He smiled.
Small. Tentative. The kind of smile that cost everything to give because it came with no guarantee of return. The kind that saidI'm here,not as a declaration but as a question. The kind that a man who'd been left by everyone he'd ever trusted offered like an open hand, knowing it might get slapped away.
The cold inside me detonated.
Not outward. Not dangerously. Inward. It flooded through my veins like a river breaking through a dam, and everything it touched came alive. My fingers tingled inside my gloves. My legs, which had felt like concrete since the opening faceoff, suddenly remembered what they were for. The crease beneath my skates sharpened into focus with a clarity so acute I could see the individual scratches in the ice, could feel the texture of every groove through my blades.
The dragon roared awake behind my ribs. Not the agitated, pacing restlessness of the last four days. Something older. Something fundamental. The deep, resonant hum of recognition that I'd felt the first time Cinder had put his hands on me in the medical room and the cold had bent around him like it had been waiting.
He was here. He was here, and he was looking at me, and the smile on his face was terrified and brave and so goddamn beautiful that I wanted to skate off the ice, cross the bench, take his face in my frozen hands, and tell him every single thing I should have had the courage to say.
I couldn't do that. Not now. Not with eighteen thousand hostile fans, a one-goal deficit, and a season hanging by a thread.
But I could do this.
The whistle blew. The puck dropped. Nashville's center won it cleanly, drawing it back to the point, and their defenseman wound up for a slap shot that I'd been a half-second late on all night.
I wasn't late this time.
I read the release before his stick made contact. Shifted left, dropped into position, and caught the puck in my glove with a snap so clean it echoed off the glass. The crowd noise dipped, confused, because that save hadn't looked difficult. It hadn't been difficult. It had been instinct, pure and immediate, the cold channeling through my body the way it was supposed to when everything was aligned.
I set the puck down for a faceoff and tapped my posts. Left. Right. Crossbar.
This time, they answered.
Nashville came again. They always did. Their second line cycled low, working the puck along the boards with the grinding patience of a team protecting a lead. A forward tried to jam it through my five-hole on a wraparound. I sealed the post with my pad and kicked the rebound into the corner so hard it startled their winger.
Another shot, high blocker. I punched it out of the air.
Another, screened from the slot. I found it through their skaters, tracked it through four bodies, and smothered it against my chest before it had time to think about crossing the line.
Max skated past during a stoppage and glanced at me, then at the bench. He grinned. Slapped my pad with his stick and said, "There you are."
Cole tied it six minutes into the second period. A breakaway so fast the defenseman was still turning when Cole snapped it overthe goaltender's glove. One-one. The Dragons' bench erupted, and I banged my stick against the crossbar three times because the sound felt right again, felt like it belonged to me.
I didn't look at Cinder. Not directly. Just once in the tunnel and wished for telepathy. But I could feel him, and his second smile was stronger. The bond, the thing I'd been trying to starve by distance and silence, hummed steadily beneath my ribs like a frequency I'd been tuned to my entire life without knowing it.
I mattered to him. Even after everything I'd done. Even after I'd let a stranger in a hallway convince me that the safest thing I could do for the people I loved was to stop loving them where anyone could see.
Nashville pushed back in the third. They were desperate now, their coach shifting their top line, throwing everything at a tied game in their own building. The shots came in waves. I stopped them all.
A one-timer from the circle that I kicked away with my right pad. A deflection from the crease that I caught. A wraparound attempt that I denied by pressing my entire body against the post and refusing to give an inch.
Thirty saves. Thirty-one. Thirty-two.
And then Sorin, our veteran D-man, scored when Nashville was too busy worrying what Cole or Keegan were going to do.
We lost the faceoff. The puck bounced free, and I saw the play forming before anyone else did—the way you saw a car accident half a second before it happened.
Nashville’s center grabbed the puck and fired it across the ice to a winger already flying through the neutral zone. Suddenly there was nothing between him and me but open ice.
Declan tried to catch him. He backchecked hard, but he came in at the wrong angle, cutting toward the middle instead of forcing the play to the boards. It was a rookie mistake, and it gave the winger a clear lane straight to the net.
The winger pulled the puck to his backhand.
I shifted to cover for the gap Declan had left, sliding toward that side to cut off the shot, but it put me half an inch out of position.
The puck slipped between my pad and the post.