Chapter 154 Playoffs
Chapter 154 Playoffs
Levi's POV
The arena is packed tighter than I've ever seen it, every seat filled, the noise already a living thing pressing down from the rafters before we've even taken the ice for warmups. Championship game. Everything we've worked four years for, condensed into sixty minutes and however many periods of overtime it takes to break us.
I haven't told the team about the rose on Anya's porch. I haven't told them about the extra security detail now stationed at the guesthouse, or the sleepless nights spent replaying camera footage that somehow, impossibly, shows nothing. I've kept all of it locked behind the locker room door, because Coach Reyes was right weeks ago, this ice is the one place the noise isn't allowed to follow me.
Tonight, more than any night before it, I need that to be true.
I go through warmups on autopilot, stick-handling drills happening somewhere below conscious effort while my mind keeps circling back to the porch, the rose, the black ribbon tied with a precision that felt more like a signature than a threat. I breathe through it, the way Coach taught me weeks ago, not erasing, compartmentalizing. Anya's safe tonight. Extra detail. She promised she'd be here. I hold onto that promise like a rope.
The pregame ritual helps. Same order every time, left skate first, tape wound three times around the same spot on my stick. Superstition, maybe, or just the human need for something to stay predictable when everything else refuses to.
"You good?" Marcus asks, lacing up beside me, voice pitched low enough that only I catch it.
"I'm good."
"You're lying, but I respect the effort." He claps my shoulder, and something steadying passes between us, the kind of understanding you only get from someone who's been in the trenches of the last month right alongside you. "Anya's fine. Extra detail's on her tonight. Focus on this."
I nod, tightening my skate laces with more force than necessary, letting the familiar ritual ground me. Tape on the stick. Water bottle in its slot. The particular metallic smell of the rink that's been the same since I was seven years old and just as terrified of failing as I am right now, just for entirely different reasons.
Coach Reyes gathers us before we take the ice, and for once his pregame speech isn't about strategy or plays or discipline. It's shorter than that.
"Whatever's chasing you off this ice," he says, and his eyes find mine for just a beat too long to be coincidence, "it doesn't get sixty minutes of your life tonight. You give this ice everything you've got, and you let it give you something back. That's the deal we make with this game. Every single time."
I feel that land somewhere deep, something in my chest loosening just slightly as we skate out into the wall of noise waiting for us.
The first period is a blur of adrenaline and old muscle memory, hard checks, faster breakouts than we've managed all season, a goal from Marcus off a rebound that sends our side of the arena into a roar so loud I feel it in my teeth. For the first time in weeks, my mind actually quiets. I catch Anya's usual seat once, early on, a flash of her jacket in the third section, and something in my chest unclenches enough to let me breathe easier through the rest of the period.
Second period, they answer back, two quick goals that flatten our lead and put something sharp and urgent back into the air. I catch myself glancing at the stands between whistles, an old habit from weeks of scanning crowds for a face that shouldn't be there, and I force my eyes back to the ice before the thought can fully form. Not now. Not here. Coach's voice cuts through the bench during intermission, steady and unshaken, reminding us that one bad period doesn't erase a whole season.
By the third period, it's tied, and the whole building feels like it's holding its breath along with us. Every shift feels like it lasts an hour and no time at all. Coach's voice cuts through every stoppage, sharp and certain, and I find myself skating harder than I have all season, like if I just give this everything, some cosmic balance will tip in my favor everywhere else too. It's irrational, but tonight I let myself believe it anyway, because the alternative, sitting with how little control I actually have right now, is worse.
With two minutes left, Marcus feeds me a pass through traffic I have no business receiving clean, and suddenly it's just me, the goalie, and the loudest silence I've ever heard as four thousand people wait to see what I do with it. Everything narrows to the width of the five-hole, four years of practice compressed into half a second of decision.
I don't think. I just shoot.
The net rattles.
The building detonates, sound crashing over the boards in a wave I feel more than hear, teammates screaming my name, gloves and sticks flying, and for one perfect second, none of it matters except this, the win, the ice, the version of my life that has always, reliably, made sense.
We win in overtime, twelve minutes of the most exhausting, exhilarating hockey I've ever played, ending on a Marcus breakaway that sends the entire team crashing into a pile at center ice, screaming, laughing, someone's helmet flying off in the chaos. For one pure, uncomplicated minute, I let myself feel nothing except this, the win, the team, the ice, the version of my life that's always made sense without complication.
Then I catch sight of the stands, scanning instinctively for Anya's face among the crowd pressing toward the glass, and my stomach drops.
She's not there.
She promised she'd be there. Front row, third section, exactly where she's sat every home game since we started dating, I can picture the seat, empty now, a stranger's coat draped over the back of it like it's been vacated for a while.
"Marcus." My voice comes out tight, the celebration around me suddenly distant, muffled, like I'm hearing it through water. "Anya's not here."
Marcus's grin drops instantly. "She texted me twenty minutes ago, said she was heading in, said the security detail was walking her to her seat"
My phone is already in my glove, hands clumsy with adrenaline and rising panic as I pull up her last message. Sent forty minutes ago. On my way, wouldn't miss this for anything.
Nothing since.
I call her. It rings four times and drops to voicemail.
I call the security line assigned to her detail. It rings twice before someone picks up, voice clipped, urgent in a way that turns my blood to ice before he even finishes the sentence.
"Mr. Thorne, we need you to come to the east entrance right now."
"Where's Anya?"
A pause that lasts a lifetime.
"We don't know. She never made it inside the arena."