Chapter 79: The Speech

The room went quiet the second I came in.

That was how I knew they were waiting on me.

I stood at the door for one beat with my crutches in hand, then kept moving because stopping would have made this harder. The locker room was full, but not loud. The guys were scattered around the benches and stalls, some still half in gear, some with their heads down, some staring at me like they already knew this was going to be one of those moments nobody forgot.

Cassian was near the far end of the room, leaning back against the lockers with his arms folded. He was trying to look calm. He was not succeeding as well as he thought. I saw the tension in his jaw first, then the way his eyes found mine and stayed there.

I walked to the center of the room and stopped.

Nobody spoke.

I swallowed once and looked around at all of them.

“I am not going to waste your time,” I said.

Nobody moved.

My voice sounded steadier than I felt.

“I cannot play.”

The room stayed silent.

I hated how much that sentence still hurt to say, I hated it even more because saying it out loud made it real in a way I had not been able to admit to myself yet. There was no pretending it was only a bruise or that it would loosen up on its own if I just kept willing it. That part was over.

I looked at the floor for half a second, then back up.

“That does not change what I am to this team.”

A couple of heads lifted.

“I am still here,” I said. “I am still your captain. And I am going to be on that bench every second, watching, supporting, believing.”

The room was so quiet I could hear the faint hum of the overhead lights.

I kept going because if I stopped now, the weight of it would settle too hard on my chest.

“You did not come this far to stop now.”

That landed.

I saw it in the way some of the guys straightened. In the way one of the younger players stopped looking at the floor. In the way a few of them glanced toward each other like they were already sharing the same thought without having to say it.

“You did not fight through the first round, the second round, the conference final, and everything else for this to end because I am not on the ice.”

My jaw tightened around the next breath.

“This team is still alive,” I said. “So you go win this. For yourselves. For each other. For me.”

The last words sat in the room a second longer than the others.

I saw it on their faces, the acceptance.

A defenseman near the back nodded once.

Another guy followed. “We will.”

I looked at him, then at the rest of them. “Good.”

Cassian had not moved from the far end of the room. I could feel him watching me, but when I looked at him directly, the whole room seemed to narrow around that one expression on his face.

Pride, worry, love.

I had to keep my own face steady because I was pretty sure mine was giving too much away already.

Raffi broke the silence first.

He stood up from the bench slowly, like he had already decided he was not letting the room stay too heavy for too long. “For Torin,” he said.

That got everybody’s attention.

I looked at him.

He tipped his chin once, serious now. “We do this for Torin.”

The room stayed still for a beat.

Then someone repeated it. “For Torin.”

Another voice. “For Torin.”

Then the whole room took it up.

“For Torin.”

The words moved through the locker room like a ripple and hit me harder than I wanted to admit. I kept my grip tight on the crutches because I did not trust myself not to show how much that mattered.

Not because I needed the praise.

Because I needed them to believe it.

Because I needed them to go out there and play like the series still belonged to them.

I let out a breath and looked down once. When I looked back up, the room was still on me.

A few moments later and some words here and there, the room was pulled back from the edge just enough to breathe again. The guys started shifting, settling, some of them pulling tape from their wrists, others straightening gear.

I stood there for one more second and let myself look at them.

They were ready.

That was enough.

When I turned my head towards the corner again, Cassian was still there, but now he had pushed off the lockers and was watching me with that same steady expression he wore when he wanted me to know he had heard every word without needing to interrupt the room.

I felt the heat of that look all the way through my chest.

He had been there through everything; the wins, the fights, the injury scare, the silence after the hit. And now this. Standing in the corner, letting me take the room while he looked at me like he was holding the rest of the weight with me even though he was not the one speaking.

That did things to me that had nothing to do with hockey.

His mouth moved slightly.

I almost smiled back.

Raffi, of course, noticed the look between us and made a face like he had seen too much already this season. “You two are really going to do that in front of all of us?”

I shot him a look. “Do what?”

He pointed back and forth between Cassian and me. “That; the staring, the charged silence, the stuff that makes the rest of us feel like we need to leave the room and give you privacy.”

A few players laughed outright now.

Cassian pushed off the lockers and said, dry as anything, “You can leave if you want.”

Raffi put a hand over his chest. “Cruel.”

“Accurate,” Cassian said.

The room cracked open a little more after that. Enough for the tension to shift into something lighter, something that felt like the team had heard the hard part and was ready to move again.

I turned to face Cassian fully.

He was still watching me.

That look again. The one that always got me. Pride and want and something softer underneath that only showed itself when he was too close to not care anymore. We were in a room full of teammates, but the air between us still felt private in the middle of all the noise.

He knew what I was thinking.

I knew what he was thinking too.

Neither of us said it.

Raffi clapped once, a clean sharp sound that got the room moving again. “All right. Enough staring at the captain, let’s go get ready.”

A few guys muttered and started toward their stalls.

Raffi lingered long enough to point at me one last time. “Do not die on us out there emotionally.”

“I will try to survive your personality first,” I said.

“Fair.”

He moved off after that, and the room began to fill with the ordinary sounds of a team gearing up for battle. Tape. Zippers. Helmets being set down. Sticks being checked. The kind of noise that meant the speech had done what it was supposed to do.

I stayed in place for another second because I wanted one more look at Cassian before we all broke apart.

He was still near the corner, but now he had started to move towards me.

Slowly.

Like he knew there was no reason to rush and every reason to make me feel it.

When he stopped in front of me, the room was still busy around us, but the space between us had gone quiet again. He looked at me for a long second before he said anything.

“You were good,” he said.

I let out a breath that might have been a laugh if my chest had not felt so tight. “That was your line?”

“It was a good line.”

“It was a speech.”

“It was your speech.”

That landed harder than it should have.

I looked at him and felt the answer in my body before I said anything. The room around us was moving again, but that look on his face made everything else blur by degrees. He was proud. Worried. Hungry in a way he did not hide as well as he thought he did.

I lowered my voice. “You are staring again.”

He tilted his head just slightly. “You started it.”

I almost smiled. “You were in the corner looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you wanted to kiss me in front of the entire room.”

His mouth twitched, just enough for me to know I had gotten close.

He stepped closer by half a pace. “Maybe I did.”

That made my pulse jump harder than it should have. Especially with the team around us.

I looked at him for a beat too long.

Then I said, low enough that only he would hear, “You will have to wait.”

His smile was small, slow, and dangerous. “I know.”

I held his gaze.

The locker room noise kept going around us, but the heat between us had not gone anywhere. If anything it had sharpened. The speech had done what it was supposed to do. The room had heard me. The team had answered. And now Cassian stood in front of me with his eyes bright and his mouth set like he was already thinking about what came after this.

I did not look away first.

That had become one of my favorite things about us.

Cassian looked at me one last time before turning toward his stall. His expression had softened, but only for me. The pride was still there. So was the love.

And when he walked away, I had the very distinct feeling that the rest of the night was going to be a problem in all the best ways.