He’s got a butterfly bandage already on his chin, blood dried at the corners of his mouth, hair wet and sticking to his forehead.
Vincent is next to him, wearing a jacket so tight it looks painted on, notepad in hand, the glint of his phone camera aimed dead center.
Ash is laughing. Not the real laugh, not the one that comes from somewhere in the lungs, but the high, helium edge he gets when he’s exhausted and running on nothing but stubbornness.
Vincent leans in, says something in Ash’s ear, and the sound is lost in the noise, but the smile on Ash’s face is the same one he used to give me after I made a big save and pretended not to care about the crowd.
I keep moving, the ache in my chest settling in somewhere deep and permanent.
The locker room is chaos. Tommy’s yelling about a bad call, Raz has an ice pack down the front of his pants and is threatening to sue the league for emotional distress.
Coach Vasquez has her hands in her hair, talking low and fast to the team doc about Ash’s concussion protocol. I barely register any of it. My brain is a tunnel, and at the end, there’s only the memory of Vincent and Ash, heads together, voices just for each other.
I strip my gear, toss it in my stall, and tell myself I don’t care. I tell myself there’s nothing between them, that Vincent is just doing his job, that Ash is too smart to fall for a guy like that.
But the lie curdles in my gut.
I shower in scalding water, letting it burn the sweat and stink off, watching the red streaks from my scraped knuckles spiral down the drain.
The whole time, my head is a broken record, Vincent’s hand on Ash’s shoulder, the way Ash tilts his head back when he laughs, like he needs to be seen.
I finish, towel off, get dressed in record time. The media are still lurking in the halls, so I take the back route, through the service tunnel that smells like wet cardboard and lost dreams.
The path dumps out into a staff corridor lined with gray metal doors, one of which is marked "Media Room—Authorized Only." The light’s on, but the door’s half-open, and through the crack I can see Vincent, alone, typing one-handed on his laptop while scrolling his phone with the other.
He’s so absorbed he doesn’t even notice me.
There’s a window facing the hallway, so I double back, slip around, and wait until he leaves for the restroom or a cigarette. I don’t have to wait long.
He stands, glances at the empty hallway, and disappears into the men’s room across the way.
The laptop is still on, screen open. I can see the headline from here:
Hero or Hate? Steelhawks' Rising Star and His Ties to the Holt Shooting
I freeze, just for a second, then slide inside.
The article is long, already six pages, and it’s all Ash. All of him.
There’s a photo, from tonight, helmet off, the bandage prominent.
Vincent’s voice is all over it, "From the shadow of the bench to the bloody center of a playoff run, Asher Rosen is the kind of underdog story America craves.
But a closer look raises uncomfortable questions about his friendship with the man police now identify as the second shooter—Caleb Holt, brother of the fallen captain."
My vision tunnels. I scan for the worst. It’s all there. The photos of Ash and Caleb at Cap’s memorial, hugging, both of them red-eyed and wrecked.
Vincent’s piece doesn’t accuse outright, but it’s the classic journalist move: question, conjecture, let the reader fill in the blanks. Was Ash in on it? Did he know? What did the team know?
There are anonymous quotes, probably from Vincent himself, saying Ash was "never quite right" after the first attack.
Then it gets worse. There’s a section called "Pillow Talk: Secrets from Inside the Locker Room." Vincent has taken everything Ash must have said, every offhand confession, and twisted it into narrative. "Sources close to Rosen," it says,"report he often felt invisible, overlooked, desperate to matter. Some wonder if that desperation made him susceptible to manipulation."
I can see the bones of the real Ash in there, raw and honest, but they’re ground into fucking hamburger by Vincent’s spin.
My hands don’t shake. Not even a little.
I take out my phone. I snap photo after photo, scrolling down, documenting every word, every lie.
