CHAPTER 18 — CLOSED LOCKER ROOM
POV: Noah Bennett
Mason's words hung in the car like a living threat.
Someone photographed you two getting out.
The window was still partially fogged. My body still carried Damon's warmth from the seat beside me, and the box with the Bennett folder sat in the back like physical proof that nothing about this afternoon could be written off as impulse, desire, or carelessness.
For a few seconds, I couldn't speak. My hand stayed on the wheel, fingers gripping the leather too tight, while the parking garage gate rose in front of us with almost offensive slowness.
The world outside kept going—wet from rain, full of gray light and concrete—as if a single photo couldn't destroy careers, reputations, internships, families, and any fragile chance of Damon ever looking at me without the shadow of a new accusation.
Damon moved first. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him lean forward, his good hand going to the dashboard—not to touch anything, just because he needed a fixed point before the rage took over.
His left shoulder, pinned under the jacket, tensed in a way that made my professional instincts want to grab him by the back of the neck and force him to breathe.
But Mason was outside, hand resting on the car roof, not a trace of humor on his face, and the folder behind us felt more urgent than any pulled muscle.
“Who?” Damon asked, voice too low, too dangerous.
Mason glanced at the emergency stairs before answering, like he half-expected to see whoever it was come back.
“Couldn't get a good look. Hood up, phone in hand, took off fast. Could've been a student, someone from the paper, someone from the department—anyone. The thing is, they were pointing at your car. Not the general exit.”
“Did you actually see them take the photo?”
“I saw the phone go up. Did I see a flash? No. But nobody hides behind a pillar filming concrete out of love for architecture.”
My throat closed up. The word filming hit harder than photo.
A single image could be explained away: me driving Damon's car because he was injured, us leaving the administrative wing, me as his medical supervisor.
But a video—depending on the angle, the timing, what the fogged window let someone imagine—could become anything in the right hands.
And the right hands, at Northaven, were almost never clean.
“We need to go,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. “Now.”
Damon turned to me. “Noah.”
“Not here. Not in the parking garage. Not with the folder in the back seat and half the university ready to decide which version of us does the most damage. Mason, get in your car and follow us to Whitmore Tower. If someone's tailing us, I want to know before we go up.”
Mason nodded without complaint, which scared me more than any joke would have.
He tapped the roof twice and stepped away.
I pulled forward the second the gate opened, keeping my speed too slow to look like flight and too fast for my heart to keep up.
Damon didn't say a word for the first few blocks.
His silence had weight. Worse than anger.
Anger I knew; silence from Damon could mean calculation, guilt, impulse held back by a thread.
“We're not going to hide,” he said finally.
A short, humorless laugh escaped me. “You say that like the problem is courage.”
“The problem is someone's trying to back us into a corner before we can use the folder.”
“Yes. And if you go out there now saying you have nothing to hide, Julian will thank you for handing him the crisis gift-wrapped.
The team finds out before we control the narrative, the administration opens an 'ethical review,' my father becomes a target, you become the athlete who got manipulated, and I become the opportunistic intern who slept with the injured captain. And the Bennett folder—which should be about protecting injured players—becomes a footnote in a sex scandal.”
That last word left the car colder. Not because there was shame in what we'd done.
There was fear of what they'd do with it.
Damon stared out the window, jaw so tight his shoulder tensed in response, rising slightly under the jacket.
Part of me—the part still furious with him for four years of judgment—wanted to say that now he'd understand what it felt like to have your life edited by other people.
The part that had kissed him in this car minutes ago hated the cruelty of that thought.
“I won't let them turn you into that,” he said.
“You don't control everyone, Damon.”
“I control enough.”
“That kind of thinking is exactly what got us here.”
He turned to face me, and for a second I thought the fight was about to erupt.
But Damon just breathed—heavy, labored—and looked back at the road.
Maybe he was learning. Maybe he was just too exhausted to fight me and Julian at the same time.
The rain picked up as we turned onto the internal road leading to Whitmore Tower, drops streaking across the windshield in quick lines.
I flicked the wipers on hard, needing to see the road, an exit, anything that wasn't his reflection in the side window.
Mason followed us to the tower garage and waited while we headed up with the box. Nobody appeared. Nobody chased us. Nobody shoved a phone in our faces. Somehow, that made it worse. An invisible threat always has more room to grow inside your head.
In the penthouse, Damon set the box on the living room table like he was putting down a loaded gun. Mason came in right behind him, shrugged off his wet coat, and looked at both of us with a seriousness that sat wrong on his face.
“All right,” Mason said. “Minimum survival plan: no impulsive texts, no punching Julian, no chasing down mysterious hoodies alone, no using the locker room as an emotional bunker without telling someone. Damon, that last part's mostly for you.”
“You think I'm going to be an idiot?” Damon asked.
“I think you're going to be Damon, which is worse because it comes with a budget and justification.”
I would've laughed in another situation.
Instead, I sat on the arm of the couch and pulled my phone from my pocket, expecting to find the photo already circulating—on some social network, in some team group chat, in some anonymous message.
Nothing. No new notifications. That silence felt like a hand gripping a knife behind my back.
“If someone has the image, maybe they're waiting,” I said. “They could use it to pressure us, sell it to Valerie, send it to Julian, post it in a private group.”
“Valerie wouldn't do that without talking to us first,” Damon said.
I looked at him. “You trust her?”
“No. But she wants the full story, not cheap gossip. That makes her useful.”
Mason rested his hands on the kitchen counter.
“The team has closed practice tonight. If this lands in a private group, it'll show up there first. Players can't keep anything to themselves, especially when it involves the captain, a physical therapist, a fogged-up car, and Blackwood drama all wrapped up together.”
The word locker room crossed my mind like a warning.
I saw the sequence before it happened: snickers, glances, someone flashing their phone, Damon's name paired with mine on other people's lips, the team judging my work by what they assumed I did off the treatment table.
I felt nauseous. Not because they might find out I wanted Damon.
I could handle that. What froze me was imagining my competence reduced to access to his body, my care twisted into ulterior motive, his injury becoming proof that I shouldn't be anywhere near him.
Damon noticed. He was on the other side of the room, and he still noticed.
“Noah.”
“Don't,” I said, standing before his voice could fully reach me. “Don't do the voice—the one where you promise to fix everything. You can't fix exposure with willpower.”
“Then tell me what we do.”
The question stopped me. Not because I knew the answer.
Because he asked instead of decreed. Mason noticed too, and had the rare decency not to crack a joke.
I ran my hand through my hair, looked at the box on the table, at the rain-streaked window, at Damon with his injured shoulder and fresh anger burning in his eyes.
“We don't react until we know where the photo landed,” I said.
“Closed practice goes on as normal. I do your follow-up like always.
Mason keeps his ears open in the locker room.
If it shows up in any group, he warns us before it turns into a wildfire.
The folder stays here, locked, away from phones, away from impulse. And you don't talk to Julian alone.”
“You're giving orders again, Bennett,” Damon said, but there was no cruelty in it this time.
“I'm preventing a catastrophe. It's similar, but with more public utility.”
Mason pointed at me. “I vote for him as crisis captain.”
“You vote for anyone who takes you out of the center of responsibility,” Damon replied.
“Exactly. Democracy in action.”
Closed practice started at seven. The arena felt different without an audience, without the roar of the crowd, without visible journalists, but the tension was worse because every sound was sharper: skates carving ice, sticks clashing, coaches shouting instructions, heavy breathing on the bench, conversations cutting off when I passed.
I stayed in the side medical area with my bag on the floor and the tablet in my hands, trying to look like the same Noah Bennett as always.
Technical. Attentive. Slightly insufferable.
Inside, every phone a player pulled from his pocket made my stomach clench.