Pride and Pucks and Prejudice - 27. Chapter 27

Jackson

The clock moved painfully slowly at the end of the Conference Championship.

Tie game.

Seven minutes seventeen seconds remained in the third.

I knew the numbers without looking at the scoreboard. I had known them for most of the night. The game had narrowed into the familiar mathematics of elimination hockey. Every shift mattered. Every mistake became permanent.

The building was deafening.

I could feel the noise through my skates.

Chicago had taken the puck behind our net. Ben pressured the defenseman and forced a hurried pass up the boards. Noah was already there.

He won the battle.

The puck came loose into the neutral zone.

I was moving before I thought about it.

Noah found me with a short pass just inside the blue line. I carried it across the ice, one defender closing from my left, another backing towards the slot.

Seven minutes.

Tie game.

Conference championship.

This was the moment.

I had been in moments like this my entire career.

Shoot earlier.

Pull it wider.

Five-hole.

Backhand.

The instructions arrived automatically, the way they always had. I could see the lane opening between the defenseman's stick and his skate. The goaltender was moving across his crease. I had half a second before the window closed.

Take it.

I shifted my weight.

The old instinct was already there.

I could score this.

Then I saw Noah.

He had driven hard towards the far post, drawing the second defender with him. For an instant, his back was to me.

I didn't need to see his face.

I knew where he was going.

Six years ago, I would have taken the shot.

Six months ago, I might have taken the shot.

Now I knew where Noah would be before I looked.

I passed.

The puck left my stick flat and hard, travelling through the narrowest possible gap.

Noah appeared exactly where I knew he would.

He caught it in stride.

The goaltender pushed across.

Noah shot.

The puck hit the back of the net.

For half a second, there was silence.

Then the building exploded.

Noah threw both arms into the air.

I stopped moving.

I watched him turn towards the bench, his face transformed by disbelief, before his teammates reached him. Ben hit him first. Eddie was somewhere behind him. Stellan disappeared into the pile.

Noah vanished beneath purple jerseys.

I was still standing near the top of the circle.

I should have been thinking about the pass.

About the assist.

About the clock.

About the fact that we were seven minutes from the League Cup Finals and had just taken the lead.

Instead I was smiling.

I couldn't stop.

Noah had scored.

Of course he had.

He had been there.

He had always been there.

Someone slammed into me from behind and nearly knocked me over. I laughed, grabbed whoever it was, and then everyone was moving towards the bench.

Noah emerged from the pile.

Our eyes met.

He was laughing.

So was I.

For years, I'd imagined this moment.

The noise. The celebration. The feeling of finally getting the decisive goal when everyone expected me to.

I had been wrong.

This was better.

Noah was still looking at me.

I pointed at him.

He pointed back.

Neither of us said anything.

There wasn't anything to say.

The puck was already back at centre ice.

The game wasn't over.

But for one impossible second, I didn't care that the goal belonged to him.

I was just happy it had been him.

---------------

The locker room was chaos.

Someone had put the music on too loud. Water bottles were flying. Stellan had somehow acquired a champagne bottle despite the fact that nobody had actually arranged champagne. Ben was standing on a bench shouting something about the greatest third period in franchise history, although we had played significantly better third periods.

I let myself get pulled into it.

There were hugs. Too many hands on my shoulders. Someone poured something cold over the back of my neck. I laughed and shoved him away.

The conference trophy sat on the table at the front of the room.

I looked at it once.

Then I looked for Noah.

I found him near the far end of the room, still wearing his equipment, his hair damp with sweat and sticking to his forehead.

He was staring at the trophy.

Everyone else seemed to know exactly what to do with themselves.

Noah looked as though someone had handed him an object from another planet.

I walked over.

He noticed me when I was a few feet away.

"Hey."

"Hey."

He looked at me.

Then at the trophy.

Then back at me.

"I scored that."

I smiled.

"You did."

"In Game Seven."

"I was there."

"The conference final."

"I know."

He shook his head slowly.

"I don't think I actually believe it."

"You should."

"I keep thinking they're going to tell me they got the wrong guy."

"They won't."

He laughed, but there was something unsteady beneath it.

Then his expression changed.

"You could've shot."

I knew what he meant.

"I know."

He studied me for a moment.

"Why?"

I looked at him.

Because you'd been there.

Because I knew where you would be.

Because after six years of trying to stop you, I had finally learned what it meant to trust you.

I could have said any of that.

Instead I said the simplest thing.

"Because you were there."

Noah went quiet.

For a second, neither of us moved.

Then he smiled.

It was small at first. Almost disbelieving.

"You knew I'd get there."

"Yes."

"You didn't even look."

"I didn't need to."

He looked down at the floor.

"That's a little ridiculous."

"Probably."

He laughed.

I had spent most of my career being told that moments like this belonged to me.

The last shot.

The last shift.

The player everyone looked for when the game became difficult.

I'd been very good at being that player.

For a long time, I'd thought that was what winning meant.

Being the person who decided it.

Being the person everyone remembered.

Being the one holding the puck when the clock ran out.

But standing there with Noah, watching him slowly understand what he'd just done, I realized something had changed.

I didn't feel as though I'd given anything away.

I didn't feel cheated out of the moment.

I felt happy.

Completely, stupidly happy.

Happier, I thought, than I would have been if I'd scored it myself.

That surprised me.

It shouldn't have.

Noah looked up.

"You're smiling."

"So are you."

"Yeah."

Someone shouted Noah's name from across the room.

He turned.

Before he could go, I caught his shoulder.

He looked back.

"Congratulations."

His expression softened.

"Thanks."

Then he disappeared into the crowd again.

I watched him go.

The trophy was still on the table.

The room was still deafening.

The season wasn't over.

But for the first time in my career, I understood that winning didn't necessarily mean being the person everyone was celebrating.

Sometimes it meant knowing exactly who should be.