Chapter 37
Drew
Miguel’s text came through just as I sat down on the edge of the bed.
Miguel: Home safe.
Relief hit first—a short, clean breath—but it didn’t last long enough to be useful. My thumb hovered over the keyboard, halfway through the message: Good. Get some– sleep, when the phone buzzed again. It was the front office.
“Coach Mackenzie.”
“G’morning,” the general manager said. “Can you be in at nine? Conference B.”
My pulse jumped. “Sure. Something wrong?”
A pause—three seconds, maybe four. “We’ll talk when you get here.”
The call clicked off before I could answer.
By the time I pulled into the rink’s lot, the sun had climbed high enough to make the ice posters in the windows fade to gray. I killed the engine and sat there, watching my reflection ghost across the windshield. I looked calm.
That was a lie.
The team offices smelled like coffee and disinfectant, the kind of clean that meant someone was expecting visitors. The receptionist said, “They’re waiting.”
Conference B was on the second floor, blinds half-drawn. Three people sat inside: the GM, the assistant GM, and Kendra Lewis from PR. No one offered coffee. No one smiled.
“Coach.” The GM gestured to the chair opposite him. “Appreciate you coming in early.”
I sat, palms flat on my thighs. The contract folder sat in front of him—my copy, the one I’d signed at the start of the season. A pen rested diagonally across it.
He cleared his throat. “We received a report this morning. From a player.”
He didn’t name the player. He didn’t have to.
“Alleging that a member of the coaching staff engaged in a personal relationship with someone on the roster.”
The air left my lungs slow and hot. I kept my eyes on the tabletop grain, counting the thin scratches left by coffee mugs over the years.
Kendra’s voice came next—smooth, trained. “We’re not here to accuse, Drew. We’re here to address perception before it escalates. You understand how fast rumors move through a locker room. Or online.”
“Has it gone online?” My voice sounded steadier than it felt.
“Not that we’ve seen,” she said. “But we can’t assume it won’t.”
The assistant GM flipped the folder open and turned a page toward me. His finger tapped a paragraph highlighted in yellow.
All coaching and support staff are expected to maintain professional boundaries with players and employees to avoid any appearance of favoritism, bias, or impropriety.
I knew that line. I’d skimmed past it when I first signed, thinking it was common sense. Now it looked like a sentence already underlined for a court date.
The GM leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You know what that means, Coach.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This isn’t a firing conversation,” he said quickly, maybe reading the expression on my face. “We’ve got respect for the work you’ve done here. But we need to get ahead of this. For the team, for the league, and for you.”
Kendra slid a smaller stack of papers toward me—public-relations protocols, the kind you give players after bar fights or tweets gone bad. “If anyone asks, you keep responses short and factual. Team matter being handled internally. Nothing else.”
I nodded, the motion small, controlled. My pulse hammered behind my ears.
They talked about optics, chain of command, potential suspension “if the situation developed further.” I heard pieces of it, not all. The words blurred into the hum of the vent.
My brain split in two: one half tracking their voices, the other replaying the exact moment the world had shifted under us. The look on Sam’s face when he saw us. That was the moment the fuse lit.
The GM’s tone softened. “We’ve got to protect the organization. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”
“I do.”
He sighed. “We’d like you to take the weekend. No media appearances, no practices. We’ll announce it as routine post-season evaluations.”
“Understood.”
Kendra slid a form across the table. “Acknowledgment of discussion,” she said, polite, perfunctory. I signed it because there was no universe where not signing would help.
The pen left a faint tremor in my hand. I turned it over once, set it down precisely parallel to the folder edge. Old habits—order when everything else cracked.
When they stood, I did too. The meeting was already fading from their minds, another problem logged and labeled. For me it was just starting.
The GM walked me to the door. “We’re not passing judgment, Drew. But you know how this looks. Keep it quiet. We’ll circle back soon.”
He reached out like he might clap my shoulder, then thought better of it. I nodded and stepped into the hall.
By the time I reached my car, the mask of calm had started to crack.
The steering wheel bit into my palms as I sat there, staring through the windshield at nothing.
I’d spent years teaching players how to recover from a hit—head up, square your shoulders, move on to the next play.
But this wasn’t the kind of blow you skated off.
The drive blurred. I must’ve hit every red light between the rink and his place, and I still don’t remember a single one turning green.
When I pulled up outside his building, the nerves finally hit—low in my gut. I didn’t even think about what I’d say.
My hand hovered before I finally knocked.
The door opened, and there he was—barefoot, hair damp.
“Hey,” I said, the word coming out softer than I meant.
He smiled a little, tired but real. “Hey.”
He stepped back, glancing over my shoulder before closing the door firmly behind me, the click of the latch louder than it should’ve been. Only then did I breathe again.
For a second, neither of us spoke. His eyes flicked over my face. My hand found his shoulder anyway. The warmth of his skin hit like air after being underwater.
He stepped closer until our foreheads touched, the contact small, grounding. A breath passed between us—mine unsteady, his steadying it.
The light from the window caught in the damp edges of his hair. His was wrinkled and I wanted—God, I wanted—to smooth it out, to smooth him out, to take the worry from his eyes.
My hand just did what my heart had already decided, finding his jaw, the rough edge of stubble warm against my palm.
He leaned in, eyes half-closed, breath brushing my chin.
The kiss —a shared breath. Then it deepened by instinct, not hunger, but need. His fingers curled to pull me closer.
When I finally drew back, our mouths barely parted.
I followed him to the couch, and when we sat, our knees brushed.
His eyes searched mine. “They called you, didn’t they?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “You okay?”
I almost laughed—short, humorless. “They pulled out the contract. The clause about professional boundaries. PR sat in.”
He exhaled slowly, like he’d been bracing for it. “I figured.”
“They didn’t say your name.” My voice cracked on the last word. “But they didn’t have to.”
He looked past me toward the hallway, then back. “What now?”
I swallowed. The answer felt too big for the space between us.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But whatever happens, you can’t—” I stopped myself. My heart was so full, I wasn’t sure if I could articulate myself in a way that wouldn’t make things worse.
He tilted his head slightly. “Can’t what?”
I sighed. “You can’t take the fall for me.”
His brow furrowed. “That what you think I’d do?”
“I think you’d walk through fire if you thought it would help,” I said quietly. “And I can’t let you. You’ve worked too hard for this—your shot at the naff, everything you’ve fought for.”
He drew a long, unsteady breath. “You think that’s what this is about? That I’d ruin my career to prove something?”
“I think you’d do it because you care too damn much.”
He leaned back, shaking his head. “Then maybe caring isn’t the problem. Maybe it’s hiding that is.”
“Miguel—”
He lifted his hand, stopping me. “If this gets worse… if the league breathes down your neck, I could ask for a trade. I’d start over somewhere else.”
The thought hollowed me out. “You shouldn’t have to leave Grizzlies to protect me.”
“And you shouldn’t have to quit to protect me,” he countered, voice breaking just slightly. “You’d resign, wouldn’t you?”
I hesitated. “If it meant keeping you safe? Yeah.”
He gave a small, disbelieving laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all. “That’s not safety, Drew. That’s you throwing yourself on a grenade that hasn’t even gone off yet.”
“I just don’t want to cost you everything,” I said.
He stood then, slow and restless, running a hand over his face. “You still don’t get it. You’re not the thing that ruins me. You’re the reason I keep trying.”
The words hit like a punch and a prayer all at once.
He turned toward me, eyes bright. “I love you.”
The air seemed to still.
“I don’t care who knows,” he went on, voice shaking but steady. “I don’t care what it costs. I’ve spent my whole life playing it safe, waiting for the right time that never comes. You’re it. You’re the right time.”
I stared at him, trying to swallow the lump that formed in my throat.
“I love you too,” I said, the words falling out on a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “I’ve loved you for a while now. I just kept waiting—for the right moment to tell you, the right chance, the right everything. But there’s never going to be one, is there?”
He shook his head slowly, a tear catching in the corner of his eye. “No. Just this one.”
I crossed the distance between us and caught his face in my hands. “Then I choose this one.”
The kiss that followed wasn’t frantic. It started softly, almost tentative, like we were both afraid of breaking what had just been spoken aloud.
Then it deepened—slow, trembling at the edges, the kind of kiss that asked a hundred questions and answered all of them at once.
He tasted like salt and breath and relief, and when his hand slid up the back of my neck, I felt something inside me finally go quiet.
For months we’d touched in shadows, in caution. This time there was nothing careful about it. Just us—bare, seen, no rink, no walls, no noise.
He whispered my name against my mouth, and I could feel it more than hear it. I answered by pulling him closer, letting every ounce of fear turn into something steady and sure.
When we finally broke apart, we stayed close, foreheads pressed together, breath mingling in the small space left between us.
His thumb brushed my jaw. “What happens now?” he whispered.
“Whatever comes,” I said, my voice rough, “we face it together.”
He smiled faintly, like a man learning to breathe again. “Together.”
I kissed him again—longer this time—and the fear that had lived between us for months finally started to fade.
I didn’t have an answer—not one that would survive daylight—but I kissed him again anyway, slower this time, until breathing felt like a promise.
The rest of the world could wait— the rules, the team, the noise.
All that mattered was this: his hand in mine, his heartbeat against my chest, the quiet certainty that we’d already chosen each other long before tonight.
When he led me toward the bedroom, it wasn’t with desperation, but with certainty.
A quiet, steady knowing that whatever the world decided, this—us—was real.