Chapter 23: The Cup

The Ironclads won the Cup on a Tuesday night, in the sixth game of the final, at home.

When the horn went, the whole bench emptied, and I stood on the boards and watched a team fall on top of its goalie.

Cillian skated to center ice as the league brought out the trophy.

It was bigger than I thought it would be, and silver, with a hundred names engraved around its rim.

The commissioner held it out to him.

Cillian took it in both hands.

Then he did something I will remember for the rest of my life.

He did not lift it.

He turned, skated to the bench door, and held it out to me.

The arena went quiet in a long, confused wave.

"Cillian," I said. "That's yours. The captain goes first."

"The captain does what he wants."

"Everyone's watching."

"Good."

He put the Cup in my hands.

It was cold and heavy, and I nearly dropped it.

"Your handwriting won this," he said, loud enough for the first rows to hear. "Lift it."

I lifted it over my head, in my dress shoes, on ice, and eighteen thousand people roared.

Later, at the penthouse, the Cup sat on his dresser in a nest of towels, because there was nowhere else to put it.

The party had gone on without us.

We got out at midnight, and neither of us had said where we were going.

In the bedroom I shut the door and leaned against it.

"Take your jacket off," Cillian said.

I did, and he came toward me, slowly, and took my face in his hands.

"I don't want to be fast," he said.

"We've been fast."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Claimed by the Rival Hockey God from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.