Chapter 73: The Bounce

The first goal told me Cassian had come to punish the other team.

The second told me he had taken it personally.

Game six had barely settled into its first ten minutes when he started skating like the ice owed him something.

Every time he touched the puck, the building changed. Every time he cut through the neutral zone, the crowd got louder. By the end of the first period, I had already stopped pretending I was surprised by him.

I was just watching him now.

The series had been ugly. The last game had been uglier, the hit on Cassian, the ejection. The way he had gone to the locker room alone while I had stood behind with my jaw locked and my whole body telling me to go after him.

Now he was on the ice playing like he had decided the entire season would end on his terms.

The other team knew it too.

They tried to slow him down in the second. One stick, then another. One late hit that should have drawn a whistle and did not. Cassian got up each time and kept moving, he did not say a word, his body language said enough. He wanted this game badly enough to make the other team regret every cheap second of it.

I sat on the bench and watched him take a pass near the boards, cut inside, and fire the puck through traffic.

Goal.

The arena exploded.

I was on my feet before the replay even hit the screen. Cassian turned towards the bench and found me immediately. His face was bright with effort, sweat at his hairline, mouth open as he sucked in a breath, and still he looked at me like there was no one else in the building.

That look hit me hard.

He skated past and slapped my glove with his on the fly. “Again,” he said.

I looked at him. “You are saying that like it was a warm-up.”

He gave me a grin that was all heat and no restraint. “It was a warning.”

I should have rolled my eyes. I did not.

The third period was worse for them.

Cassian found another gear, then another one after that. He came off the wall in the offensive zone with a shoulder dip that fooled two defenders, slid the puck across to me, and then kept going as if he already knew where the return pass would land.

It did.

We buried it.

I turned back to him on the bench later and he was breathing hard, eyes still sharp, stick resting across his knees.

“You are impossible,” I said.

He glanced at me. “You are staring.”

“Because you are playing like a menace.”

He leaned a little towards me, just enough for his shoulder to brush mine. “That is your favorite version of me.”

I looked at him for one second too long. “Do not get cocky.”

“I am allowed a little.”

“You have two goals and three assists.”

He tilted his head. “And?”

“And enough attitude for the entire bench.”

Cassian laughed under his breath, then looked back out at the ice. “Keep up.”

I wanted to, which was the problem.

The rest of the game tightened into the kind of pressure that only showed up when one team was trying to survive and the other was trying to put the series away. Every hit got heavier. Every clear got louder. The other bench started taking risks they could not afford, but Cassian did not slow down.

He made it happen again in the final five minutes.

A loose puck, a hard battle behind the net, a quick feed into the slot. The shot snapped off his stick clean and low, beating the goalie cleanly on the far side.

Goal.

The crowd went feral.

I stood so fast my knee nearly caught for a second and I did not care. Cassian was already coming toward the bench with his gloves up, eyes bright, the kind of expression he got when the game had stopped being a game and become something far more dangerous for his opponents.

Three assists. Two goals.

A performance for the ages.

He knew it too.

The final horn sounded with us up by a wide enough margin that nobody on either bench was pretending otherwise now. This one belonged to us.

The arena roared.

I did not remember climbing over the boards. I only remembered the way the ice felt under my skates and the way my chest tightened when I saw Cassian coming straight for me from the other side of the rink, stick dropped, grin finally breaking through the fatigue.

He reached me first.

He grabbed me around the waist and held on.

I caught him automatically, hands landing at his back and shoulders, pulling him in before either of us could care about the cameras or the crowd or the fact that the rest of the arena was still moving around us. His face pressed against my shoulder for one second, then he tipped his head up and looked at me with that same fierce energy he had carried all night.

“That was for you,” he said.

My throat tightened.

I bent and kissed his forehead.

His breath caught.

“That was all you,” I said.

His mouth curved, soft and stunned and a little reckless. “Liar.”

I almost smiled. “I am standing right here.”

He laughed once, then pulled back just enough to look at me properly. “You saw that, right?”

I nodded. “I saw all of it.”

He gave me a look that said he wanted to ask for more, for reassurance, for something he did not want to say in front of the world. I gave him that without words. I kept my hand at his waist and let him see exactly what he had done to the ice, the game, the series, and me.

His eyes dropped to my mouth for a fraction of a second.

His grin widened slightly. “You are looking at me like that in front of everyone.”

I gave him the most innocent expression I could manage while still holding him around the waist in the middle of a playoff ice surface. “Like what?”

“Like you are about to drag me somewhere private.”

I kept my face very still. “Maybe I am.”

That earned me a low, breathless laugh and a glare that never made it all the way to irritation.

Around us, teammates were already joining in the celebration. Gloves were banging. Someone from the bench yelled Cassian’s name. Danton was coming over with the kind of expression that meant he had already decided to be proud and grumpy about it at the same time.

Raffi shouted from somewhere behind us, “There he is!”

Cassian did not even turn around. He kept looking at me.

That was the thing about him. He could have a thousand people in the building cheering his name and still look at me like I was the only one he wanted to hear from first.

Danton reached us and pointed a finger between us. “Win the game, then hug it out on your own time.”

Cassian laughed. “We did win.”

“That is not what I meant.”

I looked at Danton. “You are going to survive this?”

He gave me a look that said he had not survived this long by being surprised often. “I am too old for this team.”

Raffi called out, “That is a yes.”

Right then, standing on the ice with Cassian in my arms, none of it felt bigger than the fact that he had played one of the best games I had ever seen him play.

And he had done it like he had something to prove.

Maybe to the other team.

Maybe to the crowd.

Maybe to the part of the world that kept trying to make him smaller than he was.

Maybe to me.

I looked at him and said, low enough that only he would hear, “You were insane tonight.”

His mouth curved. “I know.”

“That was not supposed to be a compliment.”

“It was in my head.”

I gave him a flat look. “Of course it was.”

He laughed again, then tightened his hold on my sleeve for a second before letting go.

Cassian had just given me a performance nobody would forget.

And beneath all of it, I still knew the truth.

The next round was coming.