Page 140 of Slapshot Bride

They score four minutes later on a deflection nobody could have stopped, and we tie it back up ninety seconds after that when Theo puts a point shot through traffic, and it goes in off somebody’s skate. Nobody knows whose.

I don’t know when I start scanning the stands.

I’m on the bench between shifts, and my eyes start going up and left, section by section, row by row, looking for a woman who is two thousand miles away moving a lamp in a rented event space.

I do it anyway. I do it the whole period.

I don’t find her.

I find Chicago jerseys and a man in the upper bowl who’s been standing since the first puck drop.

A wave of disappointment settles within me. But I don’t look away.

It’s the stupidest thing I’ve done all season, and I keep doing it.

I score in the third.

It isn't pretty. Kai drives the net and takes the goalie with him. The puck squirts to the back door, and I’m there. I put it on the net, and it goes in off the post. The building goes silent for half a second, and then our bench erupts, and I put my fist up and turn back toward the center.

And I look at the glass.

Second row. Behind our bench.

My eyes land on her.

She’s on her feet with her camera at her hip and her mouth open. She’s wearing my jersey.

Seventeen. My number across her chest.

I stop skating.

I actually stop, in the middle of a professional hockey game, dead in the neutral zone, and Wyatt skates into me from behind and nearly puts us both down and says, ‘What the hell, man’, then follows my eyeline and says, ‘Oh.’ And then, with more grace than I’ve ever credited him with, skates away without another word.

She came.

She got on a plane. She came for me.

A smile spreads across my face, and I point at her, ignoring the rest of the rink.

She lifts the camera. She takes the shot. She’s laughing and shooting at the same time, which is the most Riley Brooks thing that I’ve ever seen. Carefree.

I go back to playing hockey. Badly. Happily.

We win three to one.

She’s in the corridor after.

I don’t think. I close the distance, pull her in and hold her, her face in my neck, both arms all the way around her, and she laughs against my throat.

“Hi,” she says.

“You came…”

“Surprise, surprise…”

God, I fucking love her.

I lift her and spin her around. Giggles erupt from her lips, and when I finally set her down, I kiss her deeply, not caring who will see.