Page 88 of The Fall

I want to skate out there and be the player I’ve become, not the ghost of who I was, but this city makes me small again.

Blair drops his forehead to mine. “Let’s go show them who you are.”

Vancouver’s crowd starts booing me during warm-ups. Torey Kendrick, the returning hero. Not.

“Friendly bunch,” Hayes says.

Blair says nothing, but he throws harder shots, takes sharper turns, and squares up his shoulders like he’s ready to fight the whole arena. When we line up for rushes, he feeds me perfect passes right in my wheelhouse, letting me shoot and be seen by the whole crowd.

It doesn’t help.

“Kicks.” Coach calls me over as we’re coming off the ice. “A word.”

I follow him, bracing for last-minute strategy or lineup changes.

“These homecoming games can get in your head. Remember, you’re one of ours now. Whatever happened here, it’s behind you.”

I nod.

“Play your game,” he says. “And fuck ‘em up.”

The game starts brutal and gets worse.

Every time I touch the puck, boos rain down. My former teammates finish every check with a little extra, sending messages with their shoulders and elbows. We didn’t want you.

Blair answers every liberty they take. A slash on my hands earns them a crushing hit along the boards. When Tooks runs me in the corner, Blair swoops in and destroys him. It’s a clean hit, his shoulder to chest, but the ref’s arm goes up.

He skates to the box with his chin high, tapping his stick on the ice when he passes our bench.

They score on the power play. Of course they do. The crowd goes insane, and someone throws a jersey on the ice. Of course, it’s mine.

“Shake it off,” Coach barks, but his voice is lost in the roar of the crowd.

Blair comes out of the box like a man possessed. He wins the next face-off, drives the net, and nearly decapitates their goalie with his shot.

“Captain’s fired up tonight,” Hollow says to me during a line change.

That’s one way to put it. Blair’s playing like someone— Well, like someone has gone headhunting after the man he loves, and he’s not taking it. His knuckles are already swollen from a scrap with Criss-Cross, and he keeps flexing his left hand like he wants another excuse to drop the gloves.

Hayes pulls Blair aside while we’re filing off for the second intermission. “You’re playing prison rules.”

“They want to make it about him?” Blair’s voice drops. “Then I’ll make it about them.”

I should find this less attractive than I do, but Blair ready and raging to take on my entire former team because they’re being mean to me hits buttons I didn’t know I had.

“Don’t let them know how to get to you.” Hayes stares Blair down.

The third period stays scoreless, and the game clock bleeds down toward overtime.

The restless crowd wants blood. They want me to fail again, publicly, so they can say they knew I was never worth the draft pick.

Overtime solves nothing. It’s three-on-three chaos, chances at both ends, but no finish. Hawks rings one off the crossbar. Their rookie center breaks in alone and shoots the puck into Axel’s chest.

The buzzer sounds, and we’re headed to a shootout.

I know before Coach taps my shoulder. It’s Vancouver, they’re a hostile crowd, and everything is on the line. Of course it comes down to me.

“Kicks, you’re up.”

If I score, we win. If I don’t...

Blair intercepts me at the boards. He cups the back of my neck, pulling me close enough that our helmets touch. “You’re going to bury this. You’re going to score, and we’re going to win, and then you’re going to skate off this ice knowing that you don’t owe them shit.”

“Blair—”

“Look at me.”

I do. His eyes are so, so blue.

“You’re going to win this right now.” The noise swells around us. His glove tightens on my neck. “Now go show them who you are.”

The crowd boos long and loud when he lets me go. Someone starts a “Kendrick sucks” chant that catches and spreads through the lower bowl.

“Fuck ‘em, Kicks!” Hollow shouts.

I collect the puck at center ice and start forward. Each stride feels like I’m moving through water. The goalie—Becky, who used to sneer at me in the locker room—squares up.

I’ve taken this shot a hundred times in Tampa: quick fake to the backhand, pull it forehand, reverse, then elevate over the pad. It’s a move I perfected with Blair, a shot I was never capable of in Vancouver.

I push left, and Becky bites hard. He shifts, committing to the slide, and that’s when I pull it back, the puck dancing from backhand to forehand and back.

The net opens like a door: top corner, glove side, more room than I need.

I snap my wrists and the puck takes flight, black on white against red pipes and twine.

It hits the back bar with a sound like music. The goal light flashes. The ref’s arm goes up.

Game over.

Silence detonates, the perfect opposite of a cheer. Twenty thousand people groan, unable to believe what they saw as my teammates explode over the boards.

They slam into me in a tangle of limbs and sticks and shouts. Hayes gets there first, and then Hollow and Hawks pile on, then Svoboda and Reid, until I can’t tell whose gloves are pounding my helmet.

“That’s how you fucking do it!” someone screams in my ear.

Blair works through the knot of guys and throws his arm around my neck. We’re in the spotlight, on a national broadcast, in the middle of a sold-out arena, but I want to kiss him and never stop.

He pushes his helmet against mine, forehead-to-forehead. “Play stupid games.” Blair grins. “Win stupid prizes. Nobody fucks with what’s mine.”

The bus ride to the airport feels like we’re flying already.

Guys rehash the game, all of Blair’s hits, Axel’s saves, my shootout goal.

Blair sits beside me, our thighs pressed together, his hand resting on my knee.

Vancouver blurs past the windows, all its ghosts staying exactly where they belong: in the past, in my rearview.

Tomorrow we fly to Calgary, then Edmonton, and if the wins and the points keep going the way they are, we’re going to the playoffs for the first time in a long, long while.

Vancouver can keep their fucking boos.