Page 380 of Power Play

“No more weaponized kissing,” she murmured against my chest.

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“And no more calling yourself gutter-born.”

“That one might stay.”

She pulled back and glared at me until I relented.

“Fine.”

Cade rose and drew Bliss against his side the second she released me. The sight still hurt, but the pain had lost enough of its edge that I didn’t need the sunglasses to survive it. I kept them on anyway.

Rider looked at the clock. “We need to leave in forty.”

Briggs clapped his hands once. “Time to kill Minnesota.”

Easton checked his phone, and I nodded toward it. “Aura?”

He read the message and exhaled. “She said good luck, don’t die, and we’re still fighting.”

“Progress,” Cade said.

“It has a heart at the end.”

Bliss leaned over to inspect the screen. “That’s an angry heart.”

Easton frowned. “There are angry hearts?”

“There are now.”

I picked up my coffee and raised it toward Briggs. “Big day.”

He lifted his mug. “The biggest.”

The pain followed me upstairs while I collected my gear. It waited inside the master suite and behind the closed closet door, then followed my thoughts across the snow to the smaller cabin where Charm was preparing to watch me play the game that might carry me out of her life for good.

I didn’t feel better, but I felt capable.

For now, that was enough.

28

Ryan

The final horn sounded, and for several seconds, I couldn’t hear anything else.

The Flint Frost had beaten Minnesota four to three in the most violent rivalry game I’d ever played, and the stadium built around Frost Lake seemed determined to collapse beneath the celebration. The team flooded over the boards as Hollis reached me first, crashing into my shoulder before Archer and Keller slammed into us from either side. Gloves struck my helmet, my back, and every bruise still healing beneath my pads while thousands of voices screamed through the frozen air.

“Decker!”

“Zero seven!”

“El Cuchillo!”

I shoved free long enough to lift my stick, and Frost Lake Arena ignited around me.

Every player in the league had seen pictures of the place. A natural lake froze hard enough each winter to support the temporary rink, boards, benches, lighting rigs, and thousands of fans packed beneath steel beams and open sections of the night sky. Pictures didn’t capture what happened after the sun disappeared behind the trees.