Page 129 of The Puckable Playbook

The page loads, and my eyes bug out of my head.Surely this isn’t right. I refresh the page. When the number goes up by two instead of decreasing by tens of thousands, I check the video title to make sure I have the right one. But there it is. Me, in my hockey gear, smiling at the camera.

My stomach flips. “This can’t be right.”

Her smile has already stretched wide. “When my article came out in the magazine, people were salivating over seeing the video.” She moves next to me. “Look, there’s a few hundred comments, Z.”

“But—”

“I made the video public because your story wasn’t just yours anymore. It was so many others’, too. Past hockey players, young kids, they all wanted to see you, to know you.”

I peer at her, and she’s blinking rapidly. The moment she locks gazes with me, a single tear falls. “There’s something else, too.”

Pulling out her phone with shaking hands, she brings up her email. She taps the most recent one, then hands the phone over to me.

I read her screen, my heart beating like a drummer on crack.

I read it again to be certain I read it correctly. “It’s—”

Glancing up, I spot Lenore with her fists on her face, knuckles obscuring her mouth like she’s trying not to sayanything, but then she bursts. “We started that email account when we signed up for YouTube, and it automatically added it to my phone. The comments started pouring in yesterday.”

“The day your article released.”

“This came in just now. Look, Zaiah, the Rochester Renegades. A farm team. A—”

“They want me to try out.” My voice isn’t even recognizable to me. It’s so filled with wonder and awe. “You did this.”

She shakes her head. “No, you did this. The little boy who didn’t want to get off the ice. The teenager who signed with Warner. The man who never stopped trying. You did this, Zaiah.”

I wipe my hand down my face. I don’t even know what to think. Scooping her up, I spin with Len in my arms. “Wedid this,” I whisper in her ear, overwhelmed with every feeling I thought this moment would be.

When I let her down, I shout into the air, pumping my arm. Birds fly off the lake, and I’m pretty sure I violated quiet hours, butholy shit. My hockey career isn’t over.

I have a lifeline.

“I guess we make a pretty good team.”

Spinning, I eye her up as she leans against the countertop. “Are you kidding me? We make the best pucking team.”

“He seems pretty impressed,” she says, pocketing her phone again.

A balloon inflates inside me. “I’m going to do it,” I tell her. “If not in that city, then another. I’m going to be on the winning side of the statistic you wrote about. I know it for sure.”

The look on her face couldn’t be prouder. It might have taken me a hell of a long time to get here, but I’m finally here. I’m not talking hockey either. I’m talking determination and belief. “I hope you’re ready to stay a hockey girlfriend, sweetheart.”

For a split second, worry overtakes me. What would this mean for her? What—

She walks forward, sealing her lips to mine. It’s short and sweet and infused with so much meaning. “All I need is a laptop…and you.”

I have to catch my breath. “You’re serious?”

“Would I joke about hockey?”

“But—”

“But you, Zaiah,” she says, placing a finger over my lips. “It’s you.”

A million thoughts swirl around me in a tornado of emotion. I know what it means to her to say those words. She’s gone all in with me, and I take that realization with a steadfast protectiveness. “I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t.”

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