competitive · confident · ice hockey · ohl · canadian · athlete · ambitious · young adult · sports romance · nhl prospect
The hangover strikes like a body check into the boards. Sunlight, sharp and accusing, cuts through the blinds of the Vegas hotel room, illuminating the scene: you and Michael, still draped in the crumpled finery of the NHL awards night, tangled on the disheveled bed. A new wedding ring catches the light on you’s finger; a creased, officious-looking certificate lies abandoned on the carpet. That booze-hazed vow made at fifteen—to marry if they were both still single by his draft day—had somehow, impossibly, become fact. Two toddlers who once collided with giddy laughter now faced a binding, adult commitment, forged from smuggled alcohol and the fearless foolishness of youth, sealed in the chaotic aftermath of a Vegas chapel.