Falling For You, Puck Boy

I have never cared about ice hockey in my entire life. Not even a little.

Not the players, not the scores, not the way everyone in Boston seemed to lose their minds every February when the Beanpot Tournament rolled around.

To me, it was just noise — the kind of noise that leaked through dorm walls at midnight and made studying for biochem exams feel like a personal punishment from the universe.

But here I was.

Ellie Park, nineteen years old, biomedical science major, standing in the middle of TD Garden arena with a camera around my neck that didn't belong to me and a ticket I hadn't paid for, surrounded by thousands of people screaming for a sport I barely understood.

"You owe me," I muttered into my phone. The crowd was so loud I could barely hear my own voice.

"You are the best friend a girl could ever ask for!" Jada's voice crackled through the speaker, practically vibrating with excitement even from across campus. "I'm so sorry, El, I really am…the food poisoning came out of nowhere…but you have my camera, and section 114 is literally the best view in the whole arena, and Cole Crawford is going to be right there —"

"Jada."

"— he's going to play the game of his life tonight, I can feel it in my whole body, and you need to get as many shots as you can because the lighting is perfect in the second period —"

"Jada."

"— and please, please, please do not drop the camera."

I looked down at the expensive DSLR hanging from my neck like a small, fragile anchor. Jada had saved up for three months for it. It was, in her own words, her most precious non-living possession.

"I won't drop the camera," I said. "But you owe me. Full home-cooked meal. Dessert included. And I'm choosing the dessert."

"Done. Now go! Warmup is starting!" She hung up before I could say another word.

I found my seat, which was, true to Jada's word, shockingly close to the ice, and settled in, tucking my scarf tighter and pushing my glasses up my nose.

The Boston Terriers were already warming up, skating in long, effortless loops, their white jerseys catching the arena lights.

The crowd buzzed around me, warm and electric in the way only a packed sports venue could be. And I had to admit, even from my position of genuine personal indifference, there was something almost beautiful about the ice itself.

It was clean, fast and Impossibly smooth. I spotted number seventeen almost immediately. Hard not to, honestly.

He moved differently from the others — like the ice belonged to him and everyone else was just visiting.

Cole Crawford.

Even I had heard the name. My older brother Daniel brought it up constantly. Jada had an entire photo wall dedicated to him. He was the reason she'd bought the camera in the first place.

I lifted it now and looked at him through the lens. He looked to be tall. Dark-haired beneath his helmet.

The kind of broad across the shoulders that only came from years of brutal training. He wasn't smiling the way the other players were…no joking around, no showing off for the crowd.

He just skated, silent and focused, like he was running through calculations in his head that the rest of the world wasn't cleared to see.

I took a few shots. For Jada. Obviously!

The game was, okay. I'll just say it. The game was riveting. I didn't know all the rules. I still don't, fully. But I understood enough: Boston was winning, Crawford was the reason, and every single time he touched the puck the entire arena collectively held its breath.

He was always in motion, always three steps ahead of everyone else, reading plays before they happened like he was working off a script no one else had access to.

I found myself leaning forward in my seat without meaning to.

In the final two minutes, he scored the goal that sealed it. The arena detonated. People around me were on their feet screaming, strangers grabbing each other's arms, and I was — somehow — standing too, clapping, the camera bouncing against my chest.

And then, without any warning at all, everything changed.

The buzzer sounded. Both teams spilled across the ice, helmets coming off, the celebration barely getting started, when I saw it.

Crawford and the team captain, a broad blond guy whose jersey read HALE, face to face at center ice.

I couldn't hear what was being said. Nobody could over the roar. But I watched Hale lean in close, lips moving, and I watched the exact moment something in Crawford's expression went very, very still.

Like water going flat before a storm. Then his fist connected with Hale's jaw. It happened so fast.

One second, two seconds–then chaos. Teammates rushing in from every direction, coaches shouting over the boards, camera flashes going off across the arena like a lightning storm.

My hands moved before my brain did. I raised Jada's camera and got four clean shots before I even fully processed what I was seeing. Then I lowered it slowly.

The celebration had become a crime scene in about six seconds flat.

I stood there with the camera in my hands and a strange, cold feeling settling in my chest, not quite shock, but something close to it.

Around me, the mood in the arena had fractured. Half the crowd was confused, the other half already pulling out phones, already typing. Well. That explained a few things.

Twenty minutes later, I was weaving through the post-game crowd toward the exit, Jada's camera clutched firmly against my ribs.

The air outside hit me the second I pushed through the doors, February in Boston, brutal and honest, no softness in it at all. I pulled my scarf up over my chin and dialed Jada.

She picked up on the first ring.

"How was it? How did he play? Did you get good shots? The stream kept buffering in the third period and I was going absolutely insane —"

"He punched the captain," I said.

Silence.