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Intermission. I don’t wait for the room to clear.

I find a reason. Water, tape, something that gets me near the tunnel toward the concourse. I text her from the hallway, three words, no explanation:

can I see you

She’s there in under two minutes. Family area — the specific liminal space between the concourse and the locker room hallway where players’ people are technically allowed to wait. She’s got her coat still on. Her face is doing the real thing, no performance, the second she sees mine.

“Theo.” She crosses the distance fast. “What happened?”

“My dad’s here.” I say it even, because that’s the only way I can say it right now without it costing me something I don’t have to spare. “Two rows back from you. With Noah and Logan.”

Her whole face changes. “He didn’t tell you?”

“He texted this morning. Wasn’t going to surprise you.” I hear the bitterness in my own voice and don’t try to soften it. “Which is somehow worse than just showing up.”

“I know.” She doesn’t try to fix it. Doesn’t tell me it’s fine, doesn’t tell me to ignore it, doesn’t offer a single piece of advice I didn’t ask for. She just puts both hands on my chest, the way she does, and holds my eyes. “You’re allowed to be rattled. You’re also allowed to not let him have the rest of this game.”

“I took a bad penalty read. Cost us a goal.”

“Then you’re going to take a good one next shift.” She says it with total certainty, the specific confidence she has in me that I still haven’t fully gotten used to receiving. “You are not your father’s audience tonight, Theo. You’re the best defenseman on this ice. That’s true whether he’s in the building or not.”

I look at her. Something in my chest loosens half an inch, the way it always does when she’s the one saying the thing instead of me trying to talk myself into it.

“He’s not why you’re playing tonight,” she says. “You know that. Say it.”

“He’s not why I’m playing tonight.”

“Who are you playing for?”

“My team. My mom. Myself.” A beat. “You.”

“Good answer.” She kisses me, quick, careful, the concourse noise loud enough around us that nobody’s paying attention to two people in a hallway. “Now go get your game back.”

I hold her for one more second before I let go, and in that second I almost ask her — are you okay, actually okay, not the version you’ve been handing me all week. I don’t. The horn’s about to sound. There’s no time. Some instinct I don’t fully trust tells me this isn’t the moment. I put it away again. After tonight.

“I love you,” I tell her instead.

“I love you too. Go.”

I go.

Second period, I find it again.

Not because my dad disappeared. Not because the problem resolved itself — it didn’t, it’s still sitting two rows back in section four wearing a smile he didn’t earn. But because I’ve compartmentalized it the way she just helped me compartmentalize it. My gap tightens back up. My reads come back online one shift at a time.

I strip a Providence forward clean at our blue line midway through the period. No penalty. Clean stick, better positioning, the exact read I was missing an hour ago. I carry it up ice myself and dish to Cash, who buries it top corner.

1-1.

Third period, we take the lead. Wyatt again — a wrist shot off a scramble that the goalie doesn’t see until it’s already past him. Providence throws everything at us for the final six minutes trying to answer. I hold my position. Hold my gap. Hold every single read they try to beat me with. Right now the only thing in my head is the job in front of me and the girl in section four who told me I’m allowed to not let him have this.

The final horn goes off with us up 2-1.

Conference champions. Frozen Four next.

The family area after is a specific kind of chaos. Cash narrating the game to anyone who’ll listen, growing more heroic in the retelling by the minute. Wyatt getting mobbed by half the team and looking deeply uncomfortable about it. Beau somewhere in the middle of it all, still in his brace, grinning wider than I’ve seen him grin in weeks, Sloane tucked under his good arm. Parents everywhere, players everywhere, the whole rink’s worth of celebration compressed into one loud room with nowhere private in it.

My dad finds me before I find Margo, right in the middle of all of it.