Page 55 of Her Player

Because you didn’t fuck with goalies.

Ever.

And these Pirates were about to learn some lessons in some fucking manners.

19

VICTORIA

I was on my fourth call of the game when Jett scored the winner.

I knew it happened because the arena shook. Not metaphorically. Literally. Forty thousand people coming off their feet simultaneously produced a vibration that moved through the concrete walls of the corridor outside the owner’s suite and into the soles of my heels and up through my spine. My lawyer Seth said something on the other end of the line that I didn’t catch.

“Hold on,” I said.

I stepped back through the suite door and looked at the ice.

Three to two on the scoreboard. Jett skating with his stick raised, the Pirates goalie staring at the net like he was trying to understand physics. Rhett intercepting Jett mid-celebration and wrapping him up with that barely-contained joy he allowed himself in public, which was quieter than everyone else’s but somehow louder for it.

I watched for exactly five seconds.

Then I stepped back into the corridor.

“Sorry,” I said into the phone. “You were saying.”

The truth was I’d been managing the Detroit situation from the corridor for most of the third period. Detroit’s legal team had been on the phone with Seth since the forfeit was announced, trying to negotiate the terms of the loss designation before the PHL office had even weighed in officially. It was exactly the kind of procedural maneuvering I’d expected from them and it required exactly the kind of attention I didn’t want to be giving it on a night when my team was playing for a wildcard berth.

But that was ownership. The game happened whether or not you were watching it.

Brynn had texted me three times during the second period.

Mom come back in.

Rhett just hit someone into the boards so hard the glass shook.

MOM.

I’d sent back a thumbs up on that last one, which I knew would annoy her, and felt only slightly guilty about it.

I was wrapping up the call when the noise changed.

Not the good kind of noise. Not the roar that built and peaked and broke over itself the way crowd noise did when something went right. This was sharper. More jagged. The kind of noise that had an edge to it that you felt differently than you heard. I’d been in this building long enough to know the difference between a crowd celebrating and a crowd reacting to something that had gone wrong.

I ended the call without saying goodbye.

I pushed through the suite door.

The ice below was chaos.

Chaos.

It was the only word to describe the scene that unfolded. And the second I saw Rhett get tackled, I raced out of that VIP box. I clocked my daughter pushing her way through the crowd, moving away from the drink machine and toward the rink.

I practically leapt over that fucking wall as my heels touched down onto the ice.

The crowd cheered. Punches were thrown. Officials of all shapes and sizes blew their whistles as men dogpiled on top of men. It was an absolute shitshow. Brynn skated her way to me in her tennis shoes, grabbing my hand before we made a beeline for the dogpile on top of Moose.

I wasted no time in grabbing the first Detroit Pirates jersey I could put my hands on.