Page 32 of Puck Wild (Storm Warning #1)

"Team effort, my ass! That was pure artistry!" Hog disappeared into the equipment room, still shouting. "Nobody move! I got something!"

The music got turned down a notch when Coach Rusk appeared, but he didn't kill the celebration entirely. "Decent," he said.

Hog emerged from the equipment room carrying something small and blue in his massive hands.

"Gentlemen," he said, holding up his creation like it was the Crown Jewels. "I present to you... artisanal performance wear."

It was a glove cozy. Hand-knitted in Storm blue and white, roughly the size and shape of a hockey glove, with neat stitching around the edges. Across the back, in careful white letters, were the words: SOFT HANDS.

"Holy shit, Hog," Kowalczyk laughed. "You made that?"

"Damn right I did. Took me three episodes of True Crime Weekly and half a bottle of wine, but we got there." Hog held it up, admiring his handiwork. "This is for excellence in passing, demonstrated during clutch moments, with style points for making it look easy."

He crossed the room in three massive strides and presented it to Jake with mock ceremony, as if he were knighting him with a knitting needle.

"Jake 'Soft Hands' Riley," Hog lowered his head. "Please accept this token of appreciation for your dedication to the ancient art of not fucking up when it matters."

The room erupted in laughter and applause. Jake took the cozy with both hands.

"This is..." He paused, and for a second I thought he might get emotional about a piece of knitted hockey gear. "This is the most beautiful thing anyone's ever made for me."

"Wear it with pride, son."

"I'm gonna wear it to bed," Jake declared, which earned him a chorus of chirps and suggestions about what else he could wear it for.

As the celebration wound down, I sat in front of my stall, methodically packing my equipment bag. Jake appeared beside me.

"Nice goal tonight."

I smiled. "Nice pass tonight."

"Team effort."

"Yeah." I looked up at him. "Team effort."

He was still holding the glove cozy.

"Ready to get out of here?" he asked.

I zipped up my bag and stood. "Yeah. Let's go home."

The drive home was mostly silent, except for the sound of wind rattling my car windows.

Jake sat in the passenger seat, staring out at Thunder Bay's empty streets. I didn't fill the space between us with small talk. The game was over, and the adrenaline was fading.

The weight of everything we hadn't said yet returned. Rockford sat in the car with us as an uninvited passenger, taking up all the air.

Back at the apartment, we fell into our usual post-game rhythm. Skates on the drying rack by the door. Gear bags dumped in the hallway to be dealt with tomorrow. I put the kettle on while Jake disappeared into his room to change out of his game-day clothes.

The kettle was starting to whistle when Jake reappeared in sweatpants and a t-shirt. He'd left the glove cozy on the kitchen counter, positioned carefully next to the coffee maker like it belonged there.

"Tea?" I asked, already pulling two mugs from the cabinet.

"Yeah. Thanks."

I was reaching for the Earl Grey when Jake spoke again, his voice quieter than before.

"In Rockford, the guy I fought. Klondike."

My hand froze. The kettle's whistle grew louder, more insistent, but neither of us moved to turn it off.

"He was talking about you. In the locker room. Making jokes." Jake leaned against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. "Called you the neurotic cookie gay. Said I had a type. Weird and organized."

I turned the kettle off, and the sudden silence was too loud.

"That's what you fought about?"

"That's what started it." Jake didn't look at me. "It got worse. He kept going, kept making these... comments. About you baking victory cookies, power bottom vibes, and how I only used you for stress relief."

The words were like one slap shot after another to my chest. I gripped the edge of the counter, trying to process the casual cruelty of it. Strangers reduced me to a punchline, turning my relationship with Jake into entertainment.

"Someone leaked it," Jake continued. "Screenshots from their group chat ended up on some gossip account. Twelve hundred likes overnight. Comments about how you looked, speculation about our sex life, people calling you the cookie fairy like that was the funniest fucking thing they'd ever heard."

My throat closed up. "Jake—"

"I told him to stop. Multiple times. He kept pushing, kept making these jokes like you were public property, fair game for whatever bullshit fantasy he wanted to spin." Jake's hands clenched into fists at his sides. "So I hit him."

The simplicity of the explanation knocked the wind out of me. Jake had thrown away his shot at the AHL because someone had been cruel about me. He couldn't stand to hear me reduced to a stereotype.

"You lost everything for that?"

"I didn't lose everything." His voice was fierce and confident. "I lost a two-week tryout with a team full of assholes who think casual homophobia is locker room banter. That's not everything. That's not even close to everything."

"But it was your chance," I said. "Your shot at moving up."

"There'll be other chances. Other teams." Jake finally looked at me, and his eyes were bright. "But there's only one you. And I wasn't gonna sit there and let some piece of shit talk about you like you were a fucking meme."

That's when it hit me—the full weight of his actions. Jake Riley, who'd spent his entire adult life chasing hockey opportunities, had walked away from the biggest one he'd ever known because someone had been cruel about his boyfriend.

His boyfriend. Was that what I was?

Three months ago, the idea of anyone fighting for my honor would have sent me running for the nearest spreadsheet to organize my feelings into manageable categories.

Standing in our kitchen, watching Jake's face cycle through hurt, defiance, and something that could have been love, all I felt was overwhelmed.

And then, without warning, I started crying.

Not the neat, controlled tears of someone processing difficult information. Ugly, messy crying from somewhere deep in my chest caught me entirely off guard.

"Shit," I gasped, swiping at my eyes with the back of my hand. "Sorry, I don't know why—"

Jake reached for the nearest thing—Hog's knitted glove cozy—and pressed it gently to my face.

"Soft hands," he murmured.

I sniffled.

"Hey. Hey, it's okay."

It wasn't okay. It was the opposite of okay. Someone had reduced me to a caricature for the entertainment of strangers, and Jake had sacrificed his future to defend me, and I was crying in our kitchen like a broken sprinkler system.

"I'm not sad," I said into his shoulder, the words muffled by his t-shirt. "I'm not upset about the comments or the gossip or any of that bullshit. I'm just..."

"What?"

I pulled back enough to look at him, tears starting to stream down my face again like I'd lost control of my own plumbing. "No one's ever done that for me before. Fought for me. Put me first."

Jake, for once, was speechless.

"And you didn't even think about it, did you? You just reacted because someone was hurting me."

"Of course I did. Of course I fucking did."

He held me while I cried. His arms were solid around me, steady and warm, and he didn't try to fix it, make jokes, or turn the moment into something lighter.

He held on.

The apartment settled into its usual evening quiet—the refrigerator's hum, soft tick of the wall clock, and the distant sound of traffic on Memorial Avenue.

None of it mattered. What mattered was Jake's heartbeat under my ear and how his hand moved in slow circles between my shoulder blades. What mattered was that he'd chosen me over everything else, and for the first time in my life, I didn't have to wonder if I was worth staying for.

I was.

And maybe that was everything.