46. Monroe
FORTY-SIX
MONROE
AND HE WAS ALWAYS THE TYPE OF MAN TO PROVE SHE DIDN’T NEED TO CARRY THEM ALONE.
I still hated press days.
The severity of that hate had subsided somewhat since working with Graciella. Who would’ve guessed that not grunting at people asking you questions would make them like you more?
But some dread still sat in my chest when I walked into one of these rooms.
This one was a little different. It wasn’t a sea of reporters. Just one, a camera crew, and two players by my side. Well, Tommy was there, too.
They were already in the room when I got there, but I scanned the back wall for one face in particular.
She’s not here.
A rock dropped in my stomach.
I’d called her twice in the last thirty minutes. Both calls went unanswered, along with the handful of texts. I checked my phone one more time before I sat, staring at the screen like if I looked long enough, her name would pop up.
Dana, the ESPN reporter I’d meet when I spoke to the women’s team, took her place across from us, tablet in her lap, shooting us a small smile. Well, shooting Thatcher and Jimenez one. She’d yet to look at me.
“Ready?” She didn’t wait for a response before telling her cameraman, “Go ahead.”
The little light went red.
She started easy. Season expectations coming off the Cup win, what it meant to have the roster intact heading into fall. I answered the way Graciella had taught me to answer—full sentences without growling.
Oh, and smiling. I’d almost forgotten that.
“Coach Monroe.” Dana finally looked me in the eyes. “You just received an award for coach of the year, but your career has experienced some dark moments. Care to comment on that, and what’s changed?”
“I came into this role with a lot of walls up. I think that was visible to anyone who’d been in the same room as me for more than five minutes.
” Thatcher covered his laugh with a cough, but I continued.
“I spent a long time being angry at the NHL and not being honest about why. Someone helped me figure out how to put that down.”
She tilted her head. “Someone on your staff.”
My brows furrowed at her statement and how she looked down at her tablet, lips twisting into a line.
The energy in the room shifted.
My pulse ticked up.
“Coach Monroe.” Her voice changed. “I need to ask you about something that appeared on our live feed shortly before you came in. A woman identifying herself as Graciella Barrera, your former publicist, came forward on camera.” Dana looked down at her tablet, then back up at me.
“She made a statement that she had pursued you in an inappropriate manner, given your relationship status and your working relationship.”
The room was very quiet.
I tried to register what she’d just said. “What?”
She set the tablet on her knee and folded her hands over it. “There’s more. Ms. Barrera alleged that Vincent Langley, owner of the Dallas Desperados, had been actively working to end your coaching career.”
Thatcher went still.
“Ms. Barrera alleged that Langley threatened to leak a fabricated story to the press.” She continued reading from the small screen. “One claiming you were having an affair with her while in a relationship. She said she was coming forward before her actions could tarnish your name.”
I couldn’t hear past the pounding in my ears.
She watched me with an expression that almost looked pained.
“The story is gaining traction. Ms. Barrera’s statement is already being picked up. But Langley’s camp hasn’t released a comment yet.” She paused, offering a sad smile. “I…I want to give you the opportunity to respond.” Another pause. “Live.”
She gestured to a phone on a tripod.
I looked back at her, suspicion thick on my tongue. “Why? The first story ruining my life wasn’t enough?”
She shook her head, seeming unperturbed by my venom.
“No, that’s not it. I want to give you an opportunity to tell your side, unfiltered, because Ms. Barrera didn’t seem to me like a woman scorned by a man who’d rejected her as she claimed.
” She shrugged a shoulder. “It seemed to me more like a woman willing to do anything for the man she loved. But maybe I’m wrong. Either way, you get to decide.”
My answer would change everything.
My career. My contract. The organization’s trust.
Everything I’d spent years building back from nothing.
But it could also take the woman who’d mended all my wounds. The one who held my heart.
I looked directly into the camera.
“I don’t care if this costs me my job.” I squared my shoulders.
“The only thing Graciella has done is walk into my life at a point when I was doing everything in my power to push people away, and she didn’t fucking flinch.
Didn’t walk away.” I shook my head, adrenaline surging through me.
“The relationship that’s been reported on over the last few months was for optics.
A decision approved by this organization and agreed to by me.
It was fake, but what Graciella and I have is real.
I pursued Graciella, and it was wrong of me to put her in this position. Or the team.”
I reached into my pocket, hands shaking, and pulled out my phone, flicking to my camera roll.
Graciella, with my key. Her asleep in bed at the Draft. Her in the Miners jersey.
Graciella holding Goldie in the fort, kissing the top of her head…
My chest ached looking at them, and the dozen more I’d snapped or saved since meeting her. Because that’s when I knew she was special.
Special from the moment she looked me in the eyes and told me to be less of a bear.
I pulled up my social media, and looked up at Dana. “The only real relationship in my life is with Graciella, and I’ll prove it.”
I started posting. One after another. Even threw in some screenshots of my notes, their dates proving how long I’d been all in for her.
The reporter pulled up my account on the tablet, the corner of her mouth lifting with each photo. A little red heart appeared each time she tapped.
When the last one posted, I looked back into the camera. Ready to prove something else.
“Graciella Xochitl Barrera.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “I don’t know if you’re watching. But if you are, I need you to hear this. You are the person I trust, the person who has had my back.” I stared straight down the lens. “The person I love. I told you I’d chase you. I meant it.”
“I’ve got something to say.” Thatcher sat forward.
“I’m Dalton Thatcher. Team Captain for the Stars.
” He said it as if there was a real possibility that someone watching didn’t know that.
“Vincent Langley is my birth father. I want to be clear that I had no knowledge of his involvement in any of this, and I want to be equally clear that it doesn’t change anything I’m about to say. ”
He didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes on the lens.
“Coach Monroe is the best coach I’ve ever played for. If this organization decides to move on from him, I’ll walk.” He paused. “And I don’t think I’ll be alone.”
“Same,” Jimenez said.
Behind the cameras, the door opened. A handful of others, still in practice gear, walked in, parroting the sentiment, the cameraman swiveling to catch every word.
My throat tightened.
Then Tommy cleared his throat and stepped in front of the camera.
He’d been standing near the back of the room this entire time, quietly letting it all unfold.
“As General Manager of this organization, I take full responsibility for the situation. It was greenlit by upper management. We pressured Coach Monroe into taking extraordinary action to turn the tide of the press when we should’ve been standing behind him publicly from the start of this smear campaign.
Coach Monroe isn’t going anywhere.” Tommy’s tone was final.
Now I could see how he got his position of team GM. He transformed from his slightly nerdy persona to someone who seemed to take no bull shit.
“He has a long career ahead of him with the Stars,” he continued.
“And Ms. Barrera demonstrated a level of commitment to this team that went beyond her job description. She showed up for this organization and our coach in ways most people in her position never would have. Her job isn’t in jeopardy. If she still wants it, it’s hers.”
I leaned toward Tommy and said quietly, “I need to go.”
He glanced over and shot me finger guns.
I was already moving.
“Where is she?”
The gym door collided with the wall. Drywall dust and flecks of paint scattered across the mats, and Ariella’s head snapped up from her clipboard, eyes cutting between me and the damage I’d just done.
“Respectfully, what the fuck?” She set her pen down.
“You know why I’m here.”
Her jaw tightened. “Monroe—”
“Don’t.” I stepped inside, letting the door swing back on its hinges behind me. “The press ran the story. About me. About her. And now I can’t find her anywhere.”
The silence that followed was answer enough.
Ariella exhaled through her nose and set the clipboard down on her desk, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Itzel took her to the airport.”
The floor dropped out from under me.
“She’s already—” My throat closed around the rest of it.
“She’d already made up her mind, Josh.” Ariella only used my first name when she meant business. “She was protecting you.”
Protecting me.
I pressed the heel of my hand against my sternum like I could physically push back against the pressure building there. All the air in my lungs turned to concrete in my chest.
“And you let her go.” My voice came out rougher than I intended.
Ariella didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. But something moved across her face—something that wasn’t quite guilt and wasn’t quite grief.
“She’s my cousin.” Her voice was steady, but the weight behind it wasn’t. “I know her, know the way she loves. Gives her everything.” She paused. “And she did that for you. Nothing I could have said would’ve stopped her act of love for you. For Goldie. Not when so much was on the line.”
I hadn’t braced for those words. For that blow. My chest ached with a mix of anger and gratitude. I was unaware that so many emotions could coexist in one space.
“That doesn’t mean she was right to do this alone,” I choked out, bracing on the wall.
“No.” Ariella’s mouth pressed into a flat line.
“It doesn’t. But it means I understood it.
We love hard in this family, Monroe. Sometimes that looks like getting on a plane because you think you’re doing the right thing.
” Something flickered in her expression.
“Doesn’t make it hurt any less to watch... or do.”
The last part was barely above a whisper.
I stood there with the wreckage of the last hour, trying to remember how to breathe through it.
“I’m going after her, Ari. I’m not letting her get on that plane thinking she has to sacrifice herself for me. That’s not—” I shook my head. “That’s not what I want from her. That’s not what this is.”
“Thank god.” Ariella reached for her bag, pulling out her phone. “She’s got location sharing on with me.”
I was already moving.
“Monroe.” Ariella stared at the screen for a long moment before holding it out to me.
Something in my chest shifted, and I rubbed my hand down my face, a tiny amount of tension gone seeing that dot.
“What is it with you two and threatening to jump on airplanes to leave the men who love you?”
Ariella let out a snort.
“Listen,” she said. “It makes for a great story to tell.”
She was already walking toward the door, and I was two steps behind her, Graciella’s location still glowing in my hand.