She studied me for a beat longer than I liked. “Look, I know this seems like a lot, but it’s good. You should see his face when your name comes up in our higher-level meetings. Coach sings your praises. The guy practically worships you.”
I huffed out something between a laugh and a cough. “That’s flattering.”
“It is. And you need to lean into it during the press cycle.” Holly packed up her iPad and went back to the tasteless herbal concoction in front of her. “I’m scheduling you for a short post-game presser. Statement only. No questions. Just enough to give structure to the narrative.”
I nodded without registering what she was saying. My eyes had drifted again.
McAvoy rubbed the back of his neck. Van der Berg remained stone-still, staring at the table. Something heavy hung between them, a weight I couldn’t identify from here. That wasn’t transfer talk. That was “There’s a fire, and we’ve just found the match.”
Van der Berg made me. That was the only explanation.
He’d seen my lies in the reports, and told McAvoy. He was waiting for confirmation before he marched me into HR and torched my career.
“I’ll walk you through all of it,” Holly said, tapping her fingers on the cup. “You’ll get a script. I’ll be two feet away during the presser. Audience will be minimal. The only priority is— Reese?”
I startled back to her. “Sorry, I— I’m listening. Just thinking about… all of it.”
“Hey.” Her tone softened. “This won’t eat you alive. I’ve got you.”
I wished I could have believed her.
Across the room, van der Berg’s gaze snapped up. Directly at me. No blink. No warmth. The kind of look that said he’d been waiting for a moment to pin me to a wall and ask a question I didn’t want to answer.
My spine jolted, and the chair scraped under me as I shot to my feet.
“Where are you going?” Holly straightened. “We’re not done.”
“I forgot something for my kit bag,” I said, words tumbling out before I could tidy them. “I have to go. I’ll see you at the arena.”
“Reese—?”
But I was already moving, weaving between tables, bag strap cutting into my shoulder. I didn’t look back. Didn’t glance at van der Berg’s table as I passed. Not with that look of his still burning a hole through my ribs.
If he wanted to talk after the game, he’d find me. Right now, I needed distance. And air that didn’t feel like it carried my entire career dangling by a thread.
*
The cold inside the Delta Center hit me the same way arenas always did. Manufactured winter, and lights bright enough to bleach every coherent thought from your mind. I climbed over the boards and dropped onto the trainer bench, sorting my kit bag so I had something to do with my hands.
Van der Berg was on the far side, down on one knee as he checked Mason’s knee brace. He didn’t look my way, which should have calmed me. It didn’t. Nothing could’ve calmed me after what had happened at breakfast.
“Press is calling this a formality,” Coach spoke to the guys. “But we know we play every game as though it’s a final. Get out there and give me your best shot.”
The guys rushed over the boards and onto the ice in a force of sticks slapping ice and calls to kick ass. The noise from the arena felt warped under the weight sitting at the base of my throat.
I caught van der Berg’s gaze as he sat down, but quickly trained my eyes onto the ice. Still, it was as if I could hear his thoughts, heard him laying into me for faking the fitness reports.
The puck dropped and minutes seemed to blur.
My head wasn’t in Salt Lake, let alone the game. It was in that dining room with van der Berg watching me like I’d written my confession across my forehead. Every hit on the ice sounded like a countdown to getting fired. Every shift Theo took made my pulse thud under my jaw.
A Utah forward cut through our zone, and Theo lined him up against the wall. Clean contact, clean recovery. Except his right shoulder dipped on the push-off. A ghost of compensation, easily missed. But I saw it. I knew what was happening under that strapping, and I hated it.
My stomach twisted.
He skated back into position, shaking it off while talking shit to Hunter the way he always did. By the time the next play started, he was back to his usual self. Mostly. More weary on the body checks, and that fucking shoulder never really recovered its proper hold.
If there had been any hope left that my help and two days’ rest would fix everything, the first period reminded me how delusional I’d been. Second period totally crushed it. Theo was white in the face, gritting through pain as best he could. He held his defensive line well enough, which came from practice. All he needed to do was convince McAvoy he was fine to avoid further scrutiny. For everything else… he had me.
