Page 148 of Slashed Bonds

That was given. Not taken. There’s a difference, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life on the right side of it.

And that’s what we’ve got.

Evidence.

Eleven minutes of it. Four men and a woman who plotted and executed the destruction of a nineteen-year-old girl, on camera, and laughed about it on camera, because they believed with their whole hearts that nobody would ever fight for her.

They’re about to find out how dangerous a pack of rejects is.

Not because we’re unhinged. Everyone thinks that’s it. The files, the suspensions, the trophy case.

It isn’t.

We’re dangerous because we have nothing to fucking lose.

Something nudges my bare foot.

I don’t move. I stay exactly where I am, fists up, eyes closed, because I can feel it, the power shift behind my eyes, the thing that wants the wheel. I’m holding it. I’m holding it with everything, because as much as it’s deserved, as much as this morning has earned a Switch, I don’t want a second syringe.

Not today. Not with a game in nine hours.

Nine hours. Ashford’s building. Their crowd under that low ceiling, and Brandt in the far net living in April, and Halvard with his step coming down Killian’s wall.

I’ve got my own page. Cash doesn’t know I write them.

Page one says: hold it less.

She told me that. You hold it too long. Five shots in a scrimmage and she found the one flaw in a crease I’ve spent four years building, and I’ve been thinking about it every night since, and here’s what I’ve decided. She’s right, and she’s also wrong, and the difference is who’s shooting.

Against a shooter who wants the gap, I hold it. Let him look, let his eyes drop, let him commit. Against a shooter who’s patient enough to wait me out, I don’t hold it at all. I close it early and make him find something else, and there’s only one shooter in this division patient enough to wait me out, and she’s on my team.

Halvard isn’t patient. Halvard wants the gap. Halvard gets the gap, and then he gets my pad.

Page two says: the posts. Left, right, left. Every whistle. Same as always. I’m not changing the ritual because a committee’s in the building. I’m changing the ritual for nobody.

Page three says what I eat. Page four says what I don’t say. Page five is blank, because page five is for after, and I don’t write after before it happens.

And there’s a line at the bottom of page one I wrote at five this morning and haven’t decided about.

Tap her stick before the anthem.

It’s not a ritual yet. Rituals take a win to become rituals. But I’ve got a puck with her mouth on it that’s been in the center of a wall for nine months, and I’ve won every game since I hung it, and I’ve never once said that out loud because saying it out loud is how you lose the ritual.

If she lets me tap the stick, and we win, then it’s a ritual. Then it’s forever. I don’t think she knows what she’d be agreeing to.

A nudge again. Wet nose. Then the weight of a head against my calf.

Her scent gets to me first.

Through the sweat and the sand and the rubber. Black cherry, plum, the thread of winter under it. And something I haven’t smelled on her in a gym or a lobby or anywhere with lights on.

Jasmine. Opening. The thing that only happens when she’s not afraid.

And then something touches my cheek.

My eyes open halfway. My brain’s slow with it, overweighted, and it takes a second to understand where I am and who’s in front of me.

And then I lock on.