**MILA'S POV**
The arena is electric tonight.
Twenty thousand people packed into one building creates a particular kind of pressure — the roar of it sits in your chest, your sternum, the back of your teeth. The air smells like ice and popcorn and the specific sharpness of a crowd that wants something badly enough to scream for it.
I'm in the friends-and-family section, close enough to the glass to see the details. The spray of ice when a player stops hard. The vapor of breath in the cold air.
Jax skates out for warm-ups, and my heart does something I'd rather it didn't.
He's in full gear — pads, gloves, mask — and I still pick him out instantly. The way he moves. The particular way he carries himself, that confidence that walks the line between earned and insufferable. I know the diff
