“With all due respect, Ramsey,” Coach Madolora interjected calmly, addressing the GM. “We gave Bennett and his team access to most of the facilities at the arena, including the locker room. I’m sure once the series is ready for viewing, there’ll be hockey in it. But behind the hockey are people. That’s what Bennett is filming.”
Well. At least someone was on his side.
“I don’t want to see this kind of footage in the final edit,” Ramsey said with the tone of my decision is final.
Breathing became tricky since it felt like every member of an NHL team roster was sitting on Bennett’s chest. “Sir?—”
“Ramsey, do you remember what I said last year when Bennett first approached us about this series?” Lynne, the head of media relations, tried on a smile that didn’t appear to crack the GM’s composure at all. “I said that we had to give the camera crew space and allow them to film without restrictions on what or where they were filming. If you want this to be a good series, you need to let Bennett and Fowler do their jobs. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
Score two for Bennett.
But Ramsey shook his head. “No. I want this kind of footage scrapped.”
The room erupted, everyone talking over each other.
“The contract stipulates?—”
“Why don’t we wait and see?—”
“We can’t have this kind of?—”
“The league commissioner’s on standby. Do I need to?—”
Squeezing his eyes closed, Bennett counted to three, then whistled sharply around two fingers. The voices died down instantly, every pair of eyes turning to him with either shock or incredulity. Sandro squeezed his hip, a show of solidarity that made Bennett’s back straighten.
“Whether this kind of footage ends up in the final cut is anybody’s guess,” he said. “I don’t have enough content to map out all six episodes yet. But regardless of that, this is the type of content people need to see. It’s raw, it’s heartfelt, and it’s imperfect. This documentary is going to be powerful because it’s going to show truth, flaws and all, because art thrives on honesty.”
The same could be said about love, couldn’t it? Love thrived on honesty, and that was a truth it had taken him an embarrassingly long time to figure out.
Love wasn’t about making himself easy to love or being self-sufficient.
It was about interdependence. About making connections and earning affection through care and trust and partnership.
He wasn’t an island. He’d never needed to be.
At his side, Sandro stood shoulder to shoulder with him, and Bennett took strength from that.
“Dabbs is right,” he continued while the room was still his. “These clips were broadcast without any kind of context. So, yes—” He looked at the GM on the screen. “—it looks bad. I accept responsibility for that, but I promise you, I’m going to find out what corner of my camp this leak came from.”
“It didn’t,” said a new voice.
David strode into the room, briefcase in hand, looking suave and confident in a bespoke suit even at seven-thirty in the morning. He rounded the table and set his briefcase on an empty chair, then met Bennett’s gaze. “It came from mine.”
Sandro pressed his shoulder to Bennett’s, gave David a sweeping glance, and had to stifle a laugh. David was younger than he’d expected, somewhere in that indeterminate age bracket of thirty to fifty, and he wore a tailor-made suit in charcoal with a tie peppered with tiny hands waving the middle finger.
Sandro hadn’t gotten the best impression of David from Bennett, but he obviously had a sense of humor, so he couldn’t be all bad.
“What do you mean it came from yours?” Bennett asked.
Like Bennett and Sandro, David chose to stand. Hands in his pants pockets, he nodded at everyone around the table, then at the screen. “Good to see you all again.” To Bennett, he said, “And I mean just that. You and Fowler run a tight ship. The leak came from my end.” David faced the room again. “There’s a secure file transfer site Bennett and his team use to upload video footage. My assistant downloads it for me, and as such, he had the login information. He created the reel and posted it online to impress—well. It doesn’t matter who he wanted to impress. The situation’s been dealt with on my end and I’m putting precautions in place to ensure this doesn’t happen again. I have a team working on getting the reel taken down, but it’s been reblogged and reposted quite a few times already, so I don’t like our odds. I can also put a team in place to monitor comments if you’d like. Just say the word.”
“Oh. No, that’s . . . Thank you.” Ramsey nodded, and if Sandro wasn’t mistaken, the GM might’ve been a little impressed with David. “We have our own people doing that already.”
“The comments aren’t negative exactly,” Lynne said, her blond head bent over her phone. “People are expressing surprise over Sandro being gay.”
“Pansexual,” Sandro corrected absently. “But that’s not new information. I’ve been out for years.”
“True,” Lynne allowed. “But newer fans wouldn’t necessarily know that. There are also people wondering who the mysterious Chicago-playing ex is, although all of us in this room were aware of Sandro and Bennett’s past relationship prior to contracts being signed.”
