a later kiss, and I hold onto the front of his shirt for a second before I let go.
“You need four wins,” I say. “Starting tonight.”
I find my seat way up in the nosebleeds of the hostile arena, buried inside my black hoodie with Zach’s cap pulled low. I’m not dumb enough to wear Puckaneers’ colors into a Florida Vice elimination game.
When the teams file out for warmups, I scan the ice until I find number 35.
He’s already in the crease, falling into his routine.
He taps both posts, skates out to meet Dex, and bangs his stick against his defenseman’s pads.
His body language is electric. He’s present in a way he hasn’t been since the series started.
The first period is a scoreless grind. When Zach robs a Florida forward on a breakaway with a lightning-fast pad save, I grip my plastic armrest so hard my knuckles ache. For the first time in a week, the team actually looks like a team.
Halfway through the second period, Rodriguez finally breaks the deadlock. I’m on my feet screaming into the cavernous arena before I remember I’m surrounded by twenty thousand people who actively want us to lose. The woman in the Vice jersey next to me shoots me a nasty glare.
“Sorry,” I mumble, dropping back into my seat. “I just really like that player.”
It’s 1-0 until the final two minutes of the period, when Florida ties it up on a messy rebound. Even so, Zach makes three back-to-back saves to end the period that leave my heart hammering against my ribs.
It’s tied 1-1 going into the third. The tension in the building is thick enough to choke on.
Every time the puck crosses our blue line, my stomach drops, but Zach is an absolute wall.
Glove. Blocker. A desperation sprawl on a two-on-one rush where he reads the cross-ice pass perfectly and kicks his right pad out just in time to deflect the puck.
The home crowd groans in collective agony. I’m physically shaking in my seat.
With twelve minutes left, Dex carries the puck out of our zone and feeds it to Rodriguez at the blue line.
Time seems to slow down. Rodriguez holds the puck for a terrifying beat longer than any sane person would, drawing the defense, before threading a flawless pass to Brody in the slot.
Brody doesn’t hesitate. He buries it bar down.
The sharp, metallic ping of the crossbar echoes through the arena, followed instantly by the dead silence of a home crowd realizing a sweep isn’t happening tonight.
2-1.
I’m on my feet again. I’m the only person standing in my entire section, drowning in a sea of devastated home fans, and I don’t care.
Florida pulls their goalie with ninety seconds left. The ice is tilted heavily against us, and Barrett sends my dad out for the final defensive shift. My breath catches as I watch him throw his body in front of a slap shot, blocking it with his shin. He winces, stumbles slightly, but keeps skating.
With thirty seconds left on the clock, Rodriguez intercepts a pass in the neutral zone. The empty net is waiting at the far end of the ice. He has a clean shot, but he doesn’t take it. Instead, he drops a pass back to my dad.
My dad stands at center ice. The puck is on his stick. The net is sixty feet away. He takes the shot.
The puck glides across the empty ice and crosses the goal line just as the final horn blares. The arena completely deflates around me. We win. 3-1.
I want to throw my head back and scream into the rafters of this anonymous arena in a city where nobody knows my name. I want to grab the woman next to me and yell, THAT’S MY DAD AND THAT’S MY BOYFRIEND AND THEY’RE ON THE SAME TEAM AND IT’S A WHOLE THING.
But I don’t. I just sit down as the adrenaline high cracks right down the middle, letting the cold reality seep in.
It is a whole thing. My dad just scored an empty-netter to keep his season alive, and I’m sitting in the upper deck of an arena hiding from him.
This series is going to end in less than a week, and win or lose, the clock is ticking. When it’s over, we can’t hide anymore.
Zach
when do you fly out
Me
11:40
you?
Zach
flight’s loading at midnight
we’ll probably land before you
Me
you’ll DEFINITELY land before me I have a layover in Atlanta
Zach
thank you for coming
Me
stop
Zach
I mean it.
Me
I know you mean it
Zach
I could feel you here tonight
Me
you couldn’t feel me from section 342 you weirdo
Zach
something was different tonight
Rodriguez says hi
he says you owe him for the room logistics
Me
fair
Zach
fly safe
The series comes home.