Chapter Fifteen
Tessa slept badly after kissing Matvei Belov.
That seemed unfair.
She had crossed an ocean, worked through jet lag and slept soundly enough during her first two nights in Helsinki that both alarms were necessary to wake her.
The night after three drinks and a decision capable of damaging the career she had spent years building should have exhausted her into unconsciousness.
Instead, she remained awake long after returning to her hotel room.
Every time Tessa closed her eyes, the night rearranged itself into a collection of moments she could examine individually and regret more efficiently.
His hand against her knee beneath the table.
The slight turn of his face into her palm when she touched the scar along his jaw.
The seriousness in his expression when he explained that his father called only after good games.
The way he had said he wanted her too, without hesitation or enough concern for the consequences.
Then the kiss.
The first could be blamed on him, though he had given her every opportunity to refuse it. Matvei touched her chin, waited and told her to stop him. She had tightened her hand in his coat instead.
The second kiss belonged entirely to her.
He could not have mistaken it. She had stepped toward him, reached for him and closed the distance after already admitting that doing so was a bad idea. She had felt the sound he made against her mouth and the strength in his hand when he pulled her closer for one brief second.
Tessa replayed that part most often.
By three in the morning, she had established several facts.
She did not regret kissing him.
That was the first problem.
She wanted to do it again.
That was the larger one.
And in less than twelve hours, she would sit in a press box and cover his game against the United States as though neither fact existed.
Tessa rolled onto her side and looked toward the curtains.
Russia’s hotel stood across the street. His room was somewhere behind the windows facing hers, unless it was on the other side of the building or several floors above. She did not know. She had no reason to know.
The temptation to look remained.
She stayed in bed.
At four, she opened the notes for the Canada-Sweden game on her phone and reviewed both projected lineups.
At four-thirty, she made a list of stories she needed to complete before leaving Helsinki.
At five, she finally slept.
Her alarm sounded at seven.
Tessa woke with the phone vibrating beneath her pillow and the unpleasant awareness that every bad decision remained exactly where she left it.
Outside, Helsinki was still dark.
Snow had begun falling again, lightly enough that individual flakes remained visible beneath the streetlights. The Christmas decorations stretched above the narrow road between the hotels, their glow reflected in the windows and the thin layer of ice along the pavement.
Tessa stood near the curtain and looked across.
Most of Russia’s hotel remained dark. A few lobby lights illuminated the entrance. No players stood outside, and no movement showed in the windows she could see.
She told herself the disappointment was relief.
Then she closed the curtains and got ready for work.
Canada and Sweden played the first game of the day.
The tournament schedule listed the faceoff for noon, though Tessa reached the arena before nine. She needed to write a morning notebook, attend both teams’ pregame availabilities and finish background work on how Sweden had adjusted after losing Viktor.
His absence had become more visible as the tournament continued.
Sweden still had leadership. Its roster included captains, former captains and veterans who had represented the country for years.
But Viktor had been expected to center one of the checking lines, kill penalties and serve as a bridge between the team’s oldest players and the younger ones attending their first best-on-best event.
The player who replaced him had performed well.
That did not make him Viktor.
Tessa watched Sweden’s morning availability from the back of the room while a veteran forward discussed the adjustment.
“You don’t replace what he brings,” the player said. “You change how you do things without him. There’s a difference.”
Tessa wrote the quote down and thought of Viktor sitting beneath his stall in Halifax, knee braced and a flight he would never take already canceled.
Tessa finished the Sweden availability, hurried across the arena for Canada and gathered enough material to complete the notebook before puck drop. She returned to her seat with fourteen minutes remaining in warmups and opened the shell of the game story.
Canada controlled most of the opening period.
Sweden adjusted in the second.
The game became more physical after a Canadian forward drove a Swedish defenseman into the boards near the benches. Players gathered, officials intervened and the crowd responded with the kind of excitement only a game between countries could create without a true local favorite.
Tessa wrote through all of it.
She remained focused enough that she didn’t immediately notice Russia’s players entering the seating section behind the opposite net.
Matvei sat in the second row of the reserved player section with several Russian teammates. He wore the red team tracksuit and a black hat pulled low over his hair. One of the forwards beside him spoke while pointing toward Sweden’s defensive setup.
Matvei appeared to be listening.
Then he looked toward the press box.
Not searching.
Directly toward her.
The distance should have made it impossible to know their eyes had met. Tessa felt it anyway.
Everything from the night before returned at once.
His mouth against hers.
The scrape of stubble beneath her fingertips.
The way his voice changed when he said he wanted to kiss her again.
Matvei gave her a slight nod.
Tessa returned it.
Nothing more.
She looked down at her laptop and began typing a sentence she had already written.
Canada entered the third period leading 3-2. Sweden tied the game with six minutes remaining, then lost in overtime when a Canadian center finished a rebound near the crease.
Tessa filed a quick version of the story before leaving her seat.
When she looked toward the player section again, Matvei was gone.
The absence bothered her.
She had given him exactly what professionalism required. Acknowledgment without familiarity. Nothing another reporter would notice or interpret.
That had been the point.
She returned to the workroom and began rewriting the lead.
Russia’s pregame availability opened shortly after three.
Tessa considered skipping it.
She already had enough material from the previous two days to write the tournament notebook. The game would produce another opportunity afterward, and no editor expected her to interview Matvei before and after every start.
Avoiding him would be obvious only to her.
That did not make it less obvious.
Tessa joined the other reporters walking toward Russia’s mixed zone.
Matvei stood near the center of the room speaking with a Russian television crew. He was dressed in the red team jacket, hair still damp from the pregame skate. His expression remained composed, the version of himself he presented when the questions involved more than hockey.
He saw Tessa as soon as she entered.
She looked toward another player.
The decision was immediate enough to feel childish.
Tessa interviewed one of Russia’s defensemen about the United States forecheck. She asked another forward about Canada and Sweden’s overtime result and whether the tournament format changed the way teams watched earlier games.
By the time she approached Matvei, only several reporters remained around him.
He looked at the recorder in her hand.
Tessa turned it on.
“The United States has been attacking quickly after defensive-zone faceoff wins,” she said. “How much does that change where you expect the first shot to come from?”
Matvei waited.
For a second, she thought he might refuse to answer.
“They want middle fast,” he said. “Center wins back, defense moves puck to wall and forward comes inside. We need block first lane.”
“Does that require you to play deeper until you know whether the shot or pass is coming?”
“Some.”
His eyes stayed on her face.
Tessa wrote the answer without looking away.
“What did you notice watching Canada and Sweden?”
“You saw me?”
The question came quietly enough that the other reporters might not have heard.
Tessa’s grip tightened around the recorder.
“You were sitting in the player section.”
“Yes.”
“What did you notice about the game?”
Something closed in Matvei’s expression.
“Canada forecheck good.”
She waited.
He offered nothing more.
Tessa could feel the distance she had created between them, and how deliberately he returned it.
“Thank you,” she said.
She turned off the recorder.
Matvei looked toward the dark screen.
Then he looked at her.
Tessa stepped aside before he could say anything not meant for the group.
The next reporter moved forward.
She left the mixed zone without looking back.
The United States scored first.
A Russian defenseman lost the puck below the goal line, allowing an American forward to send it quickly into the slot. Matvei made the initial save, but the rebound reached another player before Russia could clear the crease.
The shot entered over his pad.
Nothing he could do.
Tessa wrote the sequence into her notes.
Russia tied the game near the end of the first period on a power-play goal. The United States regained the lead early in the second, but Russia answered less than two minutes later after forcing a turnover in the neutral zone.
The pace remained high through the third.
Matvei played well.
Not dramatically. There was no save destined to lead every highlight package or require commentators to invent new language. He controlled rebounds, stayed patient on lateral plays and stopped the shots Russia needed him to stop.
Tessa watched the details because that was her job.