By morning, the world has already decided what last night meant. Rumors swell, and the headlines multiply. My inbox fills until it’s choking with stories written by people who weren’t there. Despite that, none of it is louder than the memory of his voice.
By afternoon, it’s unbearable.
By evening, I stop fighting the part of me that already made the choice.
When night falls again, my feet move before the fear can stop them.
I go to him.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Kyle
I’m mad before I’m even fully awake. It’s not the sharp anger I’m used to, the kind that burns quick and hot when a ref blows a call or a defenseman takes a cheap shot in front of the net. This sits low in my chest like something heavy and corrosive, turning over and over with every breath I take, making it hard to tell where fury ends and hurt begins.
My eyes crack open to the dim light squeezing around the edges of my blackout curtains. It feels like every muscle in my body was braced for impact all night. The last thing I remember from yesterday is walking away from Alycia in that garage, feeling like I’d just handed her my heart. Then I watched myself keep walking, because anything else would have been taking the choice away from her. I told her I loved her and then walked off before I got down on my knees and begged her to love me back.
I stare at the ceiling for a few seconds, the memory replaying on loop, and underneath the ache is that simmering, restless anger. Not at her, but at the factthat she is this scared to love me. At the man who taught her that letting someone close meant losing everything. At this whole goddamn world for rewarding the people who hurt her and questioning the one thing that has ever felt pure between us.
My phone is buzzing nonstop on the nightstand. Vibration stacked on vibration until it sounds like the thing is trying to crawl off the table and save itself. I should ignore it. I know the feeling of a bad day before I see it written anywhere. But eventually, the noise gets under my skin enough that I roll onto my side and reach for it.
The lock screen is a mess of social media tags and unknown numbers, but it's the message from Cole that gets my attention.
Cole
You see this?
My stomach drops as I open the text and tap the link underneath it. The first thing that hits me isn’t the headline, but the photo. It’s Alycia and me in the parking garage outside the elevator, frozen mid-argument in that fragile moment when everything between us was hanging by a thread.
The angle is from the other side, grainy enough that you can’t make out every detail, but clear enough that the tension is unmistakable. My body angled toward her, hand half lifted like I’m reaching for her or bracing myself or both. We weren’t alone after all. Someone had been there. Staff. Media. A fan with a long lens.It doesn’t matter who. What matters is that they caught enough to twist the story.
“Fairy-tale Fading? Timberwolves Star and PR Intern Caught in Heated Late-Night Confrontation.”
My jaw clenches so hard my teeth ache, but I continue to scroll. Photos from the charity event. Me walking off mid-interview while she laughed it off for the cameras. A still of us on the ice, smiling like everything’s simple. The new photo, circled in red. Analysis. Speculation. Anonymous sources wondering if the relationship was “a stunt” that “went too far.” Comment sections trying to decide whose fault it is that things “imploded.” People accusing her of sleeping her way into the spotlight. People calling me unstable and too emotional for a franchise player. There it is, everything she was afraid of. Everything she told me about that man and what he did to her, coming back in a different costume.
A second link pops up from another number. Another photo. This one is us in the garage, caught at the tail end of our fight. No audio, just our faces, raw and exposed, slapped onto a slideshow and called “evidence.” I want to throw my phone hard enough to crack the wall. For a few seconds, I seriously consider it. I squeeze the phone so tightly my knuckles pale, then shove it onto the mattress instead, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes until sparks bloom behind them.
“I’m so fucking tired of this,” I mutter to the empty room.
My phone buzzes again. This time it’s a name I can’t ignore: Cooper. I answer on the third ring. “Yeah.”
“You alive?” he asks, no preamble.
“Define alive.”
There’s a beat of silence, then a quiet exhale. “You’ve seen the coverage.”
“Yeah.” I let my head fall back against the pillow. “I’ve seen it.”
“We’re on for a call with Janine in an hour,” he says. “She wants to talk about next steps.”
“Next steps?” I echo, and the words bruise as they move through me. “So, we double down on pretending? Smile for the cameras while the narrative eats us alive? Play along while the internet decides who we are and what we meant to each other?”
“Kyle—”
“Because that’s working out so fucking well.”
Cooper doesn’t scold me. He doesn’t tell me to calm down or be rational. He understands I feel like the floor underneath me isn’t holding. There’s a stretch of loaded silence before he exhales and says the one thing I’m not braced for.
