The Cyclones win Game 2.
3-1. Aiden scores twice. Brody scores once on a shot that has no business going in and the building loses its absolute mind. I photograph every second of it — the goals, the celebrations, Liam’s face when the final buzzer goes, Aurora in the family section with both hands over her mouth.
I am doing my job.
I am completely somewhere else.
There’s a moment in the third period — Aiden sets up Brody perfectly, the assist so clean it’s almost choreographed, and the puck goes in and the whole building reacts at once and I have my camera up and I’m getting the shot and for one second — one actual second — I almost let it land.
The joy of it. The city. The team. This thing they built.
Then the bathroom stall comes back. Then Webb’s phone with three photos on it.
I take the shot. File it. Move on.
The locker room celebration is loud and champagne-soaked and exactly what it should be. I move through it — camera up, recorder on, professional — and I am managing two separate bombs simultaneously and I have done this before and I am very good at it.
Jax comes out of the Aiden cluster and his eyes go to where I usually am. Press area, left side, camera at eye level.
I’m not there.
I moved without deciding to — ended up right side, near the equipment carts, worse angle, more distance. Old habit. When something is wrong I drift to the edges. Make myself harder to find before anyone knows they’re looking.
He looks at Aurora. Aurora looks around the room. She doesn’t find me either.
He goes still.
I know that stillness. I’ve been watching him for months — the crease stillness, the pre-shot stillness, the stillness when something is wrong and he’s making a calculation. This is the last one. Something is wrong and he knows it and he doesn’t know what yet.
I lower my camera.
I should go to him. I don’t.
He finds me in the tunnel.
I’m on the equipment crate. I’ve been here long enough for the celebration to go muffled, long enough for my eyes to stop cooperating with the face I’ve been holding all day. Not crying. Just — done holding.
He sits down next to me.
The way he always does.
He doesn’t say anything. Just sits there and waits and I think —he’s going to wait as long as it takes— and that’s what finally does it. Not the photos. Not Webb. Not the story about to drop. Just him sitting next to me in a tunnel being patient and present and certain and I am so tired of being the person who handles things alone.
“Carson Webb cornered me this morning,” I say. “Before warmups. He has photos of us — candid, private. His offer was confirm on record or he runs it as a scandal. Journalist sleeping with subject for access.”
He doesn’t move.
“I spent the day handling it. Legal call. Editor call. Going through my options alone.” I stop. “I didn’t tell you because that’s what I do. I handle things alone.
The tunnel is quiet.
“And there’s something else.”
He looks at me.
This is the part.
This is the part I’ve been carrying since day one — the thing that’s been sitting in my chest under everything else, the reason I came here as Nova Shaw and not V. North, the reason I named the ghost in a tunnel without a recorder, the reason I’ve been trying to make it right every single day since I walked into this building.
