Page 48 of Puck Tease
I didn’t care. My gaze was already fixed on the gleaming expanse of ice below.
Jax came out of the tunnel. He looked different. The frantic, wild energy was gone, replaced by a still, focused intensity that radiated from him like heat. He skated with a smooth, deadly precision, each glide purposeful. He lined up at center ice for the faceoff, his posture rigid, composed.
He looked up. His eyes, glacier-blue and sharp, found me in the surging crowd instantly, cutting through the noise and the faces.
He tapped his stick against his shin pads. Once. Twice. A private signal, a confirmation.
Then the puck dropped.
And Jax Carter went to war.
He scored forty seconds in. A clean breakaway, a quick wrister top shelf that beat the Michigan goalie clean and left him sprawled on the ice looking stupid.
3-1.
He assisted on the next one, threading a pass through three defenders that defied physics, a green and white streak that landed perfectly on his teammate’s stick.
3-2.
The whole building flipped in a heartbeat. One second it was dead quiet, the next the place erupted, Spartan fans on their feet losing their minds.
One minute left. Jax ate a monster hit in the corner, shoulder driven into the boards hard enough to rattle the glass. He popped right back up, puck still taped to his blade, spun off thecheck, and snapped a no-look pass to Tyler at the point. Tyler ripped it. Tie game.
3-3.
Overtime.
I sat there, clutching the thick hem of his hoodie, vibrating with his energy, with the raw, exhilarating force of his will. He wasn’t playing for the trophy anymore. He wasn’t playing for the scouts in the stands.
He was playing because I was watching.
In overtime, it took three minutes. Jax caught a rebound in front of the net. He didn't shoot immediately. He waited, held the puck on his stick for a heartbeat, freezing the goalie, his gaze unwavering, before roofing it with a flick of his wrist.
GAME OVER.
The team swarmed him, a chaotic pile-up of green and white. Gloves flew into the air like confetti. The mass of bodies crushed against the glass, a joyous, triumphant heap.
But as Jax was pressed against the boards, his face mashed against the plexiglass, he wasn’t looking at his teammates.
He was looking through the glass, up at section 104.
He found me.
He winked.
And as I sat there, sore and used, still wearing his oversized hoodie, a wave of profound understanding washed over me. The anger in the equipment room, the brutal, desperate act, hadn't been hate at all. It had been fear. The raw, terrifying fear of a man realizing he was no longer a solo act, that his performance, his very essence, was inextricably tied to another.
He had broken me in the dark so he could shine in the light.
And damn it, a hard, stupid surge of pride hit me square in the ribs, impossible to ignore.
10 – EXHIBITION
Sunday afternoons draped the apartment in a heavy, unnatural quiet. The air itself seemed to hum with a residual dullness, a lingering echo of Friday night’s reckless shouts and Saturday’s strained silence, all preceding the looming grind of Monday’s early alarm. Usually, these hours offered a reprieve, the apartment walls a solid promise of undisturbed solitude.
Not today.
The digital clock on the microwave glowed 1:00 PM. I stood in the exact center of the living room, a plastic bottle of Windex clutched in one hand, a roll of paper towels in the other. My skin prickled with goosebumps. I was naked.
