Page 66 of Wild Card 13

Not the part of the world that belonged to us.

But the machinery around it. Travel staff. Sponsor contacts. Executive logistics. The quiet, invisible work that made road games look effortless to everyone who never thought about how much coordination went into moving an NHL team from one city to another.

Keith pulled her aside in the hotel lobby.

Sarah called her twice.

A donor representative shook her hand like she already knew exactly who Lucy Thomas was and why she mattered.

And Lucy handled all of it with that same composed expression that made me want to shake her just to see if anything real would fall out.

She was good.

Annoyingly so.

I should have been proud of her.

Instead, every time I looked at her, my chest tightened with something that felt a lot like resentment.

Not because she'd changed.

Because she hadn't needed me to do it.

Game day didn't help.

From the first shift, I felt half a step behind.

Not slow. Not bad. Just...off.

A pass hopped over my stick in the neutral zone. A shooting lane I normally saw closed before I pulled the trigger.

Coach never said anything. Nobody did.

Objectively, I wasn't playing poorly.

Subjectively, I knew better.

Every mistake felt bigger. Every missed opportunity replayedlonger. Every time I found myself sitting on the bench waiting for my next shift, my eyes drifted upward toward the executive suites before I caught myself.

What the hell are you doing?I yelled at myself.She’s probably not thinking about you at all.

When the final horn sounded and the scoreboard read 3–1, the loss settled over the room like wet concrete.

Nobody talked much walking back toward the locker room. Nobody needed to.

The season had already taught us how to lose. And still, it never got easier.

I peeled off my gloves harder than necessary and dropped into my stall.

The game replayed itself automatically. The missed read in the second. The chance I'd sent wide of the net. The forecheck I thought I could have finished harder.

None of those plays lost us the game.

Didn't matter. They all belonged to me now.

Coach moved through the room afterward, reminding us we'd flush it and move on. The words bounced harmlessly off my skull. Because all I could think about was how distracted I'd been since Lucy stepped onto that damn plane.

Like somehow I'd let eight years disappear the second she sat within my line of sight. Like one accidental touch had been enough to remind my body of everything my head had spent years trying to forget.