#cm97

You laugh, a light sound that fills the cab of the truck. “That’s because you have the literary sensibilities of a hockey puck, Aus.”

“Hey! Pucks are complex,” he shoots back, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth as he pulls out of the rink’s parking lot. “They have to be frozen, you know. Very specific temperature. They’re sensitive.”

“Right. My mistake,” you say, playing along. “Deeply sensitive. Just like you.”

His hand leaves the steering wheel to find yours, his fingers lacing through yours on the center console. It’s a simple, thoughtless gesture, one he’s done a thousand times since you were fifteen. His palm is cool from holding his stick. It feels like home.

“So what’d you write about?” He asks, his voice softer now.

“The American Dream. Fitzgerald. All that jazz.”

“Gatsby?” He makes a face. “Dude was a psycho.”

“He was a romantic,” you correct gently.

“He was obsessed. There’s a difference.” He glances over at you, his brown eyes serious for a beat. “It’s not romantic if it’s one-sided.”

You squeeze his hand. The future feels like a vast, sun-drenched highway stretching out in front of you both. It’s full of terrifying and wonderful possibilities, but the one constant, the one thing that feels as real and solid as the truck beneath you, is that you’ll be on it together.

“When we get out of here,” he says, not for the first time. It’s not a question of if, but when. “When we make it, we’re gonna have a place with a real yard. For a dog.”

“Oh, we’re getting a dog?”

“Duh. A big, dumb, slobbery one,” he says with absolute certainty. “And we’ll be somewhere it snows. Like, real snow. Not the sad stuff Flagstaff pretends to have.”

You lean your head against the cool glass of the window, watching the familiar landscape of Scottsdale blur past. Palm trees and strip malls. Everything you’ve ever known. “Sounds cold.”

“It’ll be awesome,” he promises, bringing your joined hands up to his lips and pressing a soft kiss to your knuckles. “I’ll keep you warm.”

It’s always we. Our place. Our dog. His dream is a shared space he’s been building for years, and you’ve always had your own room in it.

***

The air in Buffalo is electric, thick with tension and stale popcorn. It’s a universe away from the dry heat of Arizona. You’re sitting in a sea of suits and nervous families, a small island of calm in a churning ocean of anxiety. Your dress, one you spent weeks picking out, feels both too formal and not nearly formal enough for the weight of the moment.

Auston sits beside you, impossibly still. He’s wearing a tailored suit that makes him look older, broader. But you can feel the frantic energy radiating off him, the tremor in his knee as it bounces against yours. His hand is a vise grip on your thigh.

His mom, Ema, is on his other side, her face a mask of proud anxiety. His dad, Brian, is beside you, his hand a steady presence on his son’s shoulder. But Auston’s focus is a laser beam pointed at the stage.

“You’re going to be sick,” you whisper, your voice barely audible over the murmur of the crowd.

“I’m fine,” he lies, his knuckles white where he’s gripping your leg. He hasn’t let go of you since you sat down.

“Breathe, Aus.”

He finally turns his head, his eyes finding yours. The noise, the lights, the thousands of people — it all melts away. In his eyes, you see the same seventeen-year-old kid from the pickup truck, the one who dreamed of snow and a slobbery dog. He’s terrified. He’s hopeful.

“What if they don’t …” he starts, his voice cracking.

“They will,” you say with a certainty you don’t fully feel but are projecting for his sake. “They’d be insane not to. You’re the best one here, and everybody knows it.”

He swallows hard, his gaze flicking back to the stage as the Maple Leafs’ Director of Player Personnel approaches the podium. The entire arena holds its collective breath. You feel the vibration of it in your bones.

“And with the first overall selection in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft,” Mark Hunter’s voice booms through the speakers, “the Toronto Maple Leafs are proud to select …”

Time seems to warp, stretching and slowing. You can hear the blood pounding in your ears. Auston’s grip on you tightens until it’s almost painful.

“… from the ZSC Lions … and the USNTDP … center … Auston Matthews!”

The world explodes.

A roar erupts from the stands, a wave of sound that physically pushes you back in your seat. Cameras flash like a thousand lightning strikes. Auston lurches forward as if he’s been struck, his body going rigid with shock and relief. He drops his head into his hands, his shoulders shaking.

You’re the first one he turns to. His face is a mess of overwhelming emotion — tears, laughter, disbelief. He pulls you into him, his arms wrapping around you so tightly you can’t breathe. He buries his face in your neck, and you can feel his tears soaking the strap of your dress.

“We did it,” he chokes out, his voice muffled against your skin. “Y/N, we did it.”

You cling to him, your own eyes burning. “You did it, Auston. This was all you.”

He pulls back, his hands framing your face. His eyes are shining. “No,” he says, his voice thick with emotion. “No. It was us. Always.”

He kisses you, a desperate, triumphant kiss right there in the middle of the arena, with all the cameras of the hockey world pointed directly at him. In that moment, you are the center of his universe, the anchor in his storm. He pulls on the blue and white jersey with the maple leaf on the front, the fabric stiff and new. He looks like a superhero putting on his cape for the first time. He looks like your Auston.

***

The Toronto condo is all windows and grey city light. From twenty floors up, the city sprawls out beneath you, a postcard of concrete, glass, and the distant, shimmering blue of Lake Ontario. It’s a long way from the sun-bleached stucco of Scottsdale.

“Well?” Auston says, spinning in a slow circle in the middle of the vast, empty living room. His voice echoes off the hardwood floors. “What do you think?”

“I think we’re going to need furniture,” you say, a smile playing on your lips. You walk over to the floor-to-ceiling window, pressing your palm against the cool glass. “A lot of furniture.”

He comes up behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist and resting his chin on your shoulder. You both look out at your new life.

“This is it,” he murmurs, his breath warm against your ear. “This is our place.”

Our place. The words hang in the air, full of promise. You left your job, your friends, your family, your country. You packed your life into four suitcases to follow him here, to this new city where the only person you truly know is the man holding you. It’s a terrifying leap of faith.

“It’s … big,” you say.

“We’ll fill it up,” he says confidently. He turns you around in his arms, his expression soft. “It’s gonna be great, you’ll see. You’ll love it here.”

“I already love it,” you lie, because you love him, and right now, that’s the same thing.

He seems to sense your reservation. “Hey,” he says, tilting your chin up with his finger. “I know this is a lot. You gave up everything to come here with me.”

“We’re a team, remember?” You say, offering him a small smile. “I’m the goalie. I stop you from doing dumb stuff.”

He chuckles, the sound bouncing off the bare walls. “And you’re damn good at it.” He leans in, his forehead resting against yours. “I couldn’t do this without you. I wouldn’t want to.”

The first few months are a whirlwind. He scores four goals in his first-ever NHL game, and you watch from the stands, screaming until your voice is gone, feeling a surge of pride so fierce it almost knocks you over. The city immediately falls in love with him. He is their savior, their prodigal son, the face of the franchise before he’s even legally allowed to drink in the States.

You build a life in the gaps between games and practices. You buy furniture. You learn the subway lines. You find a coffee shop that feels a little bit like home. You adopt an Aussie  Bernandoodle puppy you name Felix, who is, in fact, big and dumb and slobbery.

You’re there for every high and every low. You make his favorite pre-game meal of pasta and chicken. You learn to read his moods, to know when he needs to talk about a bad game and when he needs to just sit in silence and watch a movie. You are the keeper of his quiet, the architect of his peace in a city that wants to consume him whole.

One night, after a tough overtime loss to Boston, he comes home looking shattered. He drops his gear bag by the door with a heavy thud and sinks onto the couch, staring blankly at the dark TV screen.

You sit down next to him, not touching him yet, just letting your presence be known.

“It was my fault,” he says to the empty screen. “That turnover in the third. I saw Marchand coming, and I just … I hesitated.”

“It’s one game, Aus.”

“It’s not just one game here!” He snaps, his voice sharp. He immediately winces, turning to you. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—It’s just the pressure. It’s constant. Every mistake, every bad play, it’s all over the news, all over the internet. They’re talking about my contract already. They’re saying I’m not a leader.”

“They’re idiots who have never strapped on a pair of skates in their lives,” you say fiercely, finally reaching out and taking his hand. “You’re the best player on that team. You’re the best rookie in the league. You know that.”

He sighs, a heavy, tired sound, and leans his head on your shoulder. “I just want to win. For them. For this city.”

“You will.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know you,” you say simply. “And you don’t know how to do anything else.”

He turns his head and kisses you, a kiss that tastes like exhaustion and gratitude. “Thank you,” he whispers. “For being my person.”

“Always,” you whisper back. And in that moment, you believe it. You are an unshakable, unbreakable team of two.

***

The shift is subtle at first. A slow erosion. It’s the sixth season. The ‘rookie’ label is long gone, replaced by the weight of a massive contract and the captaincy that everyone assumes is coming. The pressure you saw in his first year has now calcified into something harder, more permanent.

He starts spending more time at the rink. Earlier mornings, later nights. He says it’s for extra video sessions, for workouts. You tell yourself it’s what it takes to be the best.

The easy conversations you used to have are replaced by a new kind of dialogue.

“How was your day?” You’ll ask when he finally walks through the door, his eyes already glued to his phone, scrolling through stats or post-game analysis.

“Fine,” he’ll grunt. “Long practice.”

You’ll have dinner waiting, the one he used to love. He’ll pick at it, his mind a million miles away.

“Something wrong?”

“Just thinking about the power play,” he’ll say. “We’re not connecting.”

His world, once big enough for two, is shrinking. It’s shrinking down to the size of a hockey rink, and you’re starting to feel like you’re on the outside of the glass, banging on it, your voice too muffled for him to hear.

The ‘we’ becomes ‘I’.

It’s no longer, “We should get dinner after the game.” It’s, “I need to be better on the road.”

It’s not, “I can’t wait for us to go back to Arizona for the break.” It’s, “I need to get some extra work in on the break.”

You try to talk to him about it one night. He’s on the couch, laptop open, watching game film. It’s his day off.

“Hey,” you say, sitting on the ottoman in front of him. “I feel like I barely see you anymore.”

He doesn’t look up from the screen. “I’m right here.”

“No, you’re not,” you say, your voice gentle but firm. “You’re here, but you’re not here. We don’t talk. We don’t do anything. It feels like you’re a ghost in our apartment.”

He finally looks up, his eyes tired and annoyed. “What do you want me to do, Y/N? This is my job. This is what it takes. Do you think McDavid just sits around all day on his days off? No. He’s working. They’re all working. If I take a day off, I fall behind.”

“I’m not asking you to take a day off your career, Auston. I’m asking you to take an hour off for us. For me.”

He scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m just … I’m tired. The media is killing me about the slump. I have to focus. I have to get my head right.”

“And I’m part of that, right? Getting your head right? I’m your person, remember?” You plead, hearing the desperation in your own voice.

He looks at you, and for a second, you see a flicker of the old Auston, the boy in the pickup truck. A flash of guilt, of sadness. But it’s gone as quickly as it came, replaced by a steely resolve.

“I just need to focus on hockey right now,” he says, his voice flat. He turns his attention back to the laptop screen.

The conversation is over. He’s dismissed you. And the cold dread that pools in your stomach tells you this is more than just a rough patch. This is a fracture in the foundation you built your entire life on.

***

It happens on a Tuesday. A grey, unremarkable Tuesday in late November. The team isn’t on the road. There isn’t a game. There’s no big fight that precedes it. There’s just a heavy, suffocating silence that has been filling the condo for weeks.

He comes home from practice and you know. The way he sets his keys on the counter without looking at you. The way he won’t meet your eyes as he takes a water bottle from the fridge. Your entire body goes on high alert.

“Aus?” You say, your voice small.

He leans against the counter, taking a long drink of water. He still won’t look at you.

“We need to talk.”

There it is. The four words that are the death knell of every relationship. Your heart plummets into your stomach, a cold, heavy stone.

“Okay,” you whisper, forcing yourself to stay calm. “Talk.”

He finally lifts his head, and his eyes are hollow. All the light, all the warmth you fell in love with, is gone. He looks like a stranger wearing your boyfriend’s face.

“This isn’t working,” he says, the words clinical and cold.

You flinch as if he’s slapped you. “What isn’t working? The power play? Because I can’t help you with that, Auston.” It’s a weak attempt at a joke, a desperate bid to steer this conversation into safer waters.

“Us,” he clarifies, his voice unwavering. “This. It’s not working.”

You have to physically grab the back of a dining chair to steady yourself. Your legs feel like they might give out. “What are you talking about? We’re … we’re fine. We’re just in a slump. Teams go through slumps.”

“This isn’t a slump,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “This is … a distraction.”

The word hangs in the air between you, ugly and sharp. Distraction.

You stare at him, your mind racing, trying to process the blow. Years of your life — high school, the draft, moving across a continent, building a home, getting a dog — all of it, reduced to a single, insulting word.

“A distraction?” You repeat, your voice rising with disbelief and hurt. “I’m a distraction? Was it a distraction when I packed up my entire life for you? Was it a distraction when I stayed up with you all night after that game seven loss? Was making you dinner a distraction? Was our life a distraction?”

Tears are welling in your eyes, hot and angry. You will not let them fall.

“I need to focus,” he says, and it sounds like a line he’s been rehearsing in his head, a mantra to justify the terrible thing he’s doing. “I need to be all in. I can’t be the player this team needs me to be and the boyfriend you deserve at the same time. It’s not fair to you. It’s not fair to the team.”

He’s framing it as a sacrifice, a noble act. He’s making it about his career, about his duty. It’s a coward’s way out.

“So you’re choosing,” you say, your voice trembling. “You’re choosing hockey.”

He can’t even give you the dignity of a straight answer. He just looks down at his shoes. “My whole life, this is all I’ve ever wanted. I’m so close to getting everything I’ve ever dreamed of.”

“And what about what I dreamed of?” You fire back, the first tear finally escaping and tracing a hot path down your cheek. “What about the dogs and kids and the house with the snow? Was that just your dream? Was I just a guest star in it?”

He looks up, and his face is full of a pain that you know is real, but it’s a selfish pain. It’s the pain of a man who knows he is causing irreparable damage but is going to do it anyway.

“You were there for all of it,” he says quietly. “I’ll never forget that.”

“But you’ll leave it behind,” you finish for him, the words tasting like ash in your mouth. “Because it’s a distraction.”

You look at him, this man you’ve loved for nearly a decade, the boy whose future you helped hold in your hands. You see the lines of stress around his eyes, the set of his jaw. The kid from the pickup truck is gone. In his place is Auston Matthews, franchise player, millionaire, superstar. And he has no room for you anymore.

“Remember in your truck, back in Scottsdale?” You ask, your voice barely a whisper now. “You were always talking about the future. And it was always ‘we’. ‘When we make it’.”

He flinches, a flicker of genuine hurt in his eyes. That, at least, gets through.

“What happened to ‘we’, Auston?”

He has no answer. He just stands there, a titan in your kitchen, looking small and lost.

“I think you should go,” you say, the words feeling foreign and heavy on your tongue.

He hesitates. “Y/N …”

“Just go,” you say, turning your back to him so he can’t see the way your face is crumbling, the way your body is shaking with silent, wracking sobs. “Go focus on hockey.”

You hear the soft click of the door as it closes behind him. The sound is deafening. You stand there in the middle of the silent condo, surrounded by the life you built together, a life that has just been condemned. Felix, the slobbery dog from his dream, trots over and nudges his head against your hand, whining softly, as if he understands.

And you are totally, completely, terrifyingly alone.

***

The silence in the Toronto condo is a physical presence. It’s heavy and cold, seeping into the furniture, clinging to the curtains. In the days after Auston leaves, you move through the space like a ghost, your footsteps echoing in rooms that suddenly feel cavernous and wrong.

Every object is a landmine of memory. The coffee maker he bought you for your birthday. The indentation on his side of the couch. The framed photo on the nightstand from the draft, the two of you impossibly young and beaming, the whole world at your feet.

You take the photo and place it face down in a drawer. You can’t bring yourself to throw it away, not yet. That feels too final, a betrayal of the girl you were, the girl who believed in ‘we’.

Packing is a methodical, numbing process. You create three piles: yours, his, and ours. The ‘ours’ pile is the hardest. The stupid little souvenirs from road trips, the worn-out blanket you both curled up under, the collection of movie ticket stubs you’d saved since high school. You sweep it all into a large cardboard box, tape it shut, and write AUSTON on the side in thick, black marker. You’ll have one of his teammates pick it up. A clean break.

Felix follows you from room to room, his brow furrowed with canine concern, his tail giving a few uncertain thumps against the floor whenever you look at him. He seems to be the only one who understands the crushing weight of the silence.

Your mom calls every day. “Just come home, sweetie,” she says, her voice thick with a mother’s worry. “Come back to Arizona. We’ll take care of you.”

You look out the window at the grey Toronto skyline. The thought of Arizona, of the relentless sun and the familiar streets where every corner holds a memory of him, is suffocating. It’s not home anymore. It’s a museum of your old life.

“I can’t, Mom,” you say, your voice steadier than you feel. “I can’t go backwards. I have to go forward.”

“Forward to where?”

That’s the question. You’re floating, untethered. You quit your job to move here for him. Your friends are his friends, the other wives and girlfriends on the team, and staying would be a constant, painful reminder. You are a satellite knocked out of orbit.

Then, you remember. An old colleague from your marketing firm had reached out a few months ago about a potential opening at her new company. A sports marketing agency. Based in Edmonton. At the time, you’d politely declined. It was a world away. Now, a world away sounds like exactly what you need.

On a desperate whim, you find the email and send a reply. You don’t expect anything. You just need to do something.

She replies within the hour. The position is still open. They’d love to interview you.

It feels like a sign. A lifeline thrown into the wreckage. The irony is not lost on you. Escaping the hockey world by moving to the heart of another hockey-mad Canadian city. But it’s not his city. That’s the only thing that matters.

The interview is over Zoom. You wear a blazer over your sweatpants and talk about branding strategies and market engagement, the words feeling foreign and strange in your mouth. You sound like a person who has their life together. You get the job.

The last day in the condo is surreal. It’s empty now, scrubbed clean of your life together. The echo is louder than ever. You leave the key and the box labeled AUSTON on the kitchen island. Felix whines at the door, sensing the finality of it all.

“I know, buddy,” you whisper, kneeling down to hug him. “It’s time for a new adventure.”

You drive west, away from the city that built you up and then broke you down. With every mile you put between yourself and Toronto, you feel a single, fragile layer of hurt begin to peel away. It’s a long, lonely drive, just you, Felix, and a playlist of sad songs you know you shouldn’t be listening to. As the CN Tower disappears from your rearview mirror, you don’t look back.

***

Edmonton is cold. Not the damp, biting cold of a Toronto winter, but a dry, sharp, honest cold that steals your breath and crystallizes on your eyelashes. Your new apartment is small, a one-bedroom with a decent view of the river valley. It’s nothing like the glass palace you left behind. It’s yours. That’s the only luxury you care about.

Your life shrinks down to a simple, manageable routine: work, walk the dog, sleep. The people at your new job are nice, welcoming. They talk about the Oilers constantly. You learn to smile and nod, a silent expert in a language you no longer wish to speak. You keep your head down. You heal in anonymity.

A few months in, on a surprisingly sunny Saturday afternoon, you take Felix to a large off-leash park by the river. It’s teeming with happy dogs and their bundled-up owners. Felix, a social butterfly in a ridiculously fluffy body, is in heaven. You stand on the edge of the fray, hands shoved deep in your pockets, a small, sad smile on your face as you watch him wrestle with a golden retriever.

A blur of black, brown, and white fur barrels past you, followed by a frantic, “Lenard, heel! Sorry about that!”

You turn to see a man in a dark parka and a toque pulled down low over his ears, chasing after a Bernedoodle who seems to have mistaken your leg for a fire hydrant.

“Oh, god, I am so sorry,” the man says, finally catching up and grabbing the dog’s collar. He looks mortified. “He’s still a puppy. He has no manners.”

“It’s okay,” you say, laughing despite yourself. “My parka has survived worse.”

“Still. Let me, I don’t know. Buy you a coffee? A new coat?” He pushes the toque back, and you stop breathing for a second.

It’s Connor McDavid.

Of course it is. Of all the dog parks in all the hockey cities in the world. He doesn’t seem to recognize you. Why would he? You were just a face in the crowd, a girlfriend on the arm of one of his rivals.

“A coffee would be nice,” you hear yourself say, the words coming out before you can stop them. “But only if Lenard apologizes personally.”

He cracks a genuine, unguarded smile. It transforms his face, which you’ve only ever seen in intense, game-face mode. It’s a nice smile. “Deal. C’mon, Lenny. Say you’re sorry.” He nudges the dog, who just licks his owner’s hand enthusiastically. “He’s very sorry. I’m Connor, by the way.”

“I know,” you say, then immediately cringe. “That sounded creepy. I mean, it’s Edmonton. I’m Y/N.”

“Nice to meet you, Y/N,” he says, his gaze lingering on you for a moment. He has incredibly green eyes. “So, that coffee?”

You walk to a little cafe just outside the park, the two dogs trotting ahead. The conversation is easy, surprisingly so. You talk about dogs, about the best places to walk in the river valley, about how cold it is. You don’t talk about hockey.

“You’re new to the city, right?” He asks, handing you a steaming latte.

“Is it that obvious?”

“You’re not wearing enough layers,” he says with a grin. “It’s a dead giveaway.”

“I’m learning,” you say. “Moved here a few months ago for work.”

“From where?”

The question hangs in the air. “Toronto,” you say, keeping your voice even.

His expression doesn’t change, but you see a flicker of something in his eyes. Recognition? Curiosity? He doesn’t push it.

“Well, welcome to Edmonton,” he says simply. “It’s a good city.”

You see each other at the dog park a few more times. The meetings feel accidental, then less so. The conversations get a little longer each time. He asks about your job. You learn that Lenard is a terror who loves to eat socks. He has a quiet kindness about him, a genuine interest that feels … foreign. He never once mentions the Leafs, or Auston, or the life you’re trying so hard to forget.

One afternoon, as the sun is setting and painting the snow-covered park in shades of pink and orange, he turns to you before you part ways.

“Hey, Y/N?” He says, a little nervously. “I know this is forward, but I was wondering if you’d want to get dinner sometime? Without the dogs as chaperones.”

Your heart does a complicated little flip-flop. Your first instinct is to say no. To run. This is a world you escaped. Getting involved with another player, not just any player, but the player, feels like playing with fire after you’ve just survived a third-degree burn.

“I don’t know,” you say honestly. “I just got out of something. It was … complicated.”

He nods, his expression understanding. There’s no pressure, no ego. “Okay,” he says. “No problem. The offer stands, if you ever change your mind.”

He gives you a small, kind smile and turns to leave. And in that moment, you realize you don’t want him to. For the first time in months, you feel a spark of something other than grief or numbness. It’s terrifying. It’s also a little bit wonderful.

“Wait,” you call out.

He stops and turns back, hopeful.

“Yes,” you say, the word feeling bigger than you expected. “I’d like that.”

***

Your first date is at a small, quiet Italian restaurant he knows where no one bothers him. You spend the whole time waiting for the other shoe to drop. For him to ask about Auston. For him to talk about the pressures of the game, the need to focus, the single-minded drive that consumes everything else in its path.

It never happens.

He asks you about your family, about your marketing degree, about your goals for your new job. He tells you about growing up in Newmarket, about his own family, about how much he misses being able to just go to a movie without being recognized. He listens. He actually listens, his eyes focused on you, making you feel like you are the most interesting person in the room.

“So,” you say, taking a deep breath and deciding to just rip the Band-Aid off. “The complicated thing I mentioned. My ex. He’s a hockey player.”

Connor just takes a sip of his water, his expression unreadable. “Okay.”

“He plays for the Leafs,” you add, the words feeling like a confession.

He sets his glass down. He looks at you, his green eyes soft with something you can’t quite name. It’s not pity. It’s empathy.

“That must have been incredibly hard,” he says, his voice quiet and sincere. “To build a life in that city, around that team, and then have to leave it.”

There’s no judgment. No questions about what went wrong. No hint of athletic rivalry. Just a simple acknowledgment of your pain. You feel a knot in your chest that you didn’t even know was there begin to loosen.

“It was,” you whisper.

“Well,” he says, offering you a small, reassuring smile. “You’re here now.”

And that’s that. He doesn’t bring it up again. He lets you be Y/N, the sharp, funny woman with a dog, not the ex-girlfriend of Auston Matthews.

He is nothing like you expected. For a man the media paints as a hockey-obsessed robot, he is profoundly, surprisingly human. He makes time. It’s not a grand gesture, it’s in the thousand little ways he shows you that you are a priority.

It’s the “Good morning” text he sends every day, even when he’s on the other side of the continent. It’s the way he calls you after every single game, win or lose, just to hear your voice before he goes to sleep. It’s him showing up at your door with your favorite takeout after you’ve had a brutal day at work, because he remembered you mentioning it a week ago.

Auston’s world had shrunk until it was only big enough for hockey. Connor’s world seems to expand, making a space for you right beside it. He doesn’t ask you to be the architect of his peace, he builds a peaceful place for the two of you together.

One evening, you’re curled up on his couch, watching a movie. Lenard is snoring at your feet, and Felix is wedged between you. It’s a quiet, domestic scene that feels both brand new and deeply familiar.

“What are you thinking about?” He asks, tracing a pattern on your arm with his finger.

“About him,” you admit quietly. “My ex.”

He stiffens slightly, but doesn’t pull away. “Yeah?”

“He said he couldn’t do it,” you say, the words tumbling out. “He said he couldn’t be the player he needed to be and the person I needed him to be at the same time. He said he had to focus on hockey. He made it sound like it was impossible to have both.”

Connor is quiet for a long moment. You hold your breath, worried you’ve broken the spell, that you’ve dragged your past into this clean, new space.

He shifts, turning to face you. He takes your hand, his thumb stroking your knuckles.

“He was wrong,” he says, his voice low and certain. “It’s not about having less focus. It’s about having something to focus for. Coming home to you, after a bad game, after a great game … it makes the wins better and the losses smaller. It makes it all real. You don’t take away from the game, Y/N. You’re the reason it matters.”

Tears spring to your eyes. You’ve been carrying the burden of being a ‘distraction’ for so long, a label seared onto your heart. And in one quiet moment, on a random Tuesday night, he heals a part of you that you thought would be broken forever.

“I love you,” you whisper, the words catching in your throat.

A slow, brilliant smile spreads across his face. He leans in and kisses you, a kiss that is full of tenderness and relief and a promise of forever.

“I love you, too,” he says against your lips. “So much.”

***

The Stanley Cup Final.

The narrative is a sportswriter’s dream. The Toronto Maple Leafs versus the Edmonton Oilers. Auston Matthews versus Connor McDavid. Two titans of the game finally meeting on the biggest stage.

For you, it’s a waking nightmare.

“Are you okay?” Connor asks you the morning of Game 1. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, tying his shoes, but his focus is entirely on you.

“I’m fine,” you lie. “Just nervous for you.”

He stands up and comes to sit beside you, taking your hand. “It’s okay if you’re not fine. This is … a lot.”

“I just don’t want to be a story,” you say, your voice small. “I don’t want some camera to find me in the stands and for the narrative to become about … this.”

“Then you won’t be,” he says with absolute certainty. “You’ll be in my private suite with my family. No cameras, no reporters. Just us. I’ll handle it. All you have to do is be there. I need you there.” He squeezes your hand. “This is about my team. Our team. This is about us winning the Cup. That’s the only story that matters.”

The series is a brutal, seven-game war. Every game is a nail-biter, a back-and-forth epic that leaves you feeling emotionally wrecked. You watch from the suite, surrounded by the warmth and kindness of Connor’s family, who have accepted you as one of their own from the very beginning. 

You see glimpses of Auston on the giant screen. He looks tired. He looks angry. He looks like a man carrying the weight of an entire city on his shoulders, and he’s carrying it alone.

Game 7 is in Edmonton. The city is a sea of orange and blue, vibrating with a nervous energy that feels like it could power the entire country.

You kiss Connor at the door before he leaves for the rink. He holds your face in his hands.

“Whatever happens tonight,” he says, his eyes searching yours. “I love you.”

“I love you,” you say, your voice thick. “Now go win the Stanley Cup.”

The game is the most stressful two and a half hours of your life. It’s tied 2-2 late in the third period. The entire arena is on its feet. Your hands are clenched so tightly your knuckles are white. Connor gets the puck in the neutral zone. He turns on the jets, a blur of motion that seems to defy the laws of physics. He weaves through two Toronto defenders. He’s one-on-one with the goalie. He dekes. He shoots. He scores.

The arena explodes. The sound is a physical force, a tidal wave of pure joy and relief. You’re screaming, crying, hugging his mom, his dad, his brother. There are still two minutes left on the clock, two minutes that feel like an eternity, but you know. They’re going to do it.

The final buzzer sounds. It’s over. The Edmonton Oilers are Stanley Cup Champions.

You watch from the glass of the suite as the team pours onto the ice, a chaotic, joyful pile of orange and blue. Gloves, sticks, and helmets fly through the air. Connor is at the bottom of the pile, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated ecstasy.

You make your way down to the ice, your legs shaking. The air is thick with the smell of sweat and champagne. It’s a beautiful, glorious chaos. Teammates are lifting the Cup, kissing it, passing it to each other. Families are flooding onto the ice.

Through the throng of people and cameras, you see him. He’s being interviewed, the Conn Smythe Trophy for playoff MVP in his hands. He’s answering questions, but his eyes are scanning the crowd, searching.

And then he sees you.

His face breaks into the biggest smile you’ve ever seen. He says something to the reporter, hands the trophy to a teammate, and starts skating towards you. He doesn’t stop. He skates through the crowd, parting a sea of people, his eyes locked on yours.

He reaches you and pulls you into his arms, lifting you off your feet and spinning you around. You wrap your arms and legs around him, burying your face in his neck, laughing and sobbing all at once. The sounds of the celebration fade into a dull roar. The only thing that’s real is him.

He sets you down but keeps his arms wrapped tightly around you. “We did it,” he says, his voice hoarse with emotion.

“You did it,” you cry, touching his face, his sweat-soaked hair. “You were incredible.”

“I told you,” he says, his forehead resting against yours. “You’re the reason it matters.” He kisses you, a deep, soul-shattering kiss right there on the ice, in the middle of a thousand flashing cameras. But this time, it’s not for them. It’s for you. It’s for you, and him, and the beautiful, quiet life you’ve built together.

What feels like miles away, in the dead silence of the visitors’ locker room, Auston Matthews watches it all on a small television screen. The celebration. The Cup. He sees Connor break away from the crowd. He sees him skate towards a familiar figure. He watches as Connor lifts you into his arms, as you cling to him, your face a portrait of a joy so pure it’s like a punch to the gut.

He sees the kiss. He sees the way you look at Connor, with a love and an adoration that used to be reserved for him. He watches you, the woman he threw away, the ‘distraction’ he cut loose to achieve this very moment, celebrating on the ice with another man. The man who just beat him. The man who figured out how to have it all.

connor always tried to play it cool around you, but he never actually succeeded, not even a little. he’d hover beside you with that soft, restless energy, shifting his weight from foot to foot like he wasn’t sure where to put all six feet of himself. whenever you said something teasing or affectionate he’d duck his head, touching the back of his neck as if he could hide the blush climbing up his ears. still, he listened to every word you said like it was gospel, nodding along with that earnest seriousness only a man who’d spent his whole life thinking in forecheck patterns could manage. it wasn’t obedience—just the way he adored you, straightforward and unguarded, like loving you was as natural as breathing.

he’d melt a little every time you tugged at his sleeve to get his attention, glancing down at you with this faint, lopsided smile that he didn’t quite know how to control. conversations always drifted into his hockey world whether he intended them to or not, but he’d try so hard not to bore you, stumbling through explanations and apologizing mid-sentence until you grabbed his hand to settle him. he relaxed instantly, the tension uncoiling from his shoulders as if your touch rewired something inside him. “sorry,” he’d mumble, even though he wasn’t in trouble, even though you’d never stop him. he just cared so much, and it leaked out of him in these endearing little bursts he couldn’t contain.

around the team, he tried to act like your relationship didn’t turn him into a golden retriever in human form, but everyone saw right through him. the way he lit up when you walked into the room, the way he stood a little taller, the way he almost tripped over a gym bag one time because he got distracted watching you smile at someone’s joke. you teased him about it later and he groaned, burying his face against your shoulder like he wished the floor would open up under him. but when you told him you thought it was cute, he peeked up with this shy, glowing look that made embarrassment worth it.

at home he was gentler, calmer, though still full of those little nervous habits—fidgeting with your fingers, brushing his thumb along your knuckles, waiting for your cues because he never wanted to overstep. yet there was nothing submissive about it; he held you firmly when he pulled you in, kissed you with intent even if he pulled back too soon to check if you were okay. his sweetness didn’t take away from the quiet confidence in his body, the strength in the way he guided you without thinking. he was just careful, thoughtful, trying to balance his boldness with that deep-rooted desire to take care of you.