Page 135 of Changing the Playbook
It’s a gladiator’s salute that lifts twenty thousand asses out of seats.
With eight minutes left, we tie it. Schmidt’s goal off a passing play so beautiful it belongs in a museum. I watch from the bench, too winded from selling my body for loose pucks tocontribute, but my heart pounds with something that might be pride. Or maybe just love for these beautiful idiots who refuse to quit.
“Keep pushing!” Coach roars. “They’re gassed!”
We hunt them. Wave after wave, searching for blood. My body aches from hits and pucks, and I feel the scouts’ eyes boring holes in my jersey, but for once, I don’t care. This isn’t about them anymore. This is about giving these boys one last memory of what we can be together.
It’s about saying goodbye.
With ninety seconds left, their best forward tries to spring on a breakaway. I read it perfectly, angling my body to force him wide. He tries the pass anyway, because desperation makes people stupid, but the puck hits my skate and bounces to Kellerman.
I don’t chase the play.
Don’t need to.
Instead, I watch my teammates fly up ice in perfect synchronization, a puck moving from tape to tape. It’s poetry in motion. Cooper to Martinez. Martinez to Schmidt. Schmidt to Maine in the slot. Maine to the back of the net as the buzzer screams.
Bedlam.
The bench empties, bodies crashing together at center ice. But then something beautiful happens. They turn—all of them—and skate toward me. They surround me, lift me, chanting my name. The crowd joins in as we flood toward the locker room, twenty thousand voices unified in appreciation.
But they don’t know they’re cheering for a ghost.
Because this Mike—hockey Mike—is dead.
And in his place, Sophie gets exactly what she needs—a boyfriend who’ll never leave, never chase dreams away from her, never be more than what fits in her carefully controlled world. Ithurts me, the most painful thing I’ve ever had to do, but I want her and she needs me.
So that will have to do.
thirty-eight
SOPHIE
The buzzer’sscream punches through twenty thousand screaming fans, but I can’t move. My ass stays glued to the plastic seat while fans surge past me, a tide of celebration I’m not part of. Because I just watched the man I love throw himself on his sword.
My fingers have gone numb around the railing. On the ice below, Mike’s teammates pile on each other at center ice—a writhing, joyful heap of bodies and sticks—but all I see is the guy in the middle of it all, quiet and reserved, like he’s in mourning.
Dead eyes. Mechanical movements. A stranger wearing Mike Altman’s face.
The same after the game as he’d been in the first period.
Before the transformation. God, the transformation.
I’d watched Mike become himself again in the second period. Every blocked shot that left him limping. Every hit that should have put him on his ass but didn’t. The way his teammates played around him, for him, like he was the sun and they were just planets in his orbit.
When twenty thousand people chanted his name after that goal, calling him a legend, my stomach turned itself inside out. Because I finally got it. I hadn’t asked him to choose a differentjob. I’d asked him to cut out a piece of his soul and hand it to me on a platter.
“Excuse me.” I shove past celebrating fans. “Sorry, coming through.”
Down in the concrete corridors under the arena, my sneakers squeak against the floor as I flag down a security guard for directions—third left, straight ahead, follow the noise. Then I’m running, my heart hammering harder with each turn, until the muffled celebration gets louder and louder and?—
The locker room door gapes open, releasing waves of music and laughter and testosterone-fueled joy. I freeze at the threshold. This is their church, their sacred space where I definitely don’t belong. But then Mike’s voice cuts through the chaos—low, tired, done—and my feet move without permission.
Twenty heads swivel toward me the second I cross into their territory.
The music cuts. Maine’s beer freezes halfway to his lips. Rook looks up from his phone. And there’s my dad, eyebrows climbing toward what’s left of his hairline. But there’s something else in his face too. Like he knew this was coming. Like maybe he’s been waiting for it.
But Mike.
