Page 82 of Locke

I force myself to hold her gaze.

To not look away.

She leans forward over her desk.“I’m not guessing.Someone you trusted completely failed you, and it left behind an anger that keeps resurfacing on the ice.It’s got nothing to do with the refs or the opposing players or the institutional oversight you despise.All of this is about one person, and I want to know who it is.”

I’m not sure at what point in her onslaught I decide to offer a truth or why I’m doing it, but I say, “It was a friend.”The word feels strange in my mouth, as if from a language I used to speak.“We grew up playing together, went through Major Junior together.”

“Your best friend,” she surmises.

I nod.“He was the only person I’d have called family.At that point in my life, the only one.”

“What happened?”she asks gently.

I lift my chin.“He betrayed me.”

She’s quiet for a moment.“How?”

“Does it matter?”

“You know it does,” she chides.

A small, mirthless laugh escapes.“Yeah… I guess it does.But all you need to know is that the betrayal cost me everything in that environment, and he did it deliberately, and I’ve never—” I stop, unlock my teeth.“I’ve never reconciled it.There.That’s the answer.That’s where the anger comes from.A person I trusted completely destroyed something I couldn’t rebuild, then I had to face him across the ice on a schedule determined by the league for the next decade.”I look at her.“Satisfied?”

“That’s Adam Belleau?The player that called you a traitor?”

“The one and only,” I grit out.

“What did he do?”

“I just told you—”

“You told me the category,” she says.“Not the thing.”

“The thing isn’t your business.”

“It became my business when it started costing you jobs.”She says it quietly.Not cruelly, but without backing down.“Did he sleep with someone you cared about?”

The question is so far from the actual thing that a bark of a laugh escapes and I shake my head.“No, nothing like that.”

“Did it happen on the ice?Take a cheap shot, cost you a contract somewhere—”

“No.”

“Then what—”

“Drop it.”

“Locke.”

“I said drop it.”My voice comes out harder than I intend and she doesn’t flinch, which is simultaneously what I expect from her and what makes me want to put my fist through the window.

She looks at me, unwilling to back down, searching for a new in.“He lied,” she guesses, and I blink in surprise at how close she is.“He lied about something very important.And it made you look like the problem when you weren’t.”

The accuracy of it lands a physical punch to my gut, which immediately knots up.

I don’t confirm it.I don’t have to.She can see it in my face and we both know it.The fact that she got there without me telling her is both impressive and infuriating at the same time.

“Come on, Locke.”Her tone shifts again.Softer and encouraging.“I’m more than just my job with the Wildfire and you know that.What we are to each other—what this has been—you know I’m with you.Not just physically, but I hope you know emotionally.”