Page 100 of Triplets for the Pucking Playboys
Cass peeks back around the corner, raises an eyebrow, and mouths: “Go.”
I go.
The walk from the service corridor to the locker room is surreal, like moving through the dream of someone who always wanted to see the inside of a hockey arena after closing. It’s quieter now, the party muffled by three layers of concrete and the endless, echoing tunnels underneath the ice. I count my steps to distract myself from the fact that my hands are still sticky from confetti and that I may or may not be wearing two left shoes.
I pass a row of catering carts stacked with champagne buckets and the remains of a five-foot sub sandwich. The media room is at the end of the hall, half lit and empty except for a flock of folding chairs and the faint smell of old popcorn. I duck in to fix my hair, maybe splash some water on my face before braving the postgame circus.
I get as far as the water cooler before Finn finds me.
He comes in at a jog, sees me and stops, hands on hips, breathless in a way that has nothing to do with his cardiovascular health. For a moment, he doesn’t say anything. Just stands there, eyes roving from my face to my hoodie to my legs, which are still dusted with a faint layer of gold confetti.
“Hey,” I say, smoothing my hair. “Congrats on the MVP. That’s, what, your third?”
“Fourth,” he says, and it’s so on-brand I nearly laugh.
Finn walks over, closing the gap in three steps, and before I can get another word out, he kisses me. Not a tentative, let’s-not-get-caught kind of kiss, but the kind you see in old movies right before the world ends. His hands are cold from the ice, and his face is still red from the onslaught of cameras, but he kisses me like I’m the only thing he remembers from the last hour. I let myself fall into it, let the world collapse down to the taste of Gatorade and the prickle of his stubble against my cheek.
When he breaks, he’s smiling so hard I think he might pull something. “Did you see it?” he asks, forehead pressed to mine. “Did you see the shot?”
“Everyone saw the shot,” I say. “You’re going to be a meme for the rest of your life.”
He beams, then winces as if remembering his ribs are probably cracked. “Worth it.”
He kisses me again, softer this time, then takes my hand and leads me to a corner of the room, away from the glass door and the chance of prying eyes. I sink onto a folding chair, and he sits on my lap, which would be funny if he weren’t six five and made entirely of muscle and stubbornness.
For a minute, we just sit, wrapped around each other like the whole season has been leading to this. He buries his face in my neck, breathes in, and sighs. “You have no idea how much I needed that,” he says, voice muffled.
I run my fingers through his hair, still wet from the shower and the victory spray. “Rough day at the office?”
“You have no idea,” he says again, but this time it’s a joke. He slides into the seat next to me.
We talk, quietly, about everything and nothing: the game, the kids, how he missed breakfast because the hotel bagels tasted like old sponges. He teases me for crying on national TV when they handed Beau the Cup. I tease him for doing the same when he talked about our kids in his MVP speech.
He lifts his head and looks at me, serious now. “Thank you,” he says. “For…you know. All of it.”
“You’re welcome,” I say, even though the real answer is:Thank you, for not running. For not hiding. For making a life out of the ruins.But I’m not in the mood to be sentimental.
He grins. “You wanna make out in the green room before anyone finds us?”
I look at the clock. “We have six minutes.”
“That’s a new record.”
He slips his hands under my hoodie, cold palms on bare skin, and I shiver. He kisses me again, deep and thorough, and it’s like the last three years never happened—like it’s just us, sneaking around after morning skate, stealing time before the trainers come in and spoil the illusion.
Except it’s not just us anymore. It’s us, and three kids, and a career, and a city full of people who now know our names and our faces and, thanks to the Storm’s social media team, our home address. It’s messy, and hard, and sometimes so exhausting I want to throw my phone into the river and move to Canada.
But right now, it’s perfect.
Finn pulls away, hair askew and lips swollen, and says, “You still want to run away with us and the kids?”
I kiss him again, and say, “It’ll be chaos, but I do.”
He laughs, that big, helpless Finn laugh, and I feel the sound all the way down to my bones. I hear them: the unmistakable crosstalk of two men who should never have been let near a microphone, much less each other. The voices bounce down the hallway, ricocheting off the concrete in a way that even postgame cleanup can’t muffle.
Beau is shirtless, again, jersey slung over his shoulder like a towel. He’s still wet, this time with a froth of champagne and something that could either be blood or Sharpie, courtesy of a very determined fan. Grey is in full postgame mode, which means he’s still in his pads, but the rest of him is composed enough to pass as a human man and not a discount superhero. They stand close enough that I can smell the victory smoke and the barely-concealed terror of impending parenthood. Neither of them has ever looked so alive.
“Told you he’d find her first,” Beau says, elbowing Grey in the ribs and nodding at the closed door where Finn disappeared.
