Page 391 of Faking the Goal

Three days after we won the Frozen Four, Clint fucking Murray called me.

Not his assistant.

Not someone from his agency.

Clint Murray himself.

The same agent I've wanted since I started seriously thinking about the NHL.

He wanted to represent me.

Apparently, he'd been following me for a while, but my performance during the Frozen Four sealed it for him. We met the following week, went over everything—my career, what I wanted, what he expected—and by the time I walked out, Clint Murray was officially my agent.

Even now, that sentence sounds fucking insane.

Since then, my life has been a blur of meetings, interviews, evaluations, phone calls, and Murray feeding me whatever information he can get about which organizations are interested. He's warned me about a hundred times that nothing is guaranteed tonight. Teams change their minds. Picks get traded. Draft boards shift.

I know.

Still doesn't stop my heart from trying to punch its way through my ribs every time another team goes on the clock.

I glance down at Taylor's hand wrapped around mine.

She immediately squeezes.

"You're doing that thing," she whispers.

I look at her. "What thing?"

"Pretending you're not nervous while slowly crushing all the bones in my hand."

I loosen my grip immediately. "Shit. Sorry."

She grins and laces our fingers together again before I can pull away. "I didn't tell you to let go, Grumpy."

Fuck.

I look at her sitting beside me in the middle of the biggest night of my life, then at Mom and Miho on my other side, and suddenly I'm hit with this ridiculous sense of contentment.

Because this is it.

Everything I've worked for is finally within reach.

Maybe I don't know which jersey I'm going to pull over my head tonight. Maybe I don't know what city I'll eventually call home or how long it'll take before I actually earn a place on an NHL roster.

But I know one thing.

Whatever name gets called tonight, whatever happens after I stand up from this seat, I'm not walking toward it alone.

Mom is here.

Miho is here.

And Trouble is holding my hand.

My family.

For the first time in my life, the future doesn't feel like something somebody else already decided for me.