Chapter 18 #2
The reel flipped back to Sandro, leaning against the counter in the team kitchen with his head resting on the cabinet behind him.
His eyes were closed and his arms crossed over his chest. He looked defeated, and it carved a hole out of Bennett’s chest. “I dealt with it by playing good hockey, showing up for my teammates, and pretending everything was okay even though it wasn’t.
I gave hockey all of my attention because giving it to my boyfriend and getting nothing back made me fucking sad. ”
Swallowing the lump in his throat, Bennett opened his mouth to say something to the real-life Sandro next to him, but Sandro-on-the-screen kept going.
“Was that the right decision? I don’t know.
Probably not, considering I got dumped just before the season ended.
But short of quitting everything and going to Chicago to be with him, I didn’t know what to do.
So I played hockey and hoped everything would fix itself in time. But it didn’t.”
The reel ended there, then began automatically playing again from the beginning. Bennett hit Pause and let his arm drop.
Sandro groaned and pressed his palms into his eyes.
“Fuuuuuck. I forgot there was a camera in the room with us. Ugh.” He carded both hands through his hair and blew out a breath that ballooned his cheeks.
“Okay. Well. That’s not the worst footage that could’ve leaked.
Not sure I like having fifteen years of bottled-up feelings laid out in the open like that, but—What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I . . .”
It felt like I was being cleaved down the middle.
The words sat like bricks on Bennett’s shoulders and lead in his veins, making his body feel heavy. Like he was trapped between four walls that were swiftly closing in on him. He’d known he’d broken Sandro’s heart, but hearing it laid out so plainly?
He sank back against the wall, unable to hold up his own weight.
He hadn’t seen the footage of Sandro and Eli before.
Hadn’t known it existed. He no longer sent David daily highlights, which meant he wasn’t regularly parsing through the camera operators’ video content.
Instead, he’d set up a shared folder on a secure file transfer site, and twice a week, one of Fowler’s people uploaded all of the footage for David to browse through whenever he wanted.
How could he not have known it existed? It seemed fundamental to . . . everything. Like he should’ve somehow known that a broken part of Sandro lived somewhere on a fucking server.
“I’m sorry,” he croaked.
“For what?” Sandro asked. “This?” He waved at Bennett’s phone. “That’s not your fault.”
“For fifteen years ago.”
But Sandro shook his head. “You’ve already apologized for that.”
“No, I know. Just . . .” Clasping Sandro’s wrist gently, Bennett pulled him closer. “That feeling of being cleaved down the middle?”
Sandro flinched.
“I will never ever make you feel like that again. Not ever.”
Leaning into him, Sandro pressed their foreheads together. “I know, B. So? This meeting?”
“Yeah. Will you come with me?”
Sandro drew back with a glare. “Obviously,” he said, and headed for the door.
Despite everything, Bennett couldn’t help but smile. “Put some pants on, will you? Those shorts are distracting.”
Sandro made a pfft sound but did as asked.
While they waited for the elevator, Bennett watched the reel again with a more clinical lens so he was fully armed for the meeting.
Sandro called Deeley and Sandbaker, then Eli to make sure they were okay, and it was as they stepped off the elevator that Sandro chuckled and said, “Trust me, Eli, you are not the first athlete to shit-talk their coach. Not even the first one to do it on camera.” A brief pause, then, “It’s true.
Look it up on YouTube. You’ll find all sorts of fun stuff. ”
In front of the closed conference room doors, Bennett pocketed his phone and eyed the doors as if they were the entrance to Mount Doom. Voices drifted out from inside, some heated, some more modulated.
“You won’t think less of me if I get fired, right?”
“Why would you get fired?” Sandro asked. “Did you waste time splicing a thirty-second reel together and uploading it online?”
“No, but the content came from my camp, which still makes it my fault.”
“Bullshit,” Sandro stated, then walked into the conference room with his head held high.
Bennett had been right about the attendees. In the room were coaches Madolora and Friedle, one of the social media coordinators who traveled with the team, Fowler, and team captain Dabbs. Dialing in virtually was the team’s head of media relations, the general manager, and the team owner.
No David, though, which was surprising since he lived in LA.
“Finally,” the GM barked. Bennett expected him to jump down his throat about the leaked footage, but what he said was, “What are you playing at here, son?”
“Uh . . .” Bennett gripped the back of a chair. On the screen at the front of the room, the general manager’s face was splotchy with anger. “Pardon?”
“You’re supposed to be filming the team on the path to victory, not—” The GM waved a hand ineffectually. “—whatever this is.”
Bennett took a breath and forced himself not to become defensive. “Look. I understand we’re all feeling the heat right now, but—”
“Have you seen the comments in response to the reel?” the team owner asked.
“No, I—”
“The clips in the reel are out of context,” Dabbs jumped in. “So the comments are unimportant. Are they inconvenient? Sure. But there’s nothing damning in the reel. Nothing that a simple statement won’t fix.”
“Nothing damning?” The GM slammed a hand on his desk. “This made us look like assholes who can’t pull our heads out of our asses. Why is this the kind of stuff being filmed? This is a hockey series—I want to see some actual hockey.”
Bennett’s knuckles whitened on the back of the chair. “I—”
“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.