Chapter 78 CHAPTER 78
Chapter 78 CHAPTER 78
Jax’s Pov
The ice wasn't clean anymore.
During the fifteen-minute intermission, the arena crew’s massive blue resurfacing machine had laid down a smooth, wet skin of water across the sheet, but within twenty seconds of the opening whistle of the second period, we tore it to shreds.
The white surface was instantly scored with deep, jagged gashes, thick, gray lines of shaved ice flying three feet into the air as four pairs of heavy leather skates dug into the red line.
Central State came out expecting the same cautious, well-behaved Northwood squad they had steamrolled in the first period. Their right winger, a tall, clean-cut kid with a yellow visor, glided across our blue line with his head up, nonchalantly cradling the puck on his forehand like he was demonstrating a stick-handling drill for a youth camp.
He didn't see me coming until my shoulder was two inches from his jaw.
I didn't try to poke-check the puck, and I didn't try to match his stride. I threw two hundred and ten pounds of weight straight into his chest, a heavy, brutal, Detroit-style body check that made his plastic visor slam upward into his brow line.
BOOM-CLACK!
The impact echoed through the bottom bowl like a shotgun blast. He went down flat on his back, his stick clattering uselessly against the glass, his white skates flying up into the air as he hit the frozen surface hard enough to knock the wind completely out of his lungs.
"Whistle! Watch the hit!" their bench screamed, three players jumping up to slam their gloves against the wooden boards.
The referee’s whistle blew, a short, frantic pip-pip but he didn't raise his arm for a penalty. The hit was clean, legal, and violent as hell.
"Puck's loose! Take the lane!" I roared, my gravelly voice cutting right through the roaring air of the arena.
The game stopped being a polite athletic exhibition; it turned into an unpaved brawl on thirty yards of frozen water.
We stopped retreating into Coach Clain’s textbook defensive box. When Central State tried to execute their fast, three-foot passing cycles along the glass, Harrington didn't step back to cover the point, he drove his elbow straight into their center's chest protector, pinning him against the dasher boards until the puck died under their skates.
Liam skated like a runaway logging truck, throwing his six-foot-three frame into every yellow visor that dared to touch the red line, his heavy wooden stick coming down on their defensemen’s shin pads with a dry, punishing THACK every time they tried to clear the zone.
They were shocked.
Central State’s disciplined, high-speed system relied on space, rhythm, and clear ice. By turning every square foot of the rink into a raw, bloody warzone, we took their rhythm away. Their passes went wild, skittering off stick blades into the referee’s boots; their wingers started looking over their shoulders before they even caught the puck, their boots stutter-stepping near the boards as they braced for the next heavy blue jersey coming down the line.
Eight minutes into the period, the shift hit its absolute breaking point.
Central State’s lead defenseman, a stocky, six-foot senior with a gold captain's patch, tried to pin the puck against the left dasher boards near our blue line to waste time on the clock.
Julian was on him instantly.
There was no grace in Julian’s stride, no elegant arc to his turn. His blue plastic helmet was tilted low, his jaw set into a flat, indestructible line of iron as he drove his frame straight into the corner. He didn't care that his third floating rib was screaming under the white zinc tape, and he didn't care that the defenseman had three inches and twenty pounds on him.
Julian slammed his chest directly into the guy's shoulder, pinning him against the glass with a sickening, wet THUD.
"Get off me, Thorne!" the defenseman spat, driving his elbow backward straight into Julian’s ribs, right into the dark, purple-and-green bruise above his hip.
Julian didn't flinch. He didn't even groan.
His face went dead white under the halogen lights, his teeth biting down so hard on his lip that a thin line of dark blood trickled out the left corner of his mouth, but his hands stayed completely rock-solid on his stick. He absorbed the agonizing blow straight into his taped midsection, used the momentum of the check to wedge his stick blade beneath the defenseman's skate, and ripped the black rubber disc loose with a sharp, violent wrench of his forearms.
"JAX!" Julian screamed, his voice a jagged, bloody rasp that echoed off the glass.
He didn't look up. He chipped the puck out into the open ice of the neutral zone, a dirty, three-foot saucer pass that floated over two fallen sticks and landed flat on the blue line.
I was already moving.
I didn't skate like an academy defenseman; I skated like a man running down a runaway freight car on the Flint rail line. My heavy iron runners cut two-inch deep trenches into the ice as I caught the puck in stride, my dark eyes locked entirely on Central State's goalie.
There were no defensemen left between me and the net. They were trapped behind the play, scrambling in the corner, leaving forty feet of clear, blinding white sheet in front of my boots.
The goalie dropped into a low butterfly stance, spreading his gray leather pads wide across the crease, his glove extended to cover the top corner.
I didn't try to skate around him, and I didn't attempt a soft, clever stick-flick.
I took two massive, crushing strides toward the high slot, wound my Sherwood stick back until the wooden blade was parallel with my shoulder, and unloaded every ounce of my two-hundred-and-ten-pound frame into a raw, brutal slapshot.
BOOOM-CLACK!
The ash wood shaft flexed into a deep, terrifying curve before snapping straight, launching the vulcanized rubber disc at ninety-five miles an hour.
The puck didn't just sail past the goalie's glove; it cut through the air like an iron slug, hitting the underside of the top crossbar with a deafening, metallic PING-RATTLE before slamming into the back mesh of the net.
The green goal light flashed red instantly.
NORTHWOOD: 1 | CENTRAL STATE: 2
"YES!" I roared, throwing my gloves into the air as I skated at forty miles an hour straight into the glass behind the net, slamming my shoulder pads against the acrylic wall until the entire iron barrier shook.
Julian was the first one to reach me. He didn't glide, he threw his body straight into my chest, his arms locking around my neck, his cold, bloody cheek pressing into my collarbone as the rest of our line piled over us in a wild, barbaric mass of blue jerseys and heavy leather pads.
The deafening roar of twenty thousand Central State fans didn't just drop; it shattered.
The stadium went from a unified, arrogant wall of noise to a sudden, stunned silence that was broken only by the loud, static-filled sound of the arena horn resetting above the rafters.
The mocking chants, the endless “UN-LIST-ED!” that had filled the upper bowl for the entire first period, died completely. People in the front rows were leaning forward over the brass rails, their programs hanging limply in their hands, their mouths slightly open as they looked down at the pile of blue jerseys screaming against the glass.
The atmosphere in the building had completely flipped.
It wasn't an academy exhibition anymore. The twenty thousand fans sitting in the risers weren't watching a routine coronation of their golden Central State program; they were watching a pair of feral, desperate dogs tear a sixty-thousand-dollar system apart with their bare teeth.
Up in box four, behind the double-paned glass partitions, the thirty NHL draft board scouts weren't looking at their stat sheets or checking their black calfskin folders anymore.
Five of them had stepped straight to the edge of the glass, their brass-rimmed glasses pushed up on their foreheads, their eyes tracking Julian as he skated back toward our bench. They were whispering among themselves, pointing down at the white zinc tape showing through his torn shoulder harness, taking frantic, handwritten notes on the margins of their projection sheets.
I skated past the lower bowl behind our penalty box, my chest heaving, my heavy leather boots leaving deep, bloody-looking ice slush in my wake.
Arthur Thorne was still sitting there in his charcoal overcoat.
He hadn't moved an inch, and his silver-framed glasses were still resting straight on his nose. But his black fountain pen was no longer turning slowly between his fingers.
His long, white hands were frozen flat against his knees, his jaw set into a thin, tight line that showed the subtle, unpolished strain of a man watching his iron control slip away half an inch at a time.
I looked him straight in the eye as I glided past the glass, lifted my right glove, and wiped a smear of black rubber dust off my cheek, my dark eyes burning with an unholy, indestructible heat that made the old man's posture stiffen by a fraction of an inch.
We were coming for his game.
With less than two minutes left in the second period, the ice had turned into a complete bloodbath.
Central State was panicking. They weren't making crisp, three-foot passes anymore; they were dumping the puck out of their zone, their players breathing heavily through their gold visors, their eyes wide with a frantic, uncoordinated terror every time Liam or Harrington stepped over the blue line.
We pinned them deep inside their end for forty agonizing seconds.
I kept the puck at the right defense point, using my broad body to shield it from two lunging wingers, before firing a low, hard wrist shot toward the crowded net.
The puck didn't make it to the goalie; it hit Central State’s defenseman in the shin pad with a dull thump and dropped loose into the crease, spinning in a circle on the gray slush three inches outside the goal line.
Julian was there.
He didn't wait for a clean angle. He dove flat on his stomach across the wet ice, reaching out with his Sherwood stick with one hand, his fingers locked onto the wooden shaft like a vise grip. He swept the puck through the goalie's five-hole just as the gray leather pads came crashing down.
CLACK-PING!
The puck hit the back iron of the net.
The green light flashed red again.
NORTHWOOD: 2 | CENTRAL STATE: 2
The entire visiting bench erupted into a frenzy, our players slamming their stick blades against the wooden boards until the noise sounded like thunder rolling through a narrow canyon.
Julian was still on his knees inside the crease, his head raised, his blue eyes bright with a wild, triumphant fire as he lifted his right arm to celebrate the tying goal.
Then Central State’s left defenseman snapped.
Losing the lead, losing their pedigree, and watching an unlisted, scandal-stained center tie the National Championship game on their home ice was too much for his clean-cut, corporate ego to take.
As Julian was looking up at the scoreboard, the defenseman swung his heavy wooden stick backward in a violent, uncalled high-sticking arc, the rigid edge of his blade catching Julian straight across the front of his face.
CRACK-SHATTER!
The impact was so hard it completely shattered the clear plastic visor on Julian’s blue helmet, sending a shower of sharp, jagged plastic splinters flying across the red crease.
The edge of the wooden blade cut a deep, three-inch gash straight across Julian’s left cheekbone, the bright red blood spurting out instantly, spraying across his white shoulder pads and staining the clean ice below him a brilliant, terrible crimson.
Julian dropped back onto the ice, his hand flying to his face as the blood ran through his fingers.
My world went pitch black.
I didn't hear the referee’s whistle, and I didn't care about the two-minute penalty arm going up in the air.
I dropped my Sherwood stick onto the sheet, unpinned my heavy leather gloves with a single, violent tear of the Velcro straps, and charged across the red line like a two-hundred-pound locomotive off its rails.
"I'LL KILL YOU!" I roared, my bare, split knuckles flying straight for the defenseman's gold visor before he could even bring his hands up to defend himself.
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