Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CALLUM
Morning comes like a punishment.
I wake up already braced for impact, my heart hammering before my eyes even open, like my body knows what’s waiting for me before my brain catches up. The ceiling above my bed swims into focus, grey and unfamiliar, and then it hits me all at once.
Rose walked away after she saw Talia leaving. She didn’t come inside and she sure as hell didn’t give me a chance to explain. I roll onto my side and grab my phone from the bedside table, thumb already hovering over her name even though I know what I’m going to see.
No new messages.
No missed calls.
Nothing.
My chest tightens painfully and I know I have to I try again anyway.
I debate whether I should get up and drive over there or phone her.
Checking the time again, I realise I’ll be late to training if I drive to Rose’s flat first, it’s in the opposite direction to the rink.
If I’m late today Coach will have my balls hung up to dry.
Playoff week is not the time to piss him off.
My thumb hits the dial button and I lift my phone to my ear, preying Rose will take pity on me and answer, if only to tell me to fuck off and she never wants to see me again.
It rings. Once. Twice. Then straight to voicemail.
“Rose,” I say when it beeps, my voice rough.
“Please. I need to talk to you. I swear to you, nothing happened. She came here to threaten me. That’s it.
I should’ve followed you straight away and I didn’t, and that’s on me, but I didn’t cheat on you.
I would never—” My throat closes around the words.
“I love you,” I finish hoarsely. “Please call me back.”
I hang up and drop the phone onto the mattress as though it’s burned me.
The silence that follows is brutal. It presses in from all sides, thick and suffocating, filled with everything I should’ve done differently.
I sit up and rake a hand through my hair, elbows braced on my knees.
The image of Rose standing across the street won’t leave me alone.
The way she didn’t hesitate before turning away.
The way she didn’t look back. She thinks I chose Talia.
The thought makes me feel physically sick.
I drag myself into the shower, letting the water run scalding hot over my skin, hoping it might burn the guilt out of me.
It doesn’t help. Nothing does. Every second leaves room for my mind to spiral—to imagine Rose alone in her flat, replaying what she saw, convincing herself that every insecurity she’s been carrying was right all along.
By the time I’m dressed and out the door, my phone is still silent.
Playoffs week doesn’t care that my life is imploding.
The rink is already buzzing when I arrive. Media vans outside. Fans clustered by the entrance hoping for a glimpse of the players. Inside, the air hums with tension and adrenaline, that familiar edge that comes when everything you’ve worked for all season narrows down to a handful of games.
Normally, this is where my head is sharpest. Where I’m focused and locked in. Today, I feel like I’m skating through fog.
Lukas catches me before I even reach the locker room. One look at my face and his expression hardens. I called him last night and told him about Rose walking away. It was his idea to let her calm down a little and not go after her.
“She hasn’t answered you,” he says. Not a question.
I shake my head once.
“She thinks you cheated,” he continues bluntly.
I flinch. “I didn’t.”
“I know,” he says. “But she doesn’t. And that’s the problem.”
I scrub my hands over my face. “I fucked this up.”
“You didn’t cheat,” Lukas says evenly. “But you did lie. And you’re still lying.”
The words land hard because they’re true.
“I’m trying to fix it,” I snap. “She won’t talk to me.”
“And she won’t,” he says, lowering his voice as guys start filtering into the room, “until you tell her everything. Not just about last night. About the crash.”
My stomach drops like it does every time he says it.
“I will,” I mutter. “I just—”
“When?” he cuts in. “Before she hears it from someone else?”
That fear crawls up my spine, cold and sharp. Because Talia didn’t come to my flat to negotiate. She came to remind me she still has leverage. And with playoffs week in full swing, the timing couldn’t be worse.
Practice is brutal. Coach runs us hard, drills sharp and unforgiving, like he’s trying to grind distractions out of us by force. I throw my body into every shift, every sprint, every hit, trying to bleed the turmoil out through exhaustion. It doesn’t work.
Every break, I check my phone. Nothing. I message again, several times, but she’s not responding to them.
There’s no blue tick to show me she’s even looked at them, and my heart is doing that stupid clenching thing again.
The pain sits low below my ribs and no amount of rubbing at it is helping.
Neither is the amount of suicides Coach makes us do.
By the time we’re peeling off gear, sweat-soaked and aching, Lukas is waiting for me again.
“She’s going to leak it,” he almost whispers.
“I know.”
“And before she does,” he adds, “Rose needs to hear it from you first.”
I nod, jaw clenched tight enough to hurt.
I don’t get the chance.
The story breaks an hour later.
I’m halfway through a recovery session when my phone explodes with notifications. Messages stacking up so fast the screen can’t keep up. Group chats lighting up. Missed calls from numbers I recognise all too well.
PR.
My blood runs cold. I open the first link someone sends me.
STAR PLAYER CONNECTED TO HIT-AND-RUN INCIDENT—SOURCES CLAIM COVER-UP
The words blur for a second before sharpening into something lethal. They didn’t exaggerate it. Didn’t soften it. They laid it out exactly as it happened.
The red light.
The hesitation.
The choice to drive on.
The hospital visit the next day.
The woman I tracked down because I couldn’t live with not knowing if she was okay.
Rose.
My chest caves in and the rink erupts into madness. Phones go off everywhere. Voices raised. Coaches get pulled into offices. PR starts moving fast, ushering players away from cameras already circling like sharks.
The fan reaction is immediate and vicious.
Traitor.
Coward.
Hero-worship shattered in real time.
But nothing softens. If anything, it gets worse.
People don’t know the full story, but still, they screenshot headlines.
They pull fragments out of context and hurl them like weapons.
The words hit-and-run spread faster than anything else, blotting out nuance, swallowing explanation whole.
My name trends alongside words such as coward, liar, privileged.
Every screen I pass flashes some version of it back at me.
Before I can even process the scale of it, a hand grips my elbow.
“Now,” Laura from PR says tightly. “Conference room.”
I don’t argue. I don’t have the energy. I follow them down the corridor like I’m being marched to sentencing, past closed doors and lowered voices, past teammates who look at me with a mix of concern and shock they don’t try to hide.
Ryan shouts out to me, I can’t make it out exactly, but I’m pretty sure it’s not words of support.
Coach is already there when I walk in. He’s flanked by the team management and Hannah from the legal department avoids my gaze. I glance across to the two other PR reps with their laptops open and phones buzzing relentlessly. The room smells of coffee and stress.
The door shuts loudly behind me.
“Sit,” Coach says.
I do.
For a moment, no one speaks. They’re all looking at me like they’re waiting for something. An explanation, a defence, a miracle even. I can’t offer them anything at the minute. Somehow my voice won’t work.
Laura breaks the silence. “We need your version. All of it. No gaps. No minimising.”
My mouth opens and nothing comes out. My jaw flaps like some comedy goldfish.
The weight of it presses down so hard my vision blurs.
My hands curl into fists in my lap, knuckles white.
I’ve told this story in fragments before to Lukas, in controlled pieces, but never like this. Never with everything stripped bare.
“I—” My voice cracks. I swallow hard and try again. “I ran the red. I didn’t hit her car, but I caused it. I knew it the second it happened.”
Coach’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“I stopped for maybe… ten seconds,” I continue, shame crawling up my spine. “I panicked. People were already getting out of their cars. Sirens somewhere in the distance. I thought—fuck, I don’t even know what I thought. I just… drove.”
Silence.
“I couldn’t live with it,” I say hoarsely.
“I went to the hospital the next day after I saw it reported on the news that she wasn’t badly injured, nobody was.
That’s how I found her. I didn’t know who she was.
I just needed to know she was alive. I couldn’t believe the news reports until I’d seen her with my own eyes. ”
PR types furiously.
“And then?” management prompts.
“And then I fell in love with her,” I say, the words tearing out of me before I can stop them. “And I didn’t tell her the truth because I was terrified that if she knew, she’d never look at me the same way again.”
My chest caves in. I drag a hand over my face, breathing hard now, control slipping fast.
“I broke things off with Talia because I knew I had feelings for Rose. It wasn’t fair to string either of them along. That’s not who I am. Anyway, Talia found out, about Rose I mean,” I add.
I turn to Laura, almost pleading. “You know how Talia’s been since we split and she found out about Rose. She’s been posting stuff on her social media sites relentlessly. Taunting Rose and making out I wanted her back when that wasn’t… isn’t the case at all.”
I take a deep breath and try to steady my heartrate a little. “Talia threatened me. She said if I didn’t tell Rose about the accident, she would. She came to my flat last night.”
Coach exhales slowly, rubbing his temples.
Mark, Laura’s colleague, looks up. “Did Rose know any of this before today?”
“No, nothing about my involvement in the accident anyway,” I say. The words weigh a ton. “She saw Talia leaving my flat last night. She thinks I cheated. She won’t answer my calls.”
Something in me finally breaks.
“I fucked this up,” I say, my voice shaking openly now. “I hurt her. I hurt everyone. I know this is on me. I’ll take whatever suspension, fine, media blackout you want. I just need the statement to be honest. I won’t lie anymore.”
The room is silent again, but it’s different now. Heavier. More human.
Coach leans forward, forearms on the table. “We tell the truth,” he says. “All of it. No spin.”
Laura nods. “We’ll emphasise accountability. Remorse. The fact you came forward. But understand this—” She meets my eyes. “Fans aren’t going to forgive you overnight. Some never will.”
I nod once. “I know.”
“And Rose?” management asks carefully.
My throat tightens painfully. “I need to see her; I have to go find her. She deserves the truth more than anyone. Even if it costs me her.”
Mark turns his laptop around, already drafting the official statement. “Then this is what we say.”
I stare at the screen, at the words forming that will define me publicly from now on. Not the golden boy. Not the headline athlete. Just a man who made a terrible choice and is finally standing still long enough to own it.
Outside the conference room, the rink hums with playoff energy that feels a lifetime away.
Inside, I sit with my hands shaking, heart raw and exposed, knowing there’s no relief coming yet.
No forgiveness or reassurance. No message from Rose. Just truth.
And the hope that telling it, fully and finally, won’t be too late.