Page 131 of Slashed Bonds

I do.

Both palms, on her wet cheeks, cradling. Not holding her still. Holding her up. Her fists are still in my hoodie and her eyes are still full of the rage and I lean in until there’s nothing between us but the sound coming out of the headphones.

And I promise her the one thing I’ve never said to anyone.

Salvation.

“Then let’s make them pay.”

She stares at me.

Like I haven’t understood my own words yet. Like she’s waiting for me to catch up to what I’ve said and take it back.

Here’s what it means. I’ve had it drawn out in my head for three days, since a lawyer put a name to four jackets in a photo, and I’ve been waiting for the right to say it.

First, the ice. November. Their building. The one with a washroom in the administration wing that she’s never going to walk past without knowing what’s in it. We go in there and we take the game from them in front of their crowd, with her at center, and I make sure every draw she wins is against a man named Ross, and I make sure the cameras are on the dot when it happens.

That’s the part they’ll see. That’s the part they’ll have to live with.

And before November, there’s this week. There’s a game, and there’s a roster that’s watched her for six days, and there’s the thing I’ve been building since the tape.

Rage is fuel. Everyone says that. It’s also a bad fuel, the kind that burns the engine, and I’ve watched a dozen Alphas skate angry and end up in a penalty box with a season on the line. What she’s got on this path isn’t fuel. It’s pressure. It’s a thing that’s been held at depth for five years and has nowhere to go.

So I give it somewhere.

Roz’s 1-3-1. Me at the top, reading. Her on the left wall, waiting. Every draw she wins on her backhand, every outlet she reads before the defenseman’s finished thinking about it, every time she stops dead on the wall and lets a man skate into her, that’s pressure going through a valve.

The ice is the valve. It always was, for her. I’m making sure the valve’s pointed at a net.

And when it’s pointed at a net, the scoreboard does the rest, and the scoreboard is a language the committee understands, and the committee is the door to a building in Halbrook.

Every game between now and November is the same game. Every one of them is practice for the one that matters.

Second, the record. A pack that isn’t on any registry got removed from one, and removal takes signatures, and signatures live in offices, and my father’s lawyers have never once met an office they couldn’t get into. Whoever filed the integrity complaint. Whoever initiated the fraud investigation. Whoever decided what time to drop a body at an ambulance bay.

Names. Every one of them. On paper, where they can’t be un-said.

Including hers. The name the committee took off a roster with three lines and no signature. That goes back on. Not because a committee decides it should. Because a scoresheet in November will make the question of whether she belongs in that building unanswerable in any direction but one.

And third.

Third is Killian’s. Third is a parking lot in Kingsmere, scaled up, with time between each so the last one understands. I don’t know yet whether we go there. I know the door’s open, and I know she’s the one who gets to decide whether we walk through it.

Her throne. Her call. I carry the sword. She points.

That’s not a metaphor I’d have chosen a week ago. A week ago I’d have said a captain leads and a roster follows, and I’d have believed it, because I’ve never had a reason not to.

Then a woman walked into my lobby and put my goaltender on his knees with one word, and I understood that there are two kinds of leading, and I’ve only ever been good at one.

She’s the other kind. The kind you don’t follow. The kind you stand behind.

I don’t take it back.

I let her see it. In my eyes. The version of me I’ve shown to exactly two people, both of whom sleep on the second floor of a carriage house. The one that frightens me. Because when I look at the hollow reflection of the man I’m letting her see, there’s only one thing in it.

My father.

Covered in the blood of his enemies. Standing over a pack who thought an Omega was theirs to take because the system had already decided she’d never shine. Never thrive. Never spread her wings.