Page 40 of The Fall
“Yes, Coach,” I boom back.
“We need to match their intensity from the drop of the puck.” Coach claps his hands together. “Let’s get it done, boys!”
The room erupts. An itch to move, to glide, to fly starts in my legs.
The arena roars to life as we troop down the visitors’ tunnel and out onto the ice. The rink is dark, save for the glow of Philadelphia’s team colors swirling over the ice as the home team skates out. Thousands of voices rise in a swell of cheers, filling each space between my heartbeats.
Everything is raining down on me: the roar of the crowd, the biting cold, the smell of ice. I breathe it all in, let it fill me up.
The back of Blair’s glove brushes against me as we stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the blue line. His touch steadies me, centers me. “Ready?” he asks.
“I’m going to give you everything,” I promise him. Everything, everything I have, everything I am.
At center ice, right before puck-drop, our eyes meet, and I see the reflection of my own untamed heart in his gaze.
It’s him and me.
The puck drops.
Nine
“Damn, who are you right now?”Hayes’s arm wraps around my neck, and his voice booms in my ear. “I still cannot believe how lit up you were, Kicks! You were on fire!”
The whole team is buzzing, high off our win in Philadelphia. We’re all crammed into an elevator, and it’s a tight fit. I’m pressed against the wall with Hayes and Jared on either side of me. The guys are shouting and laughing, recounting highlights from the game. I can’t stop grinning.
My legs burn from the game, that good ache that means I left everything on the ice. We demolished Philly, absolutely demolished them. And I was part of it, not watching from the bench or trying to keep up. I drove plays, created chances, and buried my shot when it mattered.
Ding.
We spill out onto the rooftop deck of a Boston bar, a pack of hungry hockey players fresh off a win.
It’s a sleek oasis—low-slung couches and high-tops inside a glass-walled rooftop overlooking the city. Potted palms sway. Globe lights refract off the glass walls and the buildings around us, and they twinkle in place of the drowned-out starry sky.
We hit our hotel after our short flight from Philly, ditched our suits, and came straight here. The sun is setting over the skyline, casting everything in gold and rose. The air is late-spring heady, thick with salt and brine from the harbor. A fire pit pops nearby, and I can hear the rustle of the city below, traffic moving and horns honking, a far-off siren rising and falling.
I hang back while the guys claim tables, their backslaps and raucous voices rising across the rooftop.
The view, the laughter and the clink of glasses, the smell of grilled seafood—it’s overwhelming, but that’s par for the course today.
Blair appears beside me, leaning back against the railing with his arms crossed.
“Hey,” he says. The sun is setting behind him, casting his face in gold. He’s glowing, the light catching the edges of his jaw and the curve of his lips.
“Hey.” I shove my hands into my pockets and slide closer to him.
He tilts his head toward me. “You played amazing today.”
“I was trying to keep up with you.”
He snorts. “You’ve got that the wrong way around.”
I can’t look away.
“Let’s do this, boys!” Hawks’s voice booms across the bar. “Philly take-down deserves a proper celebration.”
I follow Blair across the rooftop to where the team has set up camp at a cluster of high-tops. Hayes raises a glass as we pull out two chairs. “To Torey! For being a fucking rock star today!”
Everyone lifts their glasses toward me.
