Page 109 of Playing Dirty
I scan the stands for my family, all four sisters and Mam and Dad cheering from their seats, but my gaze keeps catching on that one empty chair where Margot should be. I try not to let the disappointment get to me again and instead focus on the ice, but the frustration is starting to bleed into my game.
The pace is getting faster as we circle round, a quick pass to Jonesy nearly going astray as the play moves into their zone. I'm trying to find that old icy calm that used to come to me so easily, but the more I search for it, the more the agitation takes hold, the stakes of the night feeling heavier with every passing second.
The game is moving at a frantic clip, and Brennan is racing for a loose puck when he gives me a sharp, mocking look. Then, at the last possible second, he turns his frame and drives directly into my knee. The fucking old injury.
A bolt of white-hot pain shoots through the joint and I go down, watching as that bastard skates off unbothered. A round of boos and whistles echoes from the crowd as I get back to my feet, but the officials weren't looking Brennan's way and they let the play continue. Fuck's sake.
Jonesy is already shouting at the nearest linesman. "That was a fucking dirty move!"
"Aye, it was, but they're not going to call it," I growl out through gritted teeth, trying to shake the ache out of my leg.
"Fuck. He's getting sloppy and he doesn't want you to find your rhythm," Jonesy says, his jaw set. "The guy fights so fucking dirty; it's the only reason he's gotten this far."
I watch him skate toward their bench, my blood officially at a boil. Fuck this.
The game intensifies, a relentless exchange of hits andchances as the clock bleeds out. Then, late in the third, Betts hammers one home off a goalmouth scramble and the building comes apart. Just like that, we're level.
Jonesy finds a lane, Sam robbing a goal at the other end with a glove save that defies physics. Tom clears the zone, and we're all leaving everything on this ice. New York is throwing the kitchen sink at us, Brennan leading the charge, and the crowd is a living, breathing wall of noise.
I'm panting, lungs burning. It's a war of attrition, clawing for every inch of ice while my knee pulses with a rhythmic ache, but none of that matters now. There's only the fucking Cup, the weight of the glory we've been chasing, the winning moment you dream of in the garage back home.
"O'Rourke!" Coach bellows from the bench, "Lock in."
I nod, skating back toward the face-off circle, and the building hums with anticipation. The roar swells like a cathedral hymn, the vibrations moving straight through my skates and into my bones. The frustration of the hit fades into a cold, hard focus as I lock eyes with Brennan. I steal one quick glance up at my family, my heart hammering.
She's here.
Margot is on her feet, wearing my jersey, hair falling loose as she jumps in row three. She sees me looking and she isn't just cheering; she's jumping up and down with Fee, matching grins on their faces. She fucking came.
The sight of her hits me harder than any hit on the ice, a surge of adrenaline that makes the pain in my knee vanish. I take a deep breath, in for four, hold for four, out for four, looking at her face and letting it anchor me, then I turn back to the game.
Brennan lines up across from me, but Jonesy and I have the read on him now. We're a unit. He tries to slam me again, but this time I'm ready, and I don't budge.
Overtime is chaos, the pace frantic as we trade chances,sudden death in the truest sense of the words. We scramble in their zone, the puck sliding loose, and the crowd booms as the building begins to shake.
Jonesy is a blur on my wing, Betts is hammering at the point, and the air is thick with the sound of sticks on ice and desperate shouting. I look up and Margot is there, screaming with her whole heart, her face lit with a fire that matches the roar of the arena.
Then, deep into overtime, it opens.
Jonesy nods, touching it back to me, and I see the lane, their defense scrambling to close the gap. Brennan lunges for me, desperate and late, and I spin past him. The roar of the home crowd and the jeers from the pocket of traveling New York fans are all falling away into static. I hear Coach yelling something from the bench, but it's just background noise now.
The whole Final hanging in the balance, narrowing down to this one stretch of ice. This is what it all comes down to—every early morning, every hit I've taken since those first games visiting my cousins in Canada, the woman I love watching from the glass, my family, my squad, and every bit of stubbornness I possess.
Twenty thousand people are packed into the building but I can't even hear them. The icy calm floods through me, the noise turning to a distant hum. I only feel the bite of my skates and the puck flying off my blade. I cut inside past the last man and shoot for the exact corner I've been aiming for since I was eight years old.
It fucking goes in.
The crowd explodes into a roar that hits me in the chest as my teammates pour over the boards, gloves and sticks raining across the ice. Jonesy hits me like a freight train, howling, and the rest of them pile on in a chaotic wreck of black and gold. Somewhere at the bottom of it I'm screaming too, the shock breaking open into pure, unadulterated joy.
"We just won the fucking Cup!" Jonesy is roaring into my ear. Betts is right there too, openly weeping, the tough-guy act gone to ash as he sobs into my shoulder.
"We did it! We actually fucking did it!"
I pull myself out of the pile and look up toward row three. Margot is there at the glass, her eyes shining and glassy with tears, clapping for me and screaming so hard her face is flushed. I've never felt more alive.
Margot
I can't stop crying, the tears coming so fast I can't even wipe them away, and I'm alternating between hugging Fiadh and squeezing the life out of Saoirse, Ellie, and Lily. Cillian's mom is trying to record everything while weeping herself, his dad is practically glowing with pride, and we are all just a beautiful, emotional wreck.
