I turned my head slowly and looked at him.
He held my stare. He had never liked me. Tolerated me, at best, when I was useful. Resented me when I was expensive. Now he looked at me the way men looked at structural damage in a building they were already thinking about replacing—annoyed by the cost, convinced collapse was inevitable.
“If it were my call,” he growled quietly, “I’d have solved this already.”
Before I could respond, the crowd surged again, a sudden sharp rise of sound pulling every eye back to the ice. Boris had stripped their winger at the line and fed Shawn down low, and the chance developed so fast the whole bench stood at once in reaction.
The shot rang iron.
A collective groan ripped through the arena.
Rawlings stepped back like the conversation had bored him already. “Don’t make Ezra regret defending you.”
Then he turned and disappeared down the tunnel. I stared after him for half a second, jaw locked so hard a pulse started beating behind my ear.
The charges had been dismissed that morning and somehow the entire day had only gotten louder after that. Messages. League chatter. Talking heads. Reporters with suddenly softer tones and sharper questions. The kind of public switch that had nothing to do with understanding and everything to do with link clicks. They’d wanted a monster while the story was dirty. Now they wanted a redemption arc because those sold better.
Same circus. Different angle.
I looked back up at the ice.
Cam broke up a rush before it could develop, ate a hit along the boards, and still made the outlet pass. Oliver pickedit up in stride. Smart, patient, controlled. Taito rotated high in support. The whole structure held.
A few rows up behind the bench, a little boy in a Frosthawks jersey with 91 on the back was pressed against the glass, both palms flat, eyes wide enough to swallow the whole night. He couldn’t have been older than seven. His mouth moved around my name when he saw me look over.
When my next shift started, I threw myself into it with enough precision to feel punishing.
No drifting toward trouble. No feeding the thing in me that always wanted to answer force with more of it. I kept my lanes clean, finished checks when they were there, leaned on bodies in the corners, dug pucks free, planted myself net-front when we needed traffic, and gave them nothing they could point to later with smug, self-righteous little circles around the frame.
Jonah forced a turnover low. The puck kicked behind the net. I got there first, absorbed contact into the boards, and shielded it with my body long enough to slide it off to Oliver curling through the slot. He snapped the pass to Marco. Marco sold shot and sent it cross-ice instead.
Zee one-timed it home.
This time the red light didn’t just go on. It detonated.
The roof nearly came off the place.
Zee screamed like he’d been electrocuted, stick in the air, grin split wide across his face as he got swallowed by bodies at the side of the crease. The bench erupted again, and this time even I felt it—something volatile and bright moving through the entire arena, the kind of belief that made people reckless with their hope.
Four-one.
The best we’d looked all season.
No question.
I coasted toward the pile after the whistle, slower than the rest of them, and somewhere above the roar my gaze snagged on the PR suite glass high across the arena.
Too far to make out much clearly.
But I saw movement there. Dark silhouettes. Someone leaning forward near the front row. Someone else with a phone against their ear. A flash of gold at a wrist when a hand lifted.
Bea.
I knew it before my brain finished putting shape to it.
She’d be up there because that was her job. Tracking narrative, monitoring reactions, staying close enough to the action to move fast when the aftermath hit. Press conference after. Statements if needed. Damage control if someone else decided tonight still belonged to the courthouse instead of the scoreboard.
Because of me.