Chapter 97 The Opening Night

Chapter 97 The Opening Night


The banner went up before I remembered how to breathe.

I stood at the edge of the tunnel with my stick in one hand and Cassian’s shoulder pressed against mine, watching the arena rise to its feet as the championship banner climbed toward the rafters. 

Cassian did not look away from it.

Neither did I.

We had played through so much to get back here that the sight of that banner should have felt unreal. It did not, it felt like every hit, every hard night, every argument, every injury, every quiet morning where we had both pretended not to be scared had led directly to this one second.

The banner reached its place.

The crowd exploded again.

I heard Danton behind us telling the line to stay focused, heard somebody else laughing too loudly in a way that sounded more nervous than confident, but none of it landed as hard as the look Cassian gave me when the lights shifted back to the ice.

He turned his head towards me.

His eyes caught mine and stayed there for half a second too long. The kind of look he had on was the one that still made me forget whatever I had been thinking before it. The kind that said he knew exactly what this night meant and wanted me to know he was here with me for every piece of it.

My mouth went dry.

Cassian’s hand brushed against the back of my glove. 

“You ready?” he asked quietly.

I looked at him. “No.”

His mouth tilted, just a little. “Good.”

I stared at him. “That is not comforting.”

“It is honest.”

That got the smallest breath out of me, almost a laugh. The tension in my chest eased by a degree, then built right back up again when the horn sounded for the opening face-off and the arena got even louder.

Opening night.

The start of the season.

A fresh run at repeating.

The puck dropped.

The first shift was fast enough to make the building feel smaller. The other team came out hard, trying to set a tone early. Heavy forecheck. Hard boards. Nothing free. Their first hit of the season landed along the wall and the crowd reacted like it had been waiting for that exact sound.

I took the next puck off the half boards and moved it up ice before they could trap us. Cassian took the pass cleanly, cut through the neutral zone with one defender backpedaling too early, then dropped it to the wing in one motion.

The first few shifts stayed ugly. Fast. Physical. The kind of hockey that leaves little room for anything fancy. We traded zone time, battled for entries, and made the other team work for every inch. It did not matter that the night felt ceremonial from the outside. On the ice, it was still a fight.

And Cassian was right in the middle of it.

He came off the wall on the second shift with a shoulder fake that made their defenseman bite, then sent the puck back to me at the point before curling off to the slot. I let the shot go. It hit traffic and bounced loose.

The crowd gave out one sharp roar at the near miss.

When I skated back to the bench, Cassian was already there, breathing hard and grinning like the whole first period belonged to him. He leaned over the boards when I stopped beside him.

“You could have buried that.”

I looked at him. “You could have given me a better pass.”

He arched a brow. “That was a perfect pass.”

“You think every pass you make is perfect.”

“Because they usually are.”

I shook my head and he laughed under his breath. That sound still got me every time. It was too easy. Too warm. Too much like home.

The period kept tightening after that.

Their defense was stubborn. Our goalie made two clean stops that kept the arena from tipping in the wrong direction. The first time the puck came all the way down to our end, I watched the shot come through and felt the whole bench lean with it. We cleared it. The crowd roared again. Someone in the lower bowl started chanting before the rest of the building picked it up.

Every shift had weight.

Every hit echoed.

And through all of it, Cassian kept finding me.

That was what made the night dangerous in the best way. He did not need to say much. He did not need to be flashy. He just kept seeing the ice exactly the way I was seeing it and giving me the one thing I wanted more than anything else on that first night back.

A clean puck.

The first goal came late in the first period and it started with a bad read by their blue line. Cassian pressured the puck along the boards, forced the turnover, and sent it low to the middle. I was already moving when it came across. One touch. A pass back. Another skate push. He got the puck again and drew two defenders toward him before slipping it back to me in the slot.

The lane opened for half a second.

I shot.

The puck beat the goalie glove side.

The arena snapped into chaos.

I heard the horn, but only after the sound of the crowd hit me. It rolled over the building so hard I felt it in my shoulders. My teammates were already yelling. Danton was out of his seat. The guys on the bench were slamming their sticks against the boards. The screen above the glass flashed my number beside the goal marker.

Cassian was already skating towards me.

I had barely turned when he got there.

He hit me with enough force to make me stagger half a step, then wrapped both arms around me in the middle of the ice like he did not care who was watching. I caught him immediately, one hand at the back of his neck, the other around his waist, and the whole world seemed to shift around the two of us for one second.

His face was close. Too close. His breath was hard from the shift, and the look in his eyes went straight through me.

“That was for you,” he said, voice low enough to get lost in the crowd.

I looked at him and laughed once because there was nothing else I could do with the feeling in my chest. “You set it up.”

He smiled, bright and real and a little dangerous in the way it always was when he was happy on the ice. “I know.”

The crowd was still roaring. The bench was still shouting. But the only thing that mattered was the warmth of his hands on my back and the fact that he had found me first, like he always did, even in the middle of a season opener in front of thousands of people.

I bent and kissed his temple before I thought about it.

IWhen he looked back at me, the smile had softened into something quieter. Something that sat under all the noise and told me the same thing without either of us having to say it.

We were right.

The crowd around us was still going crazy, the first goal sending the arena into another level of noise, but I could feel the whole night settling in a different way now. 

We skated back toward the bench with the team still pouring over us. Glove taps. Shoulder bumps. Shouts I barely heard. The game was not over, not even close, but the first one was ours and the building felt it.

Cassian skated beside me on the change and looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

“You look pleased with yourself,” he said.

I snorted. “I scored.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“Then say what you mean.”

He did not answer right away.

The grin at the corner of his mouth made it clear he was thinking of something he did not want to say with Danton right there and half the bench still listening. He leaned a fraction closer instead.

“You know what I mean.”

I did.

That was the problem.

The second period started rougher. Their forecheck tightened. Their hits got more deliberate. A rookie on the other side got a little too excited and crashed into our goalie after a whistle, which set off a small cluster near the crease. Our guys answered immediately. 

I played like the season was already on the line.

So did Cassian.

He was everywhere. Pressuring the puck. Winning battles. Getting his stick in lanes he had no business reaching. Twice in one shift he found me in transition with passes that cut through defenders by inches. The first one became a shot. The second nearly became another goal.

The chemistry felt different this year. Sharper. More certain. It was not just hockey now, not even close. It was the easy way he found me in motion, the way I read his cut before he made it, the way every shift ended with him looking at me like he was checking whether I felt it too.

I did.

I felt all of it.

The game stayed tight through the second period. We added another goal off a rebound scrum that had the crowd standing before the puck crossed the line. They got one back on a broken rush that slipped through our defense in a way none of us liked. The score tightened again. The arena got louder.

The final minutes of the third period felt like they had been stretched too far.

We were up by one. Then tied. Then up again after a weird bounce that left the goalie off-balance and the puck rolling past the line. The crowd shook the place when the lead changed. The noise never settled. It just kept rising and rising until I could barely tell the difference between one cheer and the next.

Cassian and I were out for the last shift before the final buzzer.

He looked at me just before the face-off and I knew exactly what he meant without him saying anything.

One last push.

I nodded once.

The puck dropped.

Everything happened fast after that. Their defense pinched. We forced the puck loose. Cassian got it on the half wall and moved it low. I cycled it back to him and he sent a quick pass toward the front of the net. The goalie stopped it. The rebound came free. Bodies flew in all directions.

The horn sounded before the next shot could settle.

We had won.

Opening night.

The building exploded one more time, the kind of sound that comes after a hard game and a bigger expectation has been met. The scoreboard lit up with our first win of the season and the whole place felt alive with it.

Cassian skated straight towards me at the horn.

I met him halfway without thinking.

We hit hard enough to feel it through the pads, then both of us laughed at the same time because the rush was too much to hold in one body. He caught me by the shoulders and leaned in close, eyes bright, breath still coming hard from the last shift.

“Good start,” he said.

I smiled before I could stop myself. “You think?”

His grin widened. “I think we’re going to be a problem.”

I looked at him, at the sweat at his hairline, at the way the lights caught his face, at the expression that always made me feel like the rest of the arena did not exist when he was looking at me like that.

Then I pulled him in and held him there at center ice while the crowd roared around us.

Everything felt right.