The campus is waking up around me - voices carrying across the quad and people laughing. The world is still turning. The scandal is still spreading. There will be more articles, more comments, more people who think they know who I am.
But for the first time since my helmet hit the ice, I know what I’m going to say.
I turn back toward Zane’s building.
He’s waiting.
32
LEONORA
I chose the back corner table deliberately - away from the windows and anyone who might recognize my face from the photos. My hood is up. I’m nearly finished my coffee. And Craig Tennant is seven minutes late.
I’m about to leave when the door opens and a man walks in, graying hair, black coat, the kind of face that’s been in press boxes for so long it’s become part of the architecture. He scans the room, finds me, and crosses the floor without hesitation.
“Ms. Shaw.”
“Mr. Tennant.”
He slides into the chair across from me, unbuttoning his coat but not taking it off. Up close, his eyes are more piercing than I expected. The kind of eyes that notice things.
“You look like your father,” he says. “I covered this team for years. David Shaw was the best coach I ever saw at this level. And the most honest. Which is why I was surprised when the story broke. He raised you better than that.”
The words land exactly where he meant them to.
“Everyone’s expecting me to be the villain.”
“Are you?”
“I’m a hockey player who wanted to play hockey.” I hold his gaze. “He raised me to play hockey. He didn’t raise me to stop playing just because the college cut the women’s team.”
Tennant’s expression doesn’t change, but something in his posture shifts.
He sits back in his chair, studying me. “I wrote the article that exposed you. I’m the reason your face is on every sports site in the country. And you still came to me.”
“Because you knew my father. Because you knew this team back when they were legendary. And because you’re the one who can tell the story right - if you want to.”
“The story you want me to write is the one where you’re the victim.”
“No. The story I want you to write is the one where I’m a hockey player who wanted to play hockey. Where I showed up to an open tryout, earned a spot, and helped a losing team win a championship. The one where the real scandal isn’t that I lied - it’s that there was nowhere else in this college for me to go.”
“There are people who will say you cheated. That you took a spot from a male player who deserved it.”
“I didn’t take anything. They held open tryouts because they were desperate. I showed up. I earned my ice time. If I’d been mediocre, no one would care. The only reason this is a scandal is because I was good enough to win. I think this is about bruised male egos. What I want people to understand is that I didn’t cheat. I earned every shift. I took every hit. I scored every goal asme- not as a disguise, not as a trick. Just me. And if that’s not enough… then maybe the problem isn’t me.”
Something flickers in his eyes. Respect, maybe. Or recognition.
“You’re asking me to reframe the entire narrative. To make you a symbol.”
“I’m asking you to tell the truth. What people do with it after that is up to them.” I pause. “There’s a case. Justine Blainey. 1985. She wanted to play on a boys’ team, and the courts said excluding her was discriminatory.”
Tennant’s eyebrows lift slightly. “You know your history.”
“My brother told me about her.”
“And you think you’re the next Justine Blainey.”
“No. I think I’m just a hockey player. I think there are girls all over this country who are going to read my story and see themselves in it. I think the question isn’t whether I broke the rules - it’s why I had to break the rules in the first place.”
