Page 111 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
Another woman leans forward, popping out from behind the other side of Coco. “Hey, Everly.”
“Chloe—good to see you again.” I shift to face her properly. “I heard a rumor you signed with Stratton Publishing—is that true?”
“Just last month.” Her smile turns wry. “I’m still waiting for someone to call and tell me it was a clerical error.”
“Welcome to the family.” I settle into the seat at the end of the row, leaning slightly toward the women. “For the record, that stunt you pulled with the jersey a few weeks back was pretty cute. Candy’s a lucky guy.”
Chloe opens her mouth to say something, but just then, the arena erupts as the goal horn carries over the crowd. One point for the Blue Ox.
Aw, I missed it!
The bench erupts—players spilling over the boards, sticks in the air. Vasquez is already halfway across the ice. And Beckett—Beckett swoops around behind the net, one fist raised, no showboating, just the clean controlled satisfaction of a man who made the play happen and knows it.
He skates back to the defensive zone, and I watch him the whole way. Anything that happened before—the hesitation, the distraction—is gone, replaced by Blue Line Beckett. And oh boy, he’s on fire.
“Watching him play never gets old,” I say. “He just sees the play before it even happens.” I watch him angle a winger off the puck before they’ve finished receiving it. Clean. No contact needed. All Beck.
“That’s what makes him exceptional,” Coco says simply.
The second period moves fast.
I grew up in hockey arenas. I know the sounds—the crack of a stick, the hard thud of a check that travels up through the glass and into your palms if you’re close enough, the roar that means something just happened that the crowd needed. I know how to read the bench, the way Coach Jacobsen’s posture changes when the ice is going the right way versus when it isn’t.
Right now, it’s going the right way.
The Blue Ox are on a power play, and I watch Beckett work the point—skating the blue line, moving the puck across to Reyes, pulling the penalty killers wide, creating the angles. When he finally shoots, it’s low and hard, and Conrad tips it from in front and the goal horn goes off again, and the building shakes.
2–0.
“Yes,” Chloe says, jumping to her feet.
“Let’s go!” Penny shouts.
Beckett takes a pass behind his own net—a defenseman’s play, a nothing-glamorous, collecting-the-puck-in-the-corner play—and their forwards are collapsing on him fast, two men coming hard, and for a second it looks like he’s trapped.
Except he’s not trapped.
He reads it so early it barely looks like a decision—one stride to his right, a short pass to Reyes breaking up the left side, and then he’s following the play out of his own zone at full stride, the whole sequence taking maybe four seconds, efficient and exact and completely inevitable in retrospect. The kind of play that makes you feel stupid for worrying.
He’s the Blue Line.
Third period has us up by two, but the other team isn’t going down without a fight. They push their offense, winning puck battles, forcing turnovers—and for a few shifts, the ice tilts the wrong way and the box goes very quiet.
But Beckett is everywhere tonight.
“He’s not going to let them back in this game,” Penny says.
She’s right. You can feel it, can’t you?
With two minutes left, their goalie comes off for the extra attacker, and suddenly it’s six skaters against five, and the ice is chaos—bodies everywhere, pucks bouncing off sticks and boards, the kind of hockey that’s ugly and urgent and completely riveting. I have both hands on the railing. I’m not sure when that happened.
A shot comes from the point. Beckett’s in the lane—he doesn’t move away from it, he moves into it, taking it on the shin, absorbing the hit and directing the puck into the corner. Effortless. Decisive. Deadly.
And I should have expected it. Because Beckett’s the kind of guy to put himself in front of the puck. Between the threat and the net.
Beckett passes off to Conrad—Penny surges to her feet. The clock enters final countdown, and I hold my breath.
Conrad circles the net, passes to Candy—and there goes Chloe—and he lines up the shot.
