Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
Rook
I’d had Kovac’s reply on my phone since Tuesday in the truck, and I hadn’t let myself read a word of it.
Wednesday morning I stood at the island with my coffee going cold and turned the phone face-up. Varga was still asleep upstairs, sleeping off the intensity of the day before. I opened the thread.
Kovac: Mattias — understood, and no apology needed. The piece is yours to give or not. If you ever want to talk again, hockey or otherwise, you know where I am. Good to see you. Daniel
I stared at the message. I’d expected a defense of the story, with a message that was a careful version of you can’t stop this. What was there instead was a man stepping back and leaving the door open behind him on his way out.
For six years I’d carried Kovac as the one leak I couldn’t plug. He’d never been that. He’d been a diligent reporter who happened to know something but had been cautious with it. I’d been bracing against a man who wasn’t a threat.
I didn’t want to close the door or lock any of it away.
I typed a message back.
Rook: The West Loop place, this morning, if you can. I pulled the piece yesterday, but now I want to un-pull it. New terms.
Kovac: I can be there in an hour.
I went back upstairs with my coat already on.
Varga hadn’t moved. He lay facedown, one arm off the side of the mattress, both feet kicked out from under the bottom of the sheet. I sat on the edge of the bed and slowly raked my fingers through his hair before I said anything.
He surfaced halfway without opening his eyes, and he reached a hand across the sheet to my knee.
“Hey.” I ruffled his hair playfully. “I’m going to see Kovac. This morning.”
One eye opened. “Kovac. Why? You pulled it.”
“I’m un-pulling it. I’ll give him my terms—holding it until we’ve spoken publicly in our words.”
He blinked. “You want me to come?”
“No. This part’s mine.”
He rolled over and pushed up onto his elbows. “You didn’t have to wake me up for that.”
A week ago, I wouldn’t have. He’d have woke at nine and found a text, or found me already home after it was over.
“Yeah,” I said. “I did.”
“Go,” he said. “Go get him.”
***
Kovac was in the same booth as before. His cup was half-empty, and he had a closed notebook on the table beside it.
Last time, I’d come in as if it were the last minute of a one-goal game, ready to defend a lead I couldn’t afford to lose. I ordered my own coffee so I wouldn’t owe him anything.
This time I sat and let him buy.
“Black.” He went to the counter and ordered it. While I waited, I scanned the room leisurely. He came back, set my cup down, and didn’t reach for the notebook.
“You said new terms.”
“We’re breaking the story ourselves. It will be our words, with our timing.
There will be a statement going out after a home game.
Mark already has it. You hold your story until that’s public.
” I turned my cup a quarter turn on the table the way he did.
“After that, you get the full piece. It will be the one you wanted to write. All questions answered.”
He was quiet for a second. Then tension eased in his face, and I saw him more relaxed than I could remember.
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said.
“I know. That’s why you’re getting all of it. It’s not a negotiation anymore.”
“Can I ask you what I asked before?”
He didn’t have to specify. I knew what he meant. I nodded.
“Anyone in mind for after?” Kovac asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
He didn’t follow up. He waited, letting me get to the next piece of information on my own.
“Lucas Varga,” I said.
The words came out evenly. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to say.
“You can write that down,” I said. “It’s on the record now.”
He didn’t write it down. He leaned back and looked at me.
“Thank you,” he said. “But I can remember that.”
He opened the notebook.
“I might need to write other things down. Mind?”
“Go ahead.”
He started with a straightforward question. “The retirement line. ‘Waiting until after.’ Was that ever true, or was it always cover?”
“True when I first met you.” I turned my cup. “That was before Varga. I figured I’d do the rest of my life when nobody was watching. Then he appeared, and the line kept working, so I kept saying it.”
Kovac wrote a couple of words.
“And now?”
“Now I’m thirty-six and he’s thirty.” I gave him more than I’d planned. “I spent five years promising him the life after. He never wanted after. He wanted it now. I was slow to catch on.”
Kovac asked a few more questions about who else knew and then set his pen down.
“What’s he like? This is off the record. I’ve watched Varga on the ice and at the press table on TV. I know there’s a lot of performance, and I’m not sure I’ve never seen the man under it.”
“He talks,” I said. “All day, about everything. You see that. It’s not an act, but there’s a quiet version. That one is mine only.”
He reached for the pen, but then decided against it.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I’ve got one question for you.”
“Go ahead.”
“You told me before that you had a secret source. Will you share who it was now?”
Kovac chuckled softly. “I guess it won’t do any harm. I talked to your sister.”
“My sister? What did she say?”
“She didn’t say much, but what she said corroborated what I learned from everyone else.”
I shook my head. “I should get to the rink,” I said.
“Go. Thanks, Mattias. Truly.”
I left him in the booth with his closed notebook and walked to the truck. The last time I sat in the truck with my hands shaking against the wheel. This time I got in, started it, and drove, feeling relaxed and quiet the entire way.
***
Varga and I arrived at the arena together. Everybody was only half-dressed when we got there, and Varga didn’t make it ten feet before he started. He had to. It’s part of his wiring.
“Okay, gentlemen and animals, I need everyone’s attention. That means you, too, Trier. I can see you pretending to look for a glove.”
“I am looking for it.”
“You don’t have a second glove. You’re a one-glove man, and we’ve all made peace with it.” Everyone turned their attention to Varga. Then he glanced at me, and I nodded.
He gave the announcement to me, the four-word guy.
“Lucas and I are together,” I said. “We have been for the last five years. We’re an open book now, and we wanted you to hear it from us before you heard it from anyone else.”
It was more words than I’d ever said in a row inside the locker room.
Trier’s jaw dropped and stayed there.
Cross looked up from the stick across his knees. He took it in.
“Good,” he said. He nodded once and went back to the tape.
Trier finally found words. “Five—wait. Five years? I told the married-couple joke to a reporter. I told Kovac you fight about the thermostat—“
“For the record, we don’t,” I said.
“He’s right. We don’t, and I’m the reason.” Varga spread his hands like he was accepting an award. “I run that house at a humane, accurate temperature, and he has never once thanked me.” Laughter spread through the room.
Two stalls down, Rafe had said nothing. He had one glove off and his eyes on us. He wasn’t laughing, but he didn’t look uncomfortable either. When he caught me looking at him, he gave me a small nod, prairie-flat, and went back to his laces.
Markel walked into the room at the end. He’d likely read the announcement on the group chat while sitting in his office. He looked at the two of us.
“Is there anything I need to do?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“Then it’s the same room.” He looked at the clock above the door. “On the ice in twenty.”
I ran into Mark in the tunnel. When I told him to un-pack the runway, he didn’t act surprised.
“The statement is ready,” he said. “It’s in your words. I had Heath read it. He fixed two minor things and made it better. I’m not happy that he’s better at this than me.” He made a small mark on his clipboard. “It goes out after the game as soon as the horn blows.”
“After the game.” I ran it through my head.
“Yes. It’s a good statement, Rook.”
Heath caught me just before we stepped onto the ice. He had a grin on his face.
“I’ve got your back,” he said. “I’ll handle the beat guys.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t.” He waved it off.
A shoulder nudged me. I turned to see it was Pratt. “Good,” he said.
The puck dropped, and for two periods I got to be nothing but a defenseman. No being careful about watching Varga. The work was just the work.
I took a penalty in the first and ate a hit along the wall to chip the puck out. When I came back to the bench and sat beside Varga, he was already mid-sentence.
”—not a hook, it’s a hug. You put your stick down and embraced the man—refs!“ He banged the boards once with his glove. “Refs. That’s a love story you just called a penalty.” He took a breath. “Two minutes. For affection. Only in today’s world.”
Cross scored in the second off a faceoff he won cleanly. Rafe got the insurance midway through the third—top corner, glove side. The entire team poured over the boards to pin him against the glass. Varga was in the middle of it with both hands in the kid’s cage, yelling something I couldn’t hear.
We won by two. I logged twenty-two minutes and didn’t think about the post-game statement once. The horn blew, and I left the ice, heading into a world that had changed.
Mark pushed the statement the second the horn sounded.
We weren’t ten steps down the tunnel before Heath had his phone out, turning it so I could read it without breaking stride. It was the team account, spotlighting three short paragraphs. We were out. It was no longer something that was going to happen.
The media were waiting at the gate. One of the beat writers first, phone still in her hand from reading it, and then a TV guy swung his camera up.
They got us together for once. The Rook and Varga Show was over. Now it was Rook and Varga for real. He set his shoulder against mine, in the open, under the lights, and left it there.
“Is it real?” somebody asked. “The statement—that’s true?”
“It’s real,” I said.
I stepped back and gave Varga room.
“How long?” someone asked him.
“Five years,” he said. “And you want to know the bit we ran on you the whole time? We made you think we couldn’t stand each other.
I’d chirp him at the mic, and he’d give you his four words, and one of you’d go home and write ‘no love lost in that pairing.’” Varga paused.
“Worst acting in the league’s history, and every single one of you bought it.
” A grin filled his face. “So ask me a real question now. I’ve been waiting. ”
Someone near the back asked what was next.
I had an answer to that. I’d had it for four months, sitting in a locked drawer behind a folder with an NDA I still hadn’t torn up.
Varga didn’t know it was there.
“We’ll let you know,” I said, and put my hand flat between his shoulder blades to move him toward the locker room, in front of all of them, and the world didn’t end.