Chapter 83: Game Six

The first hit landed before the anthem finished.

I heard it from the bench before I saw it, the crack of body on body hard enough to make the people around me go still for half a second. Then the crowd surged back up, louder than before, and the game settled into exactly what I had expected.

Ugly.

Fast.

Personal.

Game six did not feel like hockey anymore.

It felt like a fight nobody was willing to leave early.

I sat on the bench with my crutches leaned against the boards beside me and watched Cassian skate into the first shift like he had decided from the opening face-off that the other team had already gone too far. His jaw was set hard, his shoulders loose in the way that meant he was one second away from turning violent and making it look clean.

He looked up once before the puck dropped.

Straight at me.

That look hit harder than the hit had.

I knew what he was asking without him saying anything. You with me? You okay? You watching? All of it. I answered the only way I could by holding his gaze until he looked away first.

Then the puck dropped and everything got louder.

The arena was insanely loud; the kind of loud that got under your skin and stayed there. Every shift was a war, every hit was personal. They were targeting Cassian early, trying to make the game ugly enough to get him off rhythm. They should have known better.

He took the first shoulder in the neutral zone and stayed on his feet.

The second one hit him near the boards and sent him hard into the glass, but he came back off it with the puck still on his stick and moved it up ice before anybody could finish what they had started. The bench erupted on the next whistle, Raffi slammed a glove into his palm and yelled something I did not catch.

I did not need to catch it.

Cassian did not hear any of it, he was already back over the boards.

I kept my eyes on him.

That was the only thing I could do.

I could not get him the puck or jump in and take a shift. I could not make the other team stop trying to take runs at him when they saw him carrying us on his back. All I could do was watch and believe and hate every second of being on the wrong side of the glass while he kept going out there and taking hits like it was just part of the plan.

It should not have looked that easy.

It did, which made it worse.

He got knocked down again late in the first. A cheap finish after the whistle that the refs called too late to stop the damage and too early to do anything useful about it. Cassian got up on one knee, took the extra shove, and still got back to his feet before the linesman had even reached him.

The crowd roared.

I did not move, I could not. My hands had curled into fists so hard the tape on my fingers felt too tight.

Cassian looked towards the bench on the way back.

At me.

Something in my chest tightened immediately. His face was flushed, his breathing hard enough that I could see it even from here, and he still gave me that look like he was doing all of it on purpose.

I wanted to drag him straight off the ice and put my own body between him and every cheap shot in the building.

Instead I sat there and kept believing.

That was the worst part of being hurt, the helplessness.

The second period got meaner.

The score stayed tied, but the hits started stacking up. Their bench had decided they were going to make Cassian earn every inch of ice he touched.

And he did.

He kept forcing the puck through the middle and turning the same bad angles into chances we had no business getting. One of our defensemen scored on a rebound in front and the whole building shook so hard I felt it in the seat under me.

Cassian found me after the goal and stared at me from the far side of the bench, helmet still on, mouth slightly open from the shift, eyes too bright.

I leaned forward before I could stop myself.

His mouth moved just slightly.

You good?

I nodded once.

He looked like he believed me and did not at the same time.

That was Cassian. Even now, even with half the arena screaming and our team up a goal in the Finals, he could still make me feel seen from across the bench with nothing more than one hard look and a question he never actually asked out loud.

The rest of the second period was a grind.

They tied it with six minutes left on a net-front scramble that should have been cleared and was not. Raffi slammed his stick once, Danton barked for the next line change before the guys had even finished shaking it off.

Cassian got hit twice on the next shift.

The first one was clean enough to stay legal, the second was not. He absorbed it anyway, drove through contact, and dumped the puck deep before they could finish the check. One of their defenders stayed down for a second after the collision, and the crowd went right back into it. That was how the night was going, every hit turned into more fuel.

I hated how much I wanted to be out there with him.

I hated more that he seemed to know it.

He glanced up at the bench between shifts, and the moment his eyes landed on me, I felt the tension go through him and straight into me.

It was not just concern anymore.

It never was with us.

I had been watching him all season, but tonight was different. The way he moved when the game got tight, the way he kept coming back into the zone even after hard contact, the way he looked at me after every shift like he was making sure I had not disappeared just because I could not skate beside him.

That kind of thing got under my skin.

By the third period, the building had gone thin around the edges.

The score was still tied. Every whistle felt louder, every line change felt heavier. You could tell both teams knew what was waiting on the other side of one clean goal. We were all trying not to think about the same thing; one mistake, one bounce, one bad rotation in front of the net and the whole game could be gone.

The pressure made Cassian sharper.

He started skating like the puck had insulted him personally.

One shift he took a pass off the wall, slipped past a defender by half a step, and ripped a shot that hit the post so hard the sound carried into the bench. He threw his head back once, annoyed at the miss, then turned and looked straight at me like he had already decided the next one would not miss.

My chest tightened.

Danton leaned past the players beside me and said, “Keep up the pressure.”

I looked at the ice again.

Cassian was already in motion.

The final two minutes came too fast.

The arena was on its feet; every seat, every glass panel, every person in the building seemed to understand what a single shift could mean now. The other team dumped the puck in and tried to crowd the zone. We cleared once, then again. Cassian was already on the ice for the last push, his line changing through the noise while the clock kept bleeding away.

I found myself standing without realizing it.

My crutches stayed against the boards, I did not touch them.

The puck came out of the corner and bounced loose near center. Cassian grabbed it on the move before anyone else could get there. For one second the building seemed to narrow around him. His first defender took him high. He cut left, the second defender stepped in. Cassian shifted right, kept the puck on his stick, and drove through the middle like the ice had opened just for him.

I saw it happen before the shot.

He got through three defenders.

One.

Two.

Three.

Then he fired.

The puck left his stick hard and clean, low through the seam, right before the goalie could set his feet properly. It hit the back of the net before I had finished the breath I was holding.

The arena exploded.

I heard it before I felt anything else. The sound hit so hard it almost drowned out my own heartbeat. The guys on the bench were already up, Danton had both hands on the glass. The crowd had gone fully feral. The scoreboard flashed the goal and the place lost whatever control it had been holding onto.

I was still staring at Cassian.

He had already turned towards the bench.

His face was flushed and his mouth was open from the effort; his eyes were bright in that dangerous way they got when he had just done something impossible and knew it. He looked straight at me and the whole building disappeared for a second.

Not because I could not hear it.

Because I could feel it.

He reached the bench and I was moving before anyone else did. My knee complained as soon as I stepped off, but I did not care. The crutches were still beside me, I left them there.

Cassian came towards me at the same time, gloves still on, stick already tossed aside somewhere behind him. He had the kind of look on his face that only comes after a goal like that.

I caught him by the front of the jersey before he could even stop.

He laughed once under his breath, breathless and disbelieving at the same time, and I pulled him in so hard the rest of the room blurred around us.

The kiss came before I thought better of it.

I did not care who saw.

I did not care about the cameras, the crowd, the staff, the guys behind us or the whole arena was still roaring and I kissed him anyway, right there at the top of the bench area with my hand in his jersey and his hand at my waist like neither of us had any intention of pretending this was anything but what it was.

He kissed me back hard enough to make my pulse jump straight into my throat.

When I pulled back, he was breathing hard and smiling like he did not know what else to do with his face.

“That was for you,” he said, voice low and rough and still half wrecked from the goal.

I looked at him for one beat too long, then brushed my forehead against his and let the rest of the noise wash around us.

“You were amazing out there,” I said.

His grin softened immediately, and the look he gave me after that was the kind that could have carried the whole team through the last twenty seconds by itself.

The game was not over yet.

The arena was still roaring.

But for one second, with his hands on me and the scoreboard flashing behind us and the Finals hanging in the balance, I knew exactly one thing.

He had done that.

And he had done it for us.