Page 82 of Delay of Game

Zach touched the side of Nate’s face with one hand, fingers gentle against it. Nate’s playoff beard had gotten a bit shaggy, but he could still feel Zach’s hand hot against his skin. “If I could lend it to you I would, buddy. But in this case you just gotta trust me, okay?”

Nate looked up at him, his warm brown eyes and messy hair and lopsided smile. He could focus on Zach’s familiar face. The roiling in his stomach didn’t vanish, exactly, but it calmed. He thought about all of the other times this year he’d taken a leap of faith, trusting Zach to catch him. How the only time he’d fallen had been the fault of his own insecurity.

“I do. Trust you.”

Zach kissed him again, brief and sweet. “We better get up. We have a Cup to win.”

Later on, Nate would never really be able to remember how he got through the rest of the morning, making them breakfast, sitting in the passenger seat as Zach drove them to the rink, going through the pregame stretches and equipment checks. It was like it had all been wiped from his memory and he’d suddenly opened his eyes and here it was: he was in the tunnel, dressed for the game and watching the team go about their little rituals.

Netty and Sally had a complicated series of chest and shoulder bumps. Bee and Mike had a torturously long secret handshake, which wasn’t really secret anymore. Gags practiced taking face-offs like his life depended on it, chopping the blade of his stick down against the rubber floor. Zach had his own fist bump and handshake variation with every guy on the team. Mäkelä crouched in front of them all, in position like he was challenging on a penalty shot or a breakaway, completely serene and ignoring any noise and any unwitting bumps from behind.

Nate watched all of them, filled with the kind of swelling affection he couldn’t control. These were his siblings. His family. They were on the precipice of doing something great together, and all he had to do was keep himself together and play his fucking heart out. Dig down just a little deeper within himself than he’d dug before, give just that little bit extra he might have been holding back. He understood now, the way that guys could end their careers on long playoff runs, pushing through injuries they had no business playing through.

It was stupid. It was just a piece of metal. It wasjustthe Cup.

Nate laughed, thinking that.Justthe Cup. It wasn’t just that: it was the hardest trophy to win in any sport, he was pretty sure. But it wasn’t just about the Cup. It was about the guys, about doing it with them. Doing it for them.

Nate took a deep breath, caught Zach’s eye.

Zach smiled, that lopsided, crooked smile that was just for Nate, even though they were surrounded by the rest of the team.

And just like that, Nate knew what he had to do.

The last time Zach had played in the Cup finals, he’d been a nineteen-year-old in Montreal, a little asshole hotshot with the deep-seated belief that the world had owed him everything because he was very fucking good at hockey. At the time, the Royal had been unstoppable: they’d had it all. The two-way center, the superstar defenseman, the hotshot goalie, the best checking line in hockey. They’d had scoring depth up and down the lineup. And they’d had Zach, with his stupid baby face and his scoring touch, in the middle.

It had been almost too easy. They’d swept two of their series and finished off the finals in five. He’d been out of his fucking mind with joy to win the Cup, but he hadn’t reallyunderstoodwhat winning meant. He hadn’t understood what team meant. Guys he’d thought were his brothers, guys he thought would support him—they’d won it together and those same guys had turned their backs on him just a few months later when the latest round of pictures had ended up making the rounds on Twitter and TikTok and Reddit and the rumors about his partying were spiraling out of control. Someone had gone to the general manager, whispered that he was aproblemin the locker room.

And then he’d been shipped out of town. They’d all wiped their hands of him.

And now, years later, here he was again. The Cons had fought their way to these finals, clawed their way through every season and every series. They had earned every right to be here with sweat and blood. They’d left everything on the ice.

This was histeam. This was Netty, always making him laugh, reminding him that he could still have fun, that hockey wasfun. This was Gags finally telling him what was going on and being able to point him in the right direction. This was Mike giving him a place to stay and a sympathetic ear. This was Bee, just being Bee.

He’d earned them too.

He’d never felt so sure about winning a game, even though he couldn’t have told you why. The Aces were a damn good team and had one of the best regular season records in recent history. They were a threat in every zone. And the Cons—well, they were the perennial underdog, even now that they’d managed to figure shit out. There was no reason to have felt so sure about it. But what he’d said to Nate about his gut wasn’t wrong.

Somehow, he just knew.

“Hey,” he said, when Nate shifted down the tunnel to stand next to him. “We’re gonna have to go out soon. You wanna give the boys a little talking-to?”

Nate flushed red, immediately and suddenly, the way he always did when he was the center of attention. But he met Zach’s eyes and calmed. “Yeah,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Boys!”

The team stopped what they were doing as one. Their heads turned to look at him. Nate took another deep breath and said, “This is it. The end. Do or die.” He paused for a second, like he was considering what to say. “We’ve played together as a team for almost three years now. And I just wanted to say that it has been an honor, every second. Whatever happens out there during the game, win or lose, I’m proud of all of you. But—I truly, I—this is our year. I just have a feeling.”

No one applauded, but Bee leaned forward to bonk her visor against Nate’s, and Zach could feel his chest swelling again. To hear his words in Nate’s mouth, both giving him confidence and inspiring the guys. He knew, deep in his stomach, that he was right.

Now he just had to prove it.

When Nate skated out onto the ice for the anthem and opening face-off, he took a moment to look up at the crowd, even though he couldn’treallysee them beyond the glare of the lights. The seats were sold out, and somehow, the Frank seemed filled even beyond its regular capacity, a sea of red, white, and blue, blurring into nothing.

Even now the noise rippled around the arena, shouts ofGo Cons Goandfuck the Aces. Strangely enough, it was thefuck the Aceschant right before the anthem that made him smile and feel more at ease. It was just such a Philly thing to do, not even letting up when Allie Martinez, the Cons’ longtime anthem singer, stood at center ice, waiting patiently for all of them to calm the fuck down.

The game itself seemed to go on forever and also to take no time at all. Vegas played heavy, but that was nothing surprising. This was the playoffs: everyone played heavy. And this was game seven of the finals. So that went double. Cross-checks went uncalled, interferences were ignored. The refs usually only managed to catch the most egregious offenses because they didn’t want to disrupt the flow of the game.

This was the shit Nate lived for, honestly. The punishing hits that left bruises on his body were just reminders of what he’d weathered. When he went down on one knee to block a slapshot, the sting so bad against the bone that he wasn’t sure if he’d have to go down the tunnel to get a shot to get him through the rest of the game, that was just proof that he was fucking committed. Nate might have been a coward when it came to talking about hisfeelings, but when it came to sacrificing the body—he had no hesitation.

It paid off. The team were playing out of their minds today. Mäkelä was on fire, like every shot the Aces made was smothered in his chest no matter where they were shooting from, the almost telepathic positioning he had during his best games. The shots were even and despite everything, despite every effort Nate made to push his aching knee through the paces, the score still sat steady at 1-1 in the third.

---