Page 2 of The Save

“Easy. Just tell them the truth. You’re a terrible person who doesn’t care about anything besides algorithms and, oddly, minor league hockey.”

I gasped. “Damn it, what time is it?” I leaned over Tash and scrambled for my watch. She snatched it off the nightstand and handed it to me.

6:44 p.m. The game started at seven. Which meant I was officially ten minutes behind my usual leaving time and twenty minutes behind Shar’s. Luckily, she’d gone over to the rink early tonight with Rob, so I only had Crystal to disappoint.

I hopped off the bed with a hasty goodbye to Tash, grabbed my coat and keys, and half-ran, half-hopped down the apartment stairs like the floor was lava. Outside, the spring wind cut across the parking lot, still carrying that icy edge that screamed “Remember, this is Alberta, don’t get cocky.” My poor Rabbit was parked under the same sad street lamp it always was, looking like it had just finished a twelve-round fight with a snowplow. To be fair, it probably had.

The driver-side mirror was still duct-taped, and the left headlight had flickered since February. I threw myself into the driver’s seat, jammed the key into the ignition, and whispered a small prayer to the gods of German engineering. The engine sputtered, coughed, and finally choked awake.

“Thank you.” I patted the cracked dashboard. “You’re a queen. A temperamental, gas-guzzling queen.” I tore out of the lot and headed toward Crystal’s place, hitting every red light like it was some cosmic joke.

Crystal was waiting on the curb in her ridiculous fuzzy earmuffs and her scarf that matched mine, sipping a Slurpee like it was already July. I leaned over and flung the door open. “So sorry I’m late!”

She hopped in, and I peeled away from the curb as the door shut. The Rabbit whined but obeyed, bless her patchwork soul. We crested the hill leading to the rink, and I couldn’t help but grin.

I loved these nights. Not just because Shar got aggressively into chirping at the other team’s bench or because Crystal brought me snacks in her Mary Poppins bag of a purse. I loved them because hockey, in its own ridiculous, high-speed, sweaty way, made sense.

People thought math was rigid—just numbers, formulas, and logic. But good math? Real math? It was full of flow. Of momentum. Of elegant, precise chaos. Like a perfect pass sequence or a power play that snapped into place so cleanly it felt like watching a proof unfold across the ice.

Hockey was math in motion. Every breakout was a problem set. Every shift was a permutation of variables—angles, velocity, pressure, timing. There were infinite ways to get from puck drop to goal horn, but the most beautiful ones followed an internal rhythm. You could feel when it was right.

Players didn’t realize they were doing math, but they were. Vectors. Trajectories. Instantaneous adjustments with spatial reasoning. The best players didn’t just react. They anticipated. It was all there: the geometry of a tight-angle shot, the symmetry of a well-executed cycle, the algorithm of a three-on-two that ended with the goalie sprawled and hopeless.

It wasn’t rigid. It was poetry. The only kind I could follow.

“Is Chase going to be there tonight?” Crystal asked.

A blush rose to my cheeks. “Uh . . . how would I know?”

Crystal raised an eyebrow, grinning. “All I have to do is say his name?—”

“Stop. He’s my stepbrother.”

“Was.For what, a few months?”

Technically less. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.”

“You definitely snapped.”

“Yeah, well. The whole thing is just . . . weird. I don’t know how to act around him. That’s all this is.” I gestured to my flushed neck.

“Uh-huh.”

“Seriously.”

“Dude, Chase is hot?—”

“Can you not?”

“He’s twenty-four, a hockey player,graduated.”

I laughed and waved her off, trying to hide my reaction to the sudden swoop in my belly. I didn’t know if Chase was objectively hot or not because to me, he was an icon. The symbol of everything I wanted and could never have in high school. His physical appearance back then was beside the point. It was the way he didn’t seem to care. The way he moved. Fluid and almost lazy. The way he sprawled out in his chair. The way he always breathed out a little and dropped his eyes when he smiled. Like he was in on some secret joke that, at fourteen, I would’ve chopped off my left arm to hear.

Just the thought of him slipping his hand into the pocket of his faded jeans back then or leaning against his locker at school . . . All of that was why I reacted the way I did when my mom announced that her new boyfriend, the D-bag who always sat on our couch after school and waited for her to make him dinner, was Chase’s dad.

Chase—the guy every girl swooned over at school.His dad.

I was a deer in headlights. At least fifteen seconds passed during which I wasn’t sure if I’d gone into cardiac arrest. Andthe first time he stepped foot in my house? He probably thought I was mute. I don’t think I said a word to him until he asked for help with his math when I wandered into the kitchen.

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