Hey everyone! Sorry so much for this absolutely huge delay in uploading. I have been incredibly busy with class work, wedding planning, and soon I'll be adding work back to that list. I never intended on this chapter to take so long for me to write, but for some reason it took forever. But today, I sat down in my break between classes and finished it. It's random, but after here, we're getting into the main plot, so be ready. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy this, and I hope I'll be able to upload again soon.

By the way... I hope my hockey withdrawals NEVER get this bad again that I have to write about it in a story non-related to the sport. lol :P

**************************************************************************************

Adrianna groaned at the stupidity that was transpiring on the ice below her. Once again, the referees were making a call against her team. Throughout the years, Adrianna had noticed how heavily the referees favored the other teams. The girl often wondered in her youth if giving up her college dreams to become a referee would be worth it. The thought had crossed Adrianna's mind many times, only to have her remember she was a terrible ice skater due to her weak ankles. As she watched one of their defensemen skate into the penalty box, the thought crossed her mind once again.

She rested her head on her fist, staring intently at the ice before muttering, "I should have made my sign."

This, of course, got Tom's attention. He looked away from the game, a bewildered look plastered to his face. "What sign are you talking about?" he asked.

"A long time ago, I saw this picture on the internet, and this lady had made a sign that said, 'Ref, are you pregnant? Because you've missed two periods.' And I've always wanted to make it, but I keep forgetting," Adrianna explained, feeling a little silly about it.

Although Tom was far from happy with how the game was turning out, he smiled. "Only you would write that on a sign," he replied.

Adrianna shrugged. "I can think of at least 20,000 other people would right about now," she retorted, winking. "I don't know if you've noticed, but right now, the Wings fans are pretty upset with the way these refs have been treating their boys."

The girl wasn't kidding; there hadn't been too many games Adrianna had been to in which the refs had been booed at as loudly as this. The girl recalled every once in a while, while watching on the television, if the referees made a call that was particularly senseless, you could clearly hear the thousands of fans at the arena shouting their dismay. Adrianna was fairly sure if anyone was watching at home, they would hear the same thing.

The girl snapped out of her thoughts as a buzzer went off, signaling a goal being scored. She stood, trying to get a better look at what was transpiring. Sure enough, there was the white jerseys of the opponent clustered together, clearly celebrating a power-play goal that brought the game to a tied score of three. Adrianna clenched her fists, throwing herself back down in her chair. This was not good, not good at all. She glanced up at the scoreboard, mostly to check the time. There was less than two minutes left in the game, and she knew it was crunch time. Coming back and winning this was not improbable, but Adrianna knew her team was going to have to push harder than before to make it so.

She watched the replay of the goal on the big screen hanging from the ceiling. There was no way the goalie would've been able to stop it. Adrianna hated to admit it, but it was a good shot, but she didn't want to say it aloud.

"Lucky shot," she scoffed. "If his buddy over there wasn't interfering with Howard, that shot would've never went in."

"Right!" Tom agreed, taking a sip of his soda. "What an ass."

Adrianna interlocked arms with Tom, using his shoulder as a headrest as she attempted to get a better look at who was filing off the bench and onto the ice. If the girl knew her team's coach well enough, with a minute and twenty nine seconds left on the clock, he was going to throw out the big guns. Sure enough, Adrianna saw Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Abdelkader, Kronwall, and Ericsson file onto the ice. If there was one group of Wings she had the utmost confidence in, it was this one. They had busted the team out of some tight spots before, and she knew some way, somehow, they would do it again.

Once the game started up again, Tom struck up conversation. "So... You've never told me how you ended up finding a favorite in Datsyuk," he recalled seemingly out of nowhere. "Care to explain?"

"Of course not!" Adrianna answered. "When I was first really getting into hockey, which was... around the time I was in middle school, maybe not. I don't remember dates exactly. Anyways, I was watching a game, and there was a guy wearing my lucky number. That guy was Datsyuk." She paused for a moment to check out Kronwall knocking a guy off his feet. "People often assume I picked him after he got good- Pavel didn't start becoming really amazing until a few years later. And then I learned more about him and that solidified it."

"Your lucky number is thirteen?" Tom asked, raising an eyebrow. "Isn't that supposed to be an unlucky number?"

"Well... supposedly. But thirteen has never brought me anything but luck," Adrianna explained. "It was one of the three numbers I wore when I played soccer. I wore twelve my first year, thirteen my second, and nine for the rest of it. I wasn't happy about nine at first, but... it became special, you know?" The girl smiled, remembering the reasoning her coach handed her nine in the first place.

"Special, huh?" Tom teased.

"Hey, that was the number my coach wore! He gave it to me because he saw I had potential," the girl defended. "And while I hated the number, I grew fond of it because of the meaning behind it. I went out there every day, determined to show him he made the right choice in giving it to me."

Tom smiled at her. "I know, I know, darling. I'm just messing with you," he said. "Every once in a while it is fun to get you all fired up about something. Not that you already aren't right now because of the game."

"Tell me about it," Adrianna sighed. Before she could say anything else, the buzzer sounded again- this time signaling the end of regulation time. And now it was time for the one thing that made Adrianna the most nervous out of anything in the sport: overtime, and then possibly a shootout. Overtime was played just like the regular game- only with four players skating for each side at a time. Shootouts were the worst though in Adrianna's eyes. They were one-on-one's- a player versus the goalie. Shootouts were like train wrecks- you didn't want to watch, but you couldn't keep your eyes off of it.

Unfortunately, to Adrianna's dismay, no one scored during the five minutes of overtime. After a brief cleanup of the ice, the shootout began. The girl's grip on her boyfriend's arm intensified unintentionally as the first shooter for Tampa Bay skated onto the ice. Adrianna recognized the guy's name, but couldn't remember if he was any good or not. He started to skate towards the goalie, and when he shot, the puck went wide- never even touching the goalie to Adrianna's relief.

The girl's hopes rose, however, when she saw Datsyuk hop over the boards and onto the ice. He was one of the best in the shootout in the entire league, so Adrianna was sure he could put his team in the lead. She held her breath, watching him take center ice, circling for a moment before he took off down the ice with the puck. After a few fancy moves Adrianna hadn't seen him use before, the puck wound up in the back of the net, putting the Red Wings ahead, and one step closer to a victory. The arena was in an uproar!

As Datsyuk skated back to the bench, briefly celebrating with his teammates, Adrianna took a look at who was next for the Lightning. Sure enough, to her delight, it was Valarie's recently traded favorite player, Valtteri Filppula. Honestly, Adrianna was beginning to wonder if the Tampa Bay coach was on drugs; there was no way Filppula was going to pull this off. The boy couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, let alone the net. Besides, if he missed, she could rub it in Val's face later.

Filppula did not disappoint. The boy skated forward, making it about halfway to the net before losing his footing and tumbled to the cold surface below him. Adrianna couldn't stifle her laughter; she knew he was going to mess up, but that was better than she anticipated. She couldn't wait to have the discussion about this with Val later. The girl was laughing so hard she was wondering if she should Skype her friend that night.

She hadn't even noticed Zetterberg take the ice soon after. By the time she saw him, he was already well on his way to the net, and shooting the puck into one of the far corners of the net, thus winning the game officially for Detroit. The crowd was on their feet, cheering- this time out of joy that their team won the game. Adrianna jumped to her feet, pulling Tom up with her, screaming for joy the whole time. After a few moments, the game stars were announced, and everyone began filing slowly out of the arena.

Once they had made it outside, and into the tunnel to the parking ramp, Tom spoke up again. "We're definitely going to have to come back after I'm done filming," he promised.

While the promise of coming back to the arena always made the girl happy, him saying that made it all the more saddening. Tomorrow, she would be on her way back to London, and he would be on his way to Hollywood. They would be an ocean apart, and something about that made Adrianna more worried this time than ever before.