Page 117 of The Off Limits Captain
The puck drops.
Ryan wins the draw and feeds it back to Kowalski. Colt takes the long pass, drives the slot, and gets robbed by the goalie’s glove. The crowd groans. A kid two rows down throws his hat in disgust, and his mother slaps the back of his head without taking her eyes off the play.
“See?” Sierra says. “Real hockey.”
I laugh before I can stop myself.
For the first time in weeks, the sound feels like mine.
Ryan takes a shift late in the first. He cuts through the neutral zone, absorbs a hit, keeps the puck, and sends it cross-ice without looking.
Beautiful.
Annoyingly, unfairly beautiful.
He circles back toward the bench.
For a beat, his head tilts up.
Section 312 is too high, too crowded, too far.
He cannot possibly see me.
Still, my heart trips like he does.
Sierra steals a Cheeto from the bag in my lap. “You are in so much trouble.”
“I know.”
Below us, Ryan jumps the boards for his next shift.
For once, I am not there to take anything.
I am just there.
Ryan
The final horn sounds and Frost Bank Center comes undone.
I stay bent over my stick for one breath. Two. Sweat drips from my chin onto the ice. My lungs burn. My shoulder throbs from getting driven into the boards in the last ninety seconds. Phoenix is finished. The first playoff berth in Stampede history belongs to San Antonio.
Around me, the boys are already gone wild.
Colt tackles Volkov in the crease. Finn throws both gloves in the air and nearly falls over one of them. Zach grabs me around the neck from behind and shouts directly into my ear.
“Playoffs, Cap.”
I let myself smile.
For a beat, I let myself want all of it: the noise, the crush of bodies in crimson and gold, the room I have helped build. This is the part nobody can package for me. No campaign. No slogan. Just twenty men who have bled for each other and earned the chance to keep going.
Phoenix’s captain grips my hand hard after the final whistle. “Hell of a game, McAllister.”
“You too.”
The moment passes. The building keeps shaking.
I skate toward the bench, but my eyes go up before I can stop them.
