Chapter 81: The Series

CASSIAN’S POV

The first period told me everything.

We were off, not by much; just enough to matter.

Without Torin on the ice, the whole game felt like it had shifted a few inches out of place and stayed there. Passes that usually found a stick were sliding through empty lanes, breakouts that normally clicked were getting stalled at center. The other team smelled it early and pressed harder every shift, like they knew exactly where the weak spot was and had decided to keep hitting it until we cracked.

I hated that I could feel the difference so clearly.

I hated that the difference had a name.

Torin.

He was in the press box tonight, not the bench, because there was no point pretending his knee would let him stand through a game this soon.

I had not realized how much I relied on him until I had to play without him.

The second period was worse.

We were chasing everything; loose pucks, rebounds, momentum. The other team got their first goal on a rebound scramble that should have been cleared, then another after we lost coverage in front of the net for half a second.

The bench got quieter after the second goal.

Danton was barking adjustments, trying to tighten the line changes and get the forecheck back in our favor. Raffi was muttering to whoever would listen. I could feel the frustration building in the room like static, we were not playing like the same team that had dragged itself through the last round and the one before it. We were playing like men trying to remember a rhythm that Torin had helped keep steady all season.

Then the third goal happened.

Late in the second.

Another bad bounce, another scramble. Another shot through traffic that found the back of the net before our goalie could seal the far side.

Three to nothing.

I leaned forward on the bench and stared at the ice for a second too long.

Not because I thought the game was over. It was not, not officially. But I knew what the score meant in a Finals series. I knew what it meant when a team was already down a man, already missing its captain on the ice, already trying to survive the kind of pressure that eats at confidence by inches.

One more loss and it was over.

That thought sat in my chest like a stone.

The horn sounded to end the second and nobody moved for a beat.

The room felt wrong when we got back to the locker room.

I sat down at my stall and took my helmet off with both hands.

My shoulders were sore, my legs were sore, my head felt heavier than it had all game. I had been trying to carry too much of the offense myself and knew it. Everyone knew it, that was the problem.

Without Torin there to read the ice with me, every shift felt a half beat slower. The passes were still there, the looks were still there, the timing was not.

I dropped my gloves onto the bench and stared at the floor.

A message buzzed on my phone.

Then another.

I ignored them both.

Raffi slid onto the bench a few spots away and muttered, “This is ugly.”

I did not answer.

He glanced at me. “You okay?”

I gave him a tired look. “Do I look okay?”

“No.”

“Then no.”

That was the extent of the conversation.

I took off my skates, one at a time, hands moving automatically even though my brain felt stuck on the score. Three to nothing. Game five, Torin in the press box. The next game would decide whether we were going back with a chance or staring down elimination.

The room got quieter the longer I sat there.

Most of the guys filtered out for treatment or water or whatever else they needed before heading back out into the night. I stayed where I was because I did not feel like moving and because I knew the second I stood up I would either start pacing or start thinking too hard.

I was still staring at the floor when the door opened again.

I knew it was him before I looked up.

Torin stepped in slowly, one hand braced lightly on the wall beside the doorway, the other carrying the kind of quiet exhaustion I had been trying to ignore all night. He looked better than he had the first time I saw him after the injury, but not by much. His face was still tight around the eyes, his movement still careful off the knee, his expression still that of a man who hated being told to stay off the ice and was trying to act like he did not.

He looked straight at me when he came in.

That was when the rest of the room blurred.

He did not speak at first. He just crossed to me and sat down beside me on the bench with a kind of controlled care that made my chest tighten harder than the score had. He moved slowly, like his knee still had to be negotiated with every time he changed position, but he sat beside me anyway.

He did not say a word.

That somehow made everything worse.

I turned my head towards him, and he was looking straight ahead with that calm, steady expression he used when he was trying not to make a scene out of something that had already hurt too much.

Torin just sat beside me in silence.

I looked at him for a second longer than I should have. His jaw was set, his shoulders were loose enough to make him look calm to anyone else, but I knew him too well by then. I knew the tension he carried when he was trying not to force the conversation. I knew the way he sat still when he was actually thinking too hard.

I swallowed once and looked back down.

The room kept moving, but the air around us felt still.

I did not know how long we sat that way.

Long enough for the frustration to settle into something heavier.

Long enough for the locker room to thin out.

Long enough for the score to stop feeling temporary and start feeling dangerous.

Finally I heard my own voice come out quiet.

“I do not know if I can do this without you.”

The words landed between us harder than I expected.

I did not look at him at first. I did not trust my face. The honest answer had been sitting in my chest since the second period, but saying it out loud made it feel worse and better at the same time.

Torin did not answer immediately.

Then his hand found mine.

He took it without hesitation. Not hard. Not gentle. Just certain.

I looked up at him.

His face had changed.

Not with surprise. Not with pity. With something steadier than both. The kind of look he wore when he understood exactly what I was asking and refused to let me carry the question alone.

“You can,” he said.

The words were low. Clear. Real.

I did not say anything.

He tightened his fingers around mine. “You will.”

I stared at him.

His thumb moved once over my knuckles, and the contact sent something through my chest that had nothing to do with the game. He was tired. Still hurting. Still off the ice. Still choosing to sit beside me anyway when he could have been somewhere else resting and saving his strength.

That mattered more than the loss.

He looked at me and said it again, quieter this time. “You will.”

My throat tightened.

I kept my eyes on his face, on the line of his mouth, on the tension he was holding in his jaw because he was probably trying not to show how much this series was getting to him too. He had missed his first game in years. He was sitting in the locker room with a leg that should have been on ice and a team that was now one loss away from going home. He still looked at me like I was the thing he wanted to steady first.

I did not deserve that.

Maybe he knew what I was thinking because his expression softened by a degree.

“And I will be right there,” he said.

I inhaled slowly.

Every second of the game, every bad bounce, every shift that felt wrong without him, all of it pressed in around those words.

He was here.

He held my hand tighter and looked me in the eye. “Every second.”

Something in my chest loosened and broke at the same time.

I nodded once because I did not trust my voice.

Torin’s gaze stayed on mine. There was heat in it, even here, even in a locker room full of guys pretending not to notice the way we always seemed to drift back toward each other after everything went wrong. There was also exhaustion. Pain. The kind of stubborn love that kept showing up when the rest of the world kept trying to make everything practical.

I should have looked away. I did not.

The silence between us was not empty.

It was everything we had not said since the injury, since the tunnel, since the hit that took him off the ice and left me trying to win games with half my attention broken off and missing.

His hand was still in mine.

I turned my thumb once against his skin, and he answered by squeezing back.

“You do not have to say it like that,” I murmured.

He gave the smallest breath of a laugh. “Like what?”

“Like you are promising me something impossible.”

His expression changed. Not much. Enough. “I am promising you something true.”

That hit hard.

I looked at him for a long second and felt the room around us shift again, not because the score had changed or the game had suddenly become any less awful, but because he was there with me in the middle of it, steady enough to tell me what I needed to hear and close enough to make it feel real.

He leaned in a fraction and lowered his voice. “You are not doing this alone.”

I held his gaze.

He was still watching me like that same heat had been sitting under every conversation all year. Not enough to make the room explode. Enough to make my pulse catch. The kind of look that made everything else feel like background noise.

I nodded once.

Then I said the only thing I could manage.

“Promise?”

His thumb moved over my hand again. “Promise.”

I closed my eyes for one second and let that sit where it belonged.

When I opened them, he was still looking at me.

I looked at him and finally let myself believe the one thing I had been trying not to say since the second period.

If we were going to survive this, we were going to do it together.