Chapter 85: Game Seven

CASSIAN’S POV

The biggest game of my life started with Torin on the bench and me pretending that did not change everything.

I had played in pressure before, I had played through injuries, through bad streaks, through games that felt like they could break a season in half. None of that compared to this. This was Game seven, one more night and it was over one way or the other. One more night and either we got the championship or spent the rest of our lives thinking about how close we had been.

Torin sat near the boards with his crutches beside him, one hand resting on the top rail, his jaw set in that calm way he wore when he was trying not to show how much he wanted to be out there with me. He looked better than he had the day before.

I saw him before warm-ups even started.

He found me too.

The look on his face was small, quiet, and enough to steady me and reduce the weight I had been carrying around in my chest since the night before when we had said the words we had both been holding back for too long.

I love you.

It was still in me when I stepped onto the ice.

The arena was louder than I wanted to admit. The kind of loud that got under your skin, fans were on their feet before the anthem was even done. White towels were spinning and flags were waving. The whole building vibrated with the pressure of a championship game that had finally reached its last possible night.

I took one lap during warm-ups and forced myself to breathe.

Then I looked at the bench.

Torin was already looking at me.

He gave me one nod. The kind of nod that meant I was supposed to go do my job and trust him to be where I needed him to be even from the bench.

I nodded back.

The puck dropped and the game got ugly immediately.

The other team came out hard, trying to make every shift a statement with heavy forechecks and hard finishes. They were not wasting time trying to outplay us, they wanted to outlast us. The first hit of the night landed along the boards and sent a jolt through the whole building, I got clipped on my first rush and stayed up, shoved the puck wide, and took the next check without blinking.

That was the tone.

Every hit echoed.

Every shift mattered.

The first period was a battle of broken plays and collisions. I kept looking up at the bench after every change, and every time I found Torin there, watching me like he was trying to hold the night steady by force. He was not on the ice, but he was still in it with me. I felt that from the first five minutes.

I also felt how much I wanted him there.

The game did not care.

Neither did the other team.

They kept throwing bodies at us. We answered with speed and pressure. Raffi took a brutal hit in the corner and got up swearing, one of our defensemen got caught high along the blue line and still managed to clear the puck. The refs were letting more go than they should have; the crowd got louder every time the whistle stayed down.

I took a pass from the point late in the first and fired it through traffic. The goalie got just enough of it to push it wide, but the rebound hopped into a scramble and we nearly put it home.

When I skated back towards the bench, I looked straight at Torin.

He did not smile, but his eyes changed by a fraction, and that was all it took to keep me locked in.

By the second period, the game had turned physical in the worst possible way. Their forecheck was ugly, there were late finishes and even more hard contact with no room in the middle. Every puck battle felt like it had teeth, I got leaned into twice in one shift and felt one hit drag across my ribs hard enough to make me clench my jaw.

The crowd went wild after every collision.

I could feel Torin watching me even when I did not look. He had a way of making me feel seen from anywhere in the building.

A few minutes into the period, I caught a loose puck in the neutral zone and carried it myself. Their defense stacked up, trying to cut off the middle. I pulled the puck across my body, slipped through the gap, and got the shot off from the hash marks.

It hit the post.

The sound ripped through the arena.

I had to fight the urge to look up and see Torin’s reaction because I knew it would tell me too much. The next face-off came quickly, and we kept going.

The first goal of the night came on a broken rush after one of our defensemen intercepted a pass and sent it deep. I was already moving when the puck got to me. I cut wide, drew the defender, and slipped a clean pass into the slot where our winger buried it past the goalie.

The bench exploded.

I looked up instinctively and found Torin already on his feet as much as the crutches allowed, face bright with the kind of pride he could not hide even when he tried.

That hit me harder than the goal.

I pointed at him without thinking.

He shook his head once like I had caught him doing something illegal.

I skated back to the bench grinning before I realized it.

Raffi caught my shoulder. “You are smiling like a fool.”

I shot him a look. “We are up one nothing.”

“We are not done,” he said.

“No,” I answered, still looking towards Torin. “We are not.”

The second period stayed tense after that. They answered with pressure, we answered with hits. One of their forwards tried to run me after a whistle and got shoved off by two of our guys before I could get there. Danton had been yelling from the bench the whole period, trying to keep us focused on structure. He knew what was coming, we all did. Game seven was always going to go to the team that could hold itself together longer.

Torin never stopped watching me.

Every time I came to the bench, his eyes found mine first.

At one point I was breathing hard enough to feel it in my ribs when I looked over. He did not speak, he just looked at me with that same steady, intent expression that always made me feel like I had exactly one job now and it was not to let the moment slip.

I went into the third already too wired to sit still.

The score stayed tied after their equalizer late in the second, a bad bounce in front that Raffi never saw cleanly. The arena shifted after that, every shot got louder and each save mattered more. Every shift felt like it was carrying the weight of the season on its back.

The final minutes of regulation were brutal. I took a hard check along the boards and got up immediately, our defense bled time off the clock. Their goalie made a save on a shot I thought was in and I almost yelled. Cassian, come on, I told myself. Play.

The last thirty seconds came too fast.

One chance at the net, one blocked shot, one scramble in front that never settled long enough for either side to finish it.

Then the horn sounded.

The building erupted and then groaned at the same time.

Tied.

Overtime.

I bent forward on the bench for one second and caught my breath. The arena around me was buzzing with bodies, energy, and the sharp reality that the next goal would end the season. Win it and the championship was ours, lose it and everything turned into pain and next year and what if.

I looked up.

Torin was already looking at me.

He did not have to say anything. I could see it in the way his mouth was set, in the way his crutches stayed against the bench like they were only barely keeping him where he was supposed to be. He looked exhausted and sure. He also looked like the same man who had sat beside me through injury, fear, and every bad moment that had brought us here.

Danton started the overtime talk, but I barely heard him.

All I could see was Torin.

His expression changed when I looked at him hard enough, and the arena seemed to narrow around that one shared look. There were no spoken words, just the pressure of the moment sitting between us and all the things we had said the night before.

He gave me the smallest nod.

I nodded back.

Then I stood.

The overtime buzzer had not sounded yet, but it was coming. The next period of our lives was waiting to start. The same ice, the same crowd, the same impossible weight.

Only now there was no room left to hide from it.

We had sixty minutes behind us.

We had one more chance.