Chapter 19
The hearing packet was two hundred and thirty-seven pages.
I knew because I’d counted. Twice. Once when it arrived Wednesday morning, and again Thursday night when I couldn’t sleep and decided recounting legal documents was better than lying awake thinking about how Andrew had kissed me and then acted like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Now it was Friday afternoon, and we were in Andrew’s home office, a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that held exactly three books and a lot of hockey memorabilia. Andrew sat at his desk, leg bouncing so hard the whole thing vibrated.
“Stop,” I said.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Your leg. You’re shaking the desk.”
He stopped. For approximately five seconds. Then started again.
I’d never seen him like this. Andrew Knox, who’d faced down entire teams, who’d gotten into fights on national television, who’d kissed me in a hallway without hesitation, was nervous.
He reached for the stack of papers, knocked over his water bottle (empty, thank god), swore, and shoved his hand through his hair hard enough that it stood up at odd angles.
“We need to go through the incident reports,” I said, pulling my copy of the packet closer. “The league’s building their case around—”
“I know what they’re building their case around.” His voice was tight. “I was fucking there.”
I looked up. Andrew was glaring at the papers.
“Then help me understand it,” I said carefully. “Because they’re going to try to make this about a pattern of behavior, and we need to—”
“A pattern.” He laughed, ugly and sharp. “Right. Because I’m just some violent asshole who can’t control himself.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what they’re going to say.” He stood abruptly, started pacing. “It’s what everyone’s saying. Knox loses his shit again. Knox can’t handle the pressure. Knox’s a liability.”
I watched him wear a path in the expensive rug, all that energy with nowhere to go. This was bad. This was the Andrew from the street, from the gala, coiled so tight he was about to detonate.
“Andrew. Please sit down,” I said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not. Sit down. We have work to do.”
He stopped and slowly turned to look at me, jaws set, blue eyes sharp, like he was deciding whether or not to push back.
But then, after a beat, he exhaled hard and dropped into the chair.
I didn’t comment on it, but I did have to force myself to ignore how satisfying it was to know that he had actually listened.
I slid an incident report across the desk. “Start with this one. Detroit. What happened?”
Andrew pulled the papers closer, squinting at the text. Then he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a pair of black-framed glasses.
Oh no.
He put them on.
Oh no.
I stared. Couldn’t help it. Andrew Knox in glasses should not have been as devastating as it was, but somehow the frames made his eyes impossibly bluer, made him look older and somehow more focused and I hated myself for being overwhelmed by glasses of all things but—
“Matthew.”
I blinked. “Hm?”
“What are you muttering about?”
My face went hot. “I wasn’t. I’m reading.”
“Uh huh. Sure. You’re lying to me now?”
“I’m—the glasses are new. I didn’t know you wore glasses.”
“These? Yeah, but only for reading.” He was watching me now, something calculating in his expression. “Is there a problem?”
“No. No problem. They’re fine. Very. . . intellectual.”
One scarred eyebrow went up. “Intellectual.”
I cleared my throat. “Can we focus, please?”
Andrew smirked, but he looked back down at the papers, shuffling through them roughly. “Detroit. Right. That was Kaperton. He crosschecked Morrison into the boards from behind. I went after him.”
“Resulting in a two-game suspension,” I said, reading from my notes. “And before that, there was—”
“Vancouver, I know. That was Hansen. He was slashing at Morrison’s ankles all night. Refs weren’t calling it.”
I looked up. “You remember that specifically?”
“Yeah.”
“That was months ago.”
Andrew shrugged. “So?”
I pulled up another file on my laptop. “And the Philadelphia incident this year. Also involved Morrison.”
“Morrison’s a good kid. He’s a fucking dumbass, but he doesn’t deserve—” Andrew stopped, jaw working.
I was starting to see the pattern. Not the pattern the league wanted to paint—violent, unstable, dangerous—but something else. This wasn’t team politics. This was personal.
“You were protecting him,” I said. “Every time.”
“Morrison’s a rookie. These assholes go after rookies because they think they can get away with it.”
“So you made sure they didn’t.”
Andrew didn’t answer. Just kept shuffling papers, leg bouncing again.
I watched him, cataloging the tells. The way his shoulders stayed tight when Morrison’s name came up. The way his voice sharpened. He didn’t talk about anyone else on the team like this.
I scrolled through my notes, grounding myself. “The Archibald fight. What did he say to Morrison?”
Andrew’s hands stilled. “Does it matter?”
“Yes. It matters. If Archibald provoked—”
“He called him a faggot.”
Oh.
“Kept saying it. Over and over.” Andrew’s words came out flat, hard. “Asking Morrison if he was a faggot, if that’s why he couldn’t keep up, if he liked getting fucked in the locker room.”
Andrew stared out the window. “The refs didn’t hear it,” he continued. “Or didn’t care. But Morrison heard it. I could see it on his face. He’s twenty-two years old and this piece of shit is—”
He stopped. Breathing hard.
“So you hit him,” I said quietly.
“So I hit him. Multiple times.”
Silence settled between us. Andrew was staring at the desk, hands fisted on top of the papers.
“The league won’t care,” he said finally. “They’ll say I should’ve reported it. Should’ve let the officials handle it. They’ll say I overreacted.”
“Did Morrison file a complaint?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Andrew looked at me then, and something in his expression made my chest ache. “Because Morrison doesn’t want anyone looking too closely at why Archibald would say that shit to him specifically.”
Oh.
Fuck.
“Is Morrison—”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. It’s not my business.” Andrew’s voice was rough. “But it doesn’t fucking matter. Nobody should have to hear that shit on the ice.”
I looked down at my notes. At the incident reports, the witness statements, the league’s carefully constructed narrative of Andrew Knox as a violent player with anger management issues.
They were wrong. But proving that was going to be nearly impossible.
“We need to document everything,” I said. “Not Morrison. Not why they were targeting him. Just the pattern.”
“You’re not putting his name on anything.”
“I know. I’m not asking you to. You could frame it as failure of officiating or player safety. You escalated because the system didn’t do its job.”
“Which still makes me the guy who threw punches.”
“It makes you the guy who reacted after every other option was taken away,” I said. “That’s not the same thing.”
Andrew snorted. “The league won’t see it that way.”
“They don’t have to like it,” I said. “They just have to explain why the same players keep getting away with the same shit while you’re the only one punished.”
He was quiet for a moment, staring at the desk.
“You really think that’ll work?” he asked.
“I think it’s the only argument that doesn’t throw a twenty-two-year-old rookie under the bus,” I said. “And I think you’d rather burn your own career than do that.”
Andrew didn’t answer. But he didn’t argue either.
Andrew’s phone buzzed, and he grabbed it, scowling at the screen. “It’s Chappy.”
“You should answer.”
“I don’t want to talk to—”
“Andrew. Answer it.”
He glared at me but swiped to accept. “Yeah.”
I could hear Kirk Chappell’s voice, warm and easy even through the phone speaker. “Hey, man! How’s it going? You doing okay?”
Andrew stood, started pacing again. “Why would you ask a stupid question like that?”
“You sound stressed. Are you stressed? You shouldn’t be stressed, it’s all going to work out.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one facing a hearing.”
“I know, but like, you didn’t do anything wrong. Archibald’s a dick. Everyone knows Archibald’s a dick.”
Andrew’s expression flickered—something almost fond despite the tension. “Thanks, Kirk.”
“I’m just saying! You stood up for—” Kirk paused, then corrected himself. “You know. The situation. That takes balls. The league should give you a medal, not a suspension. A manliness medal.”
“Fucking hell. That’s not how it works—”
“Well it should! Hey, do you think they’ll let you bring witnesses? Because I’ll absolutely testify. I’ll tell them Archibald sucks and you’re a good guy and—”
“That won’t be necessary—”
“—and Morrison would probably testify too if you asked him,” Kirk was saying. “He feels really bad about the whole thing.”
Andrew stopped pacing.
“No.” His voice was sharp, final. “That’s not happening. Tell him it’s not his fucking fault and he needs to get his ass in the gym if he wants to survive to next season.”
I slid a note across the desk: DON’T SNAP AT HIM.
Andrew read it, jaw clenching, but when he spoke again his tone was marginally softer. “Just—tell Morrison I’m fine. The hearing’s next week. It’ll be over soon.”
“Okay, but if you need anything—”
“I know. Thanks, man.”
“Alright! Well, I’ll let you go. But seriously, man, don’t stress. You’ve got this!”
“Yeah. Bye.”
Andrew ended the call, stared at his phone for a long moment, then set it down harder than necessary. “I just—I can’t—”
He didn’t finish. Just grabbed the papers on the desk, started shuffling through them again with too much force.
“Those are organized,” I said.
“They’re not—”
“They are. Chronologically by incident date, then alphabetically by—”
“They’re a mess, Matthew—”
“Stop—” I reached across the desk to grab the papers. Andrew grabbed them at the same time. We both pulled.
Papers went flying.
Everywhere.
I lunged to catch them. Andrew lunged from the other side of the desk. We collided somewhere in the middle, both of us grabbing at papers in midair like idiots.
“I had those organized—”
“You had them in a pile—”
“A categorized pile—”
“That’s not a thing—”
I grabbed for a sheet near Andrew’s elbow. He grabbed it at the same time. Our hands collided. Papers scattered across the desk.
“Stop touching that,” he snapped.
I froze.
Andrew froze.
We were close. Too close. I’d somehow ended up leaning over the desk, Andrew mirroring me from the other side, and the air between us had changed from irritated to something else entirely.
Andrew’s eyes behind the glasses were very blue. Very intense.
Then he stepped back. Fast.
“Sorry.” He ran a hand over his face. “I’m—fuck. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—you were just trying to help.”
I straightened slowly, papers still clutched in my hand. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” He looked at the disaster of documents spread across every surface. At me, still standing there watching him. “You’ve been absorbing all my bullshit anxiety all week. That’s not fair.”
“That’s my job.”
“To let me snap at you?”
“To help you manage this.” I gestured at the papers. “Which includes managing you when you’re about to lose it.”
Andrew stared at me. Something shifting in his expression—recognition, maybe. Gratitude.
“Go home,” he said finally.
“What?”
“It’s Friday. Go home. Do whatever you do on weekends.”
“I’m not done reviewing—”
“Matthew.” His voice was gentler now. “Go home. Please.”
I looked at him—at the tension still in his shoulders, the way he was holding himself too carefully, like he didn’t trust what he’d do next.
“What are you going to do this weekend?” I asked.
Andrew shrugged. “Sleep. Work out.”
“Hit things with your hockey stick?”
“Maybe.” He almost smiled. “What about you? I bet you do normal things. Movies. Putt-putt.”
“I’m not a child.” But I couldn’t help smiling. “I used to see a lot of movies, actually.”
Something flickered across Andrew’s face. “Used to?”
“Haven’t had much time lately.”
“Right.” He was quiet for a moment. Then: “We should go see a movie then.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“A movie. You and me. This weekend.” He wasn’t looking at me now, focused instead on straightening papers that didn’t need straightening. “If you want.”
Was he—
Was Andrew Knox asking me to—
My brain stalled. Fully. Completely.
Andrew glanced up, caught my expression, and immediately winced. “Jesus, Quinn.” He huffed out a breath. “It’s a movie. Not a marriage proposal.”
“No. I mean, yes. Sure,” I heard myself say. “Yeah. A movie sounds good.”
He visibly relaxed, shoulders dropping a fraction. “Saturday?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll text you.” He nodded once, like that settled it. Like he hadn’t just knocked my entire sense of equilibrium sideways.
I gathered my laptop and notes, headed for the door.
“Matthew.”
I turned back.
Andrew had taken off the glasses, was holding them in one hand. “Thanks. For today. For not letting me destroy the office.”
“Any time.”
I left and made it all the way to the elevator before my brain caught up with what had just happened.
Andrew had asked me to see a movie. Just the two of us. On Saturday. After explicitly asking what I did on weekends, after I’d told him I used to see movies, after—
The elevator doors closed.
Oh my god.
Was this a date?
Had Andrew Knox just asked me on a date?