Chapter 86: The Overtime

Five minutes passed.

Then ten, then fifteen, and the tension in the arena kept tightening until it felt like the whole building was holding its breath with us. Every shot could end it, every save could stretch it and every blocked puck, every face-off, every scramble in front of the net carried the weight of the season in it now.

I sat on the bench and watched the ice like it was the only thing keeping me upright.

Nobody on either side was breathing normally anymore.

Danton stood just behind with his arms crossed, eyes fixed on the play. The players were all locked in, bent forward, waiting for the next rush, the next mistake, the next chance. Even the crowd had gone into that strange, dangerous kind of noise that happens when people know one goal could end everything.

Cassian was out there looking like he had decided the night belonged to him.

I had seen him play with fire all season, this was different.

He was skating like every shift had personally offended him. The other team kept leaning on him, trying to crowd him out, trying to wear him down. It did not matter. He kept moving, reading, and forcing the puck into places they had not expected.

And every time he came back to the bench, his eyes found mine first.

That was the part that kept hitting me hardest.

The puck went deep again.

Cassian chased it into the corner and got hit hard along the boards. He stayed up, shoved the puck loose, and sent it to the slot before the defender could finish the check. We nearly ended it there but the goalie made the save and the rebound vanished under bodies.

The crowd exploded anyway.

I gripped the rail in front of me until my fingers hurt.

My knee ached every time I shifted wrong, but I barely noticed it now. The game had already taken up too much room inside me for anything else to matter. I only knew the feeling of Cassian out there. The shape of the shift and the way he kept turning pressure into momentum like it was instinct.

He came back to the bench on the next whistle, breathing hard, helmet slightly askew, face flushed from the effort.

“You good?” he asked.

I looked at him.

He looked worse for the wear in the best possible way.

I nodded once. “You?”

His mouth twitched. “I’m not asking about me.”

I gave him a flat look. “I am asking about you.”

That got the smallest smile out of him, brief enough that nobody else would have noticed. He leaned closer to the boards, one hand on the rail, and for a second the entire arena seemed to disappear around the two of us.

Then the puck dropped again.

The second overtime began the same way the first had ended; hard, physical and ugly in all the ways that matter late in a championship game. Their defense was collapsing fast around Cassian every time he touched the puck now, trying to force him wide, trying to bait him into a mistake. He did not take the bait, he never did when it mattered.

A shot from their point got through traffic and our goalie turned it aside, I felt the whole bench jerk in response.

Then it came back the other way.

One rush, then another. Then the kind of broken play that only happens when both teams are too tired to do anything cleanly and too desperate to stop.

Five minutes in, I was standing without realizing it.

The crutches stayed propped beside the bench where I had left them, I did not touch them. My hands were on the rail instead, my body tense enough that I could feel every heartbeat in my throat.

Cassian took a hit near center ice and still kept the puck alive. He drove into the zone, cut through one defender, then another, and pulled the puck back just enough to keep possession alive before they could collapse on him.

The crowd got louder.

The next shift was even worse.

The tension in the arena had gone past unbearable and started becoming something else. Something sharper, like the whole building was waiting for one player to blink. The puck pinged between skates. Sticks clashed, bodies hit the ice and got back up again. Every time our goalie made a save, I felt it in my ribs.

Cassian kept taking hits.

He kept getting up.

The other team started getting frustrated, which usually meant they were running out of answers. One of their forwards clipped him late coming out of the corner. Cassian turned and gave him a hard shoulder back, then skated straight into the next play like nothing had happened. That was Cassian at his best. The kind of man who would rather absorb damage than give the other side a reason to believe they had gotten to him.

I could not stop watching him.

Not even when I tried.

Then it happened.

The puck came loose near center ice after a missed pass and a bad bounce, Cassian got there first. The whole rink seemed to pull into a single point around him. One defender stepped up, Cassian shifted left and slipped past. The second defender reached too early. He cut right and kept going, the third tried to pin him against the lane and Cassian deeked through him like he was not there.

I was already leaning forward before he shot.

The lane opened for half a second.

Cassian fired.

The puck beat the goalie glove side.

The horn blared before the sound had even finished leaving the building.

For one second I did not move.

Then the arena exploded.

The bench erupted, Danton lost the shape of his posture entirely for half a second. The guys were on their feet, yelling, slamming sticks against the boards, helmets half off, bodies colliding in the kind of celebration only a championship goal can cause. The crowd was screaming so hard it felt like the roof might lift off.

Cassian stopped at center ice.

He raised both arms.

I could see the grin on his face from where I stood.

He turned immediately, eyes searching through the chaos, and I knew exactly who he was looking for.

Me.

I was already moving.

The pain in my knee hit hard the second I took a step, but I ignored it. I grabbed the crutches and almost threw them aside before remembering I still needed them. The second the officials backed off and the bench emptied into the ice, I made it to my feet and started out after him.

My steps weren’t fast or clean like I wanted.

I did not care.

The team was flooding the ice now, waving, shouting, running into one another. The crowd was still losing its mind. Cameras were already flashing, people were crying, people were shouting. The world was breaking apart around the goal and I could barely see through it because I had one thing in mind.

Cassian.

He was still at center ice, arms out, chest heaving, eyes moving through the bodies until they found mine.

The second he saw me, his whole face changed.

I limped onto the ice on one leg and one crutch, ignoring the pain because there was no room for it now. Guys were already moving around me, but I could see Cassian through all of it, and he could see me. He started towards me immediately, not waiting for the crowd to clear, not waiting for anybody else to get out of the way.

Neither of us had patience for that kind of distance anymore.

When we reached each other, the team was still swarming behind us.

We stopped hard.

Just looked at each other for one beat.

Then I grabbed him.

The kiss came out of nowhere and everywhere at once. I did not care who saw, I did not care who was crying or yelling or filming or shouting our names from above the glass. I kissed him like the whole season had been leading to this one second and I was not going to waste it on anything less.

Cassian made a sound against my mouth and kissed me back with everything in him.

His hands came up to my face first, then to my shoulders, and I felt the whole world tilt under us in one bright, furious, impossible second of triumph.

When we finally broke apart, both of us were breathing hard.

Cassian’s eyes were wet.

I looked at him and the sight of him like that, standing there on the ice in the middle of the biggest game of our lives with tears in his eyes and a smile on his face, nearly undid me completely. He looked stunned by it too, like the emotion had caught him too fast for him to hide it.

I touched his cheek with my hand and forgot the pain in my knee for one more second.

Then I leaned in close enough that only he could hear me.

“I love you,” I said.

The words felt bigger now than they had the first time.

He stared at me like he had been waiting his whole life to hear it again in this exact moment. Then he let out a shaky breath and smiled through it, still wet-eyed, still stunned.

“I love you too,” he said.

I kissed his forehead.

The crowd was still roaring around us, the team was still celebrating. The trophy was still not yet in our hands, but it felt close enough to taste now.

Cassian pulled me closer and rested his forehead briefly against mine.

I could feel his breathing steadying in the space between us.

The season was over.

The overtime had ended.

And for one perfect second in the middle of all that noise, we just held each other on the ice and let it finally land.