Chapter 76: The Magic

The first pass told me everything.

Cassian did not even look for the puck. He just moved, and I sent it to the exact spot he was about to reach.

That was how Game Two started.

It didn’t start with a shout, a hit or the crowd. It started with the small, sharp certainty that he was already where I needed him to be.

The building was loud from the opening face-off, but the sound did not get to me the way it had in Game One. Tonight felt different from the first shift, like the ice had finally decided to stop fighting us and start working for us instead.

Cassian caught my pass in stride and cut through the neutral zone without slowing.

I saw the defense collapse before they did.

He slid it back to the point before the lane even opened all the way, and by the time the shot came through traffic, I was already moving to cover the rebound.

That was the first one.

It wasn’t a goal yet, just a statement.

Cassian looked at me once on the change, and the corner of his mouth moved like he already knew what kind of night this was becoming.

I got the puck again two shifts later. Then again after that.

Each time, he found space before I could fully think it through. Each time, I found him without having to look long. It should not have felt that easy. It should not have felt that natural. But it did.

We had played together all year. We had built chemistry, trust, timing, all the things coaches talked about when they wanted to make a line sound like a machine. But this was different, this was faster than thought. Cassian was not just reading me. He was there before I had finished making the decision.

The first goal came six minutes in.

I carried the puck over the blue line, drew the defender toward me, then dropped it back to Cassian as he cut into the slot from the weak side. He did not hesitate. One touch. One shot. Top shelf.

The arena exploded.

I turned towards him before I meant to. He had already flung his arms up once, then skated straight toward me with a grin that looked too bright for the middle of a Finals game. He hit me with a glove to the shoulder and shouted, “There it is.”

I laughed once, too short to be anything but real. “You were open.”

He shot me a look that was half challenge and half satisfaction. “Because you saw it.”

I did not answer.

He did not need me to.

The second goal came midway through the period, and it felt almost worse for the other team because this one was uglier and cleaner all at once. Cassian won the puck along the boards, slipped past two defenders with a shoulder fake, and fed it back to me at the point without even checking twice. I took the shot. It hit a stick, changed direction, and slid in.

We did not even need to celebrate to know what had just happened.

Cassian turned towards the bench and looked at me with that same heavy, electric stare he got when the game started to move the way we wanted it to. Too much heat in it to call it a hockey look alone.

It was never just hockey with him.

On the bench, Danton leaned past the whiteboard and pointed at us with the marker. “That. Keep doing that.”

Raffi, sitting two seats down, muttered, “He says that like he is not enjoying it.”

Cassian heard him and gave him a flat look. “Focus on your own line.”

Raffi grinned. “I am focused on the fact that you two are starting to look telepathic.”

I glanced at Cassian.

He looked at me.

We both looked away at once, which only made Raffi laugh harder.

The crowd started to get into it by the end of the first. Every entry got louder. Every hit got a reaction. The other team was trying to slow us down now, leaning on us harder, crowding Cassian at every turn. It did not matter. He kept moving.

And every time he came back to the bench, his eyes found mine before anyone else’s.

I should have been distracted by the noise. I was not.

There was a moment in the second period, right after a face-off, when he turned up ice and I sent him a pass so clean he did not even have to adjust his blade. He took it through the neutral zone and skated into the zone with that low, controlled speed that always made defenders back up half a step too early. He dragged the puck across his body, froze one man, and then fed it back to me just as the lane opened.

I hit the puck first time.

Goal.

The building shook.

I was already moving towards him when he turned, and the second we met near the face-off dot, he caught the front of my jersey and pulled me in just enough to keep it private for the cameras and impossible for me to ignore.

His voice was rough with effort. “That was stupidly good.”

I almost smiled. “You set it up.”

“I know.” His eyes stayed on mine. “I just wanted to hear you say it was good.”

I looked away first because I had to.

The rest of the period got tighter. Their goalie settled in. Their defense got meaner. One of their forwards started taking runs at us after the whistle, which usually meant they were running out of answers. They still could not stop Cassian from finding seams. If anything, the pressure made him sharper.

He hit me late in the period with a pass from behind the net that I did not see until it was already on my stick. I slid it across, we got the shot off, and the rebound found its way into the net after a scramble in front that took half the crease with it.

Three to one.

Cassian looked at me from the goal line like he could hardly believe we were doing this in real time.

I could.

That was the problem.

Everything about the way he played tonight had that same impossible feeling. He moved like he trusted me to be exactly where the puck needed to be, and every time I got it to him, he turned it into something dangerous.

The kind of dangerous that wins championships.

By the third period, the other team was bleeding confidence.

Cassian got his second of the night on a break where I carried the puck wide, pulled the defender with me, then slid it into the middle as soon as I saw Cassian cut across the lane.

He shot before anyone could close.

Goal.

His arms went up before the puck had even settled in the net.

The crowd erupted like the building itself had finally decided it was ours.

The final goal came late, an insurance marker after a turnover at center ice. Cassian grabbed the puck, crossed the blue line, drew the defense to him, and slipped it to the far side where our winger buried it into the open net.

Five to two.

That was the game.

The last minutes burned off fast after that. The crowd was already on its feet. I could feel the building moving with the clock. Every second after the final goal felt like waiting for the inevitable.

Then the horn sounded.

We had won.

Game Two.

I looked up just as the crowd rose into the noise, the team on the bench erupting behind me, gloves slamming, sticks banging, guys shouting over one another like they had all been waiting to breathe again. Danton had both hands on the glass, the closest he ever got to looking emotional in public. Raffi was already yelling something unintelligible at the ceiling.

Cassian came in fast, helmet off, sweat at his temples, grin breaking wide now that the game was over and the pressure had finally cracked. He stopped in front of me, grabbed my arm, and pulled me into a hard embrace right there on the ice.

I held on immediately.

His face pressed into my shoulder for half a second. Then he pulled back just enough to look at me, and the expression on his face made my chest tighten.

“Magic,” he said, breathless.

I nodded once because the word fit too well. “Yeah.”

He looked at me like he wanted to say more. So did I. The cameras were close, the crowd was loud, the whole arena was still shaking with celebration. But for a beat, none of that mattered because he was standing there with his hands on my arms like he had nowhere else he needed to be.

“I have never felt anything like that,” he said.

My throat tightened.

I lifted a hand and kissed his forehead quickly, privately, before anybody could make it into a moment bigger than it already was. “Neither have I.”

That was all I could say without saying too much.

His eyes stayed on mine for one second longer, then he smiled, small and real and still a little dazed from the game. “We were unbelievable.”

“We were.”

He nodded towards the bench as if the rest of the team had not already started dragging us into the larger noise. “Come on.”

I followed because I did not want to do anything else.

Cassian caught my sleeve when we got to the locker room and pulled me away from the noise just enough to stand with me by the wall.

He looked at me and the grin had softened into something quieter. Something that made my body react before my mind could catch up.

“That was,” he started.

I nodded once. “Yeah.”

“I have never felt anything like that.”

I looked at him. “Neither have I.”

He took a breath like he wanted to say something else, something bigger, but the room was too loud and the moment too public for whatever was actually sitting behind his eyes.

So I made the choice for both of us.

I kissed him.

His hand found the back of my neck immediately and held me there for the brief second before I pulled away. The kiss did not last long. It did not need to. It was enough to make his breath catch and my pulse jump all over again.

When I lifted my head, his eyes were bright.

The room around us kept going. But for a second, standing there with him and remembering the way we had just moved on the ice, the whole game felt like it belonged to us in a way no one else could touch.

Game Two had been different.

Not just because we won.

Because it had felt like magic.