Chapter 12 Chloe
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHLOE
The apartment is quiet except for the hum of my laptop fan and the occasional hiss of the radiator. It’s late, too late for sane people, but not for me. Post-game deadlines don’t care if my eyes sting or my brain feels like scrambled eggs.
The cursor blinks at me, smug and unhelpful. The words are there, swimming in my head, but every time I try to put them on the page, they slip sideways. Because all I can see, clear as the game clock, is Ollie Taylor smirking at me from the ice. That bloody wink.
I squeeze my eyes shut, flex my fingers, and force myself to type.
The Raptors secured a hard-fought win on home ice tonight, battling through penalties and relentless forechecking to claim victory over the visiting Wolves.
Clean. Proficient. Nothing suggestive about the fact that my stomach dropped when he skated past my section, eyes deliberately finding mine in the crowd.
Nothing about the way Sophie’s glare cut across the stands like a blade when she noticed me.
Definitely nothing about the whispered “Tabloid Girl” that followed me like a bad smell as I made my way down to the tunnel.
I delete and retype the same sentence three times, my chest tight, before finally letting it sit there. It’s fine. Good enough.
I push my chair back and stand, pacing to the window. The city is muted below me, a scattering of headlights, pubs emptying, someone dragging bins across pavement. Ordinary lives. I almost laugh. Because nothing about mine feels ordinary anymore.
I came here for a job. To prove myself. To claw back credibility after Murphy-gate, after the entire press box and half the internet branded me a puck bunny with a notebook.
I told myself this assignment, shadowing a hockey team for a season, would be a chance to set the record straight.
And yet here I am, heart pounding over a look, a wink, like a teenager at her first school disco.
I lean my forehead against the cold glass and breathe out.
“Get it together, Miller,” I whisper.
Back at the desk, I re-read what I’ve written.
The game analysis is solid. Penalties logged, goals broken down, quotes from Coach slotted neatly in.
On the surface, it’s exactly what my editor wants.
But between the lines, I see the fingerprints of my distraction.
Too many adjectives when Ollie was on the puck.
Too much space given to his line change hustle. Subconscious betrayals.
I strip them out, sentence by sentence, until what’s left feels sterile.
My phone buzzes with an email. My editor.
Need this in fifteen. Keep it sharp, not soft. No human-interest detours. Sponsors want clean coverage.
I bite my lip. The sponsors. Always the sponsors.
My father’s fingerprints are all over that word, even if no one else knows it.
He’s the anonymous investor everyone in the organisation whispers about, the shadowy figure propping up The Raptors’ finances.
Not so anonymous to me. He told me about the deal in clipped tones, as if sharing it was both a burden and a warning.
“This team matters,” he said. “Don’t screw it up. ”
It wasn’t just about the money. It never is with him. It was about legacy. About his name being tied, however quietly, to something powerful and beloved. And about me not embarrassing him again.
So here I am, walking the tightrope. The daughter no one knows is connected to the money, writing stories that have to look unbiased, while sitting on the knowledge that if I fail, I don’t just tank my own career. I chip away at his.
I type faster, mechanical.
Taylor contributed an assist in the second period and demonstrated his trademark speed along the right wing. Despite an early penalty, his energy remained consistent throughout the match.
There. Clinical. Distant. A hundred miles from the real memory. The way his grin hooked sideways when he leaned over the boards, sweat dripping, eyes finding mine like he’d been searching all along.
I shake my head hard, try to physically fling the thought away.
My job is not to swoon over players. My job is to document, analyse, inform.
The team already thinks I’m the enemy. Sophie’s narrowed eyes, Mia’s disdain, even Dylan’s polite frostiness, it all screams the same thing.
You don’t belong here. You’re only here to chase headlines and break hearts.
And maybe I deserve that. Maybe once, I was exactly the girl they think I still am. But that was before the fallout, before I learned the hard way that there’s nothing glamorous about being branded a tabloid cliché.
I hit send before I can overthink it again. The story whooshes into the digital ether, and I sag back in my chair. Done. Professional mask polished and delivered.
But my heart is still racing.
Because under the layers of detachment, there’s the echo of his voice in my ear, playful and warm.
There’s the weight of that wink. There’s the tiniest part of me that thinks Ollie Taylor sees me, not just the headlines, not just the mistakes, but the person underneath.
And that’s terrifying. Because if he sees me, really sees me, he could break me in ways no gossip rag ever managed.
I close my laptop with a snap.
The apartment is still quiet, but my head is roaring. I pad to the kitchen, pour myself a glass of water, and lean against the counter. My reflection in the dark window looks tired, hair pulled back haphazardly, skin pale. Not the girl the tabloids plastered in sequins and smirks. Just me.
The phone buzzes again, this time a one-line message from my editor.
Good. Keep it like this all season.
I laugh without humour. Because this is what I signed up for, clinical, detached coverage. The version of me that’s acceptable.
And yet.
I pad back to the desk, reopen my laptop, and in a blank document type the things I can’t send. The version of the story that will never see daylight.
He winked at me like we shared a secret. And for a second, I believed we did.
My fingers hover, then I close the file without saving.
I know better.
But when I finally crawl into bed, curling beneath the duvet, it’s not the game highlights I replay in my head. It’s the sound of his laugh drifting across the ice. The warmth in his eyes when everyone else was looking at me like I was poison.
And against every rule I’ve set for myself, I fall asleep smiling.
Mask on. Heart racing underneath.