Page 57 of Offensive Edge
They went over the boards again. With Rowan, Mateo, Vic, and Link, Theo felt goddamn invincible. His adrenaline was coursing through his bloodstream, making his pain fade. He could use his shoulder enough to play, and that’s all he cared about.
They were deep in the attack zone. Theo was waiting for Rowan to dig the puck out of the corner and pass to him. He was sending the puck straight to Theo when his stick was hacked out of his hand by a Storm defender. The ref’s arm shot up for a delayed penalty, and Theo picked his stick back up. As long as they kept possession, play would continue. The second a Storm player touched the puck, play would be called down, and their power play would start.
Link passed to Vic, and he saw Sammy sprint from the net to the bench. Drew hopped on the ice, and they would have six skaters until the end of the play.
They didn’t need to keep the play alive for long. Vic passed the puck back to Theo, who dished it over to Rowan behind the goal line. Rowan’s shot was physics-defying, and it narrowly made it into the net, top shelf.
Rowan fucking Foley. He turned straight to Theo and crashed into his arms, and for a split second, it was just the two of them. Every time that happened early in the season, Theo felt outside of his body, confused, hurt, yearning. Now, he had never felt more present.
Sammy headed back to his net as both teams reset at center ice. There were five minutes left on the clock. Since they scored on the delayed penalty, they wouldn’t get their power play, but it didn’t matter. They were ahead. The puck dropped, and Theo won his face-off again. His face-off win percentage had been okay throughout the season, but his postseason percentage had been killer. He was grateful for it now.
His line stayed on the ice long enough to secure possession before they hit the bench again. He was drinking his weight in Gatorade, and split a banana with Mateo as their team wound the clock down. Coach Peters sent the top line out for the final forty seconds. The Storm wasn’t going quietly, and they got another two shots on goal. Sammy was earning his salary and then some. They cleared their zone as the clock expired. The goal horn rang louder and more obnoxiously than Theo had ever heard it.
They were Stanley Cup Champions.
There was a mess of gloves and sticks on the ice. Theo tossed off his helmet, and Rowan followed suit as he beelined to Theo. He took Theo’s face in his hands and pressed their foreheads together.
“Winning this without you wouldn’t have been worth it. You are everything,” he said, his words difficult to hear over the cheering of the crowds. They had won the Cup, and Rowan was here reassuring him how much he meant to him.
Theo was exhausted and elated, pumped so full of emotion that his body couldn’t hold it in anymore. He was crying. He was happy. He was fucking tired. He loved Rowan Foley, possibly the best hockey player in the history of the game, with his entire heart. And he got to share the best moment of his life with him.
The team crushed together in one gigantic pile of happiness as they all screamed in each other’s faces, gripped on to each other’s jerseys, all clinging on to this moment for as long as they could. They had done it. This same exact group of guys would never do this together again. This moment was so special it almost hurt knowing it wouldn’t last forever.
When they calmed down, they made it through the handshake line, and Theo tried to say something nice to each guy he shook hands with. He was so deeply grateful he didn’t know how the Storm was feeling right now, but he also didn’t want to be an asshole.
They collected their little hats that Theo would put with his Western Conference finals hat. And finally, the side doors of the rink opened and the deputy commissioner of the league came out with the Conn Smythe Trophy. Theo already knew who was MVP, no matter what the official decision had been. But Theo didn’t need to worry about it. Rowan Foley wasn’t an overlooked, underrated player. He was phenomenal. And everyone knew it.
Rowan collected his trophy, shook the deputy commissioner’s hand, and skated back to Theo, the huge trophy in his hands.
“What the fuck?” he asked, just laughing with joy over what had just happened. He handed off the trophy to Assistant Coach Brablik behind the bench, and every player on the ice kept making their rounds within each other, congratulating everyone as they got set up to bring out the Cup.
Finally, the keepers of the Cup, along with the commissioner of the league, came out to present the Cup to Vic. There were handshakes, and photos, and while the chaos was happening, Rowan reached over to give Theo’s hand a squeeze. Rowan was right. This would be different if they weren’t doing this together. It would be worse.
Finally, Vic was allowed to take the Cup. He picked it up and, in one smooth movement, raised it over his head. The crowd exploded, the cheers an overwhelming wall of sound. Vic skated his lap around the ice, showing the Cup to their fans, and getting a thousand photographs of himself taken. And when his lap was over, he skated over to Rowan to hand it off.
“Fuck,” Rowan said, his hands shaking as Vic passed it over to him. “Theo,” he said, likelook at what we fucking did together.
When Rowan’s lap was done, he handed it directly to Theo. They had a moment where they were holding it together, living the dream they had talked about so often as kids. Theo never thought they would be here together, sharing a Stanley Cup. Soon, they would have matching Cup rings. Both their names would be engraved on this heavy thing.
When Rowan let go, Theo felt the full weight of it. He’d always heard guys say that it felt like nothing in the moments after you win it, but those guys did not have shoulder injuries.
There was no mandated order for who to pass the Cup to next, so Theo found Sammy, and Sammy put his whole body into lifting it over his head dramatically. Every person in San Jose probably heard him scream.
Every guy got his moment with the trophy, and Theo was grateful to see that he was not the only person who was crying.
Families were starting to make their way onto the ice, and Theo saw his mom with Rowan’s parents, and the two of them skated over to them, doing rounds of hugging, and then more hugging. Theo was used to him and his mom being a complete family unit. But it felt, in that moment, as they shared their joy together, that maybe Theo’s family was expanding.
From there, it was a blur of champagne and cheap beer. The locker room was ridiculously rowdy, and Theo cried again as Vic slotted the final puck into their wall tracker. Rowan had an arm wrapped around Theo’s waist, snuggled in to what Theo assumed was the most rank possible version of his armpit in the history of the universe. He was sure Rowan knew he had chosen the good shoulder, instead of the one that was aching considerably worse as the adrenaline had run its course through his bloodstream and his pain really showed itself.
Theo planted one big, wet kiss on Rowan’s forehead. In this context, all the boys were handsy with each other. Several such kisses had been doled out as they all took turns drinking out of the Cup. Their affection had always toed the line to not tip off anyone to the true nature of their relationship, and Theo and Rowan had already talked about how they didn’t want this moment to become about the two of them. This moment was about their team. If they ever came out, it would be later.
Theo was trying to soak in every single memory, every second of his boys together. The lineup would change over the summer. Guys would move on, sign elsewhere, retire. Eventually, Theo would retire too. But right now they had each other, and they had this trophy. And that was more than enough.
CHAPTER29
ROWAN
Rowan wokeup with the breeze on his face and an absolutely brutal headache. It took long moments to realize he was living in the aftermath of winning the Stanley fucking Cup.
