CHAPTER 21 — THE EMPTY ROOM #2
It was an idiotic choice and, for that very reason, familiar.
The arena was almost empty, the ice freshly prepared, and I convinced myself I needed to test my body, clear my head, prove I could still exist outside that penthouse that now reeked of abandonment.
Mason wasn’t there. My father wasn’t there.
Noah wasn’t on the sideline with his clipboard, his attentive gaze, his irritation ready to stop me from doing something stupid.
That absence should have been freedom. It felt like a lack of gravity.
I stepped onto the ice alone. At first, my body responded well.
Skates, cold, puck, breathing. The old routine trying to impose itself over the new confusion.
I did light laps, short direction changes, passes against the boards.
The shoulder bothered me, but nothing I couldn’t handle.
Handle, however, was the wrong word. Noah would say that.
Tolerable isn’t a diagnosis. I heard his voice in my head so clearly that I lost control of the puck and cursed loudly at an empty arena.
I pushed harder than I should have on the next sequence.
Not much. Enough. A turn, a quick arm extension, an idiotic attempt to remind my body who was in charge.
The pain came sharp and dry, shooting from shoulder to arm, and for a second my fingers tingled inside the glove.
I stopped in the middle of the rink, bent over my stick, breathing through my nose while mild nausea rose.
There was no Noah to shout my name. There was no firm hand on my chest to stop me from compensating.
There was no sarcasm, no ice applied at the right time, no irritating way of looking at me as if my body mattered more than my image.
Without Noah, I didn’t feel free.
I felt unsupervised in a house on fire.
I got off the ice before stupidity turned into damage.
The decision should have felt like maturity.
It felt like defeat. In the empty locker room, I pulled off my gloves with difficulty, sat on the bench, and stared at the locker in front of me.
My phone was vibrating inside my bag. Julian, again. This time, I answered.
“Damon,” he said, as if he hadn’t spent the night trying to reorganize my life without consulting me. “Finally.”
“Talk.”
“We need to contain the damage. The article was irresponsible, but it gives us an opportunity. If you stay calm, temporarily distance yourself from Noah, and let another professional take over your treatment, the university shuts down the speculation in forty-eight hours.”
I looked at my left hand. The fingers no longer tingled, but the memory was there. “You want to remove him.”
“I want to protect you, the team, and yes, even Noah himself. He’s under pressure, emotionally involved, connected to his father and the past. Any reasonable person will see a conflict.
You don’t need to deny anything. Just say that while the investigation is ongoing, you prefer a neutral team.
It’s mature. It’s responsible. It’s the kind of decision a captain makes. ”
Captain.
Julian knew how to choose words the way someone chooses pressure points.
Captain wasn't brother. Wasn't a man. It was a function.
It was what I understood, what I sacrificed, what I feared losing if the team looked at me and saw only scandal.
For a second, the solution seemed easy. Cruel, but easy.
Distance Noah officially. Call it prudence.
Keep the folder safe. Buy time. Protect the season.
Protect myself from the risk of being more exposed than I already was.
And buried in the filthy depths of that logic, protect the cowardly part of me that still wanted a way out where Noah didn't demand everything.
“Are you listening?” Julian asked.
I was. That was the problem.
“I am.”
“Then do this today. Before afternoon practice. I can draft the statement with Legal. Something simple: confidence in the medical team, respect for Noah, need for temporary neutrality. Nobody needs to get hurt.”
Nobody needs to get hurt. The phrase almost made me laugh.
Noah had already walked out with a suitcase.
I was already sitting in the locker room with my shoulder burning because I'd tried to train without him.
My father was buried in documents, Noah's father under threat, former athletes reduced to footnotes, and Julian could still say that as if wounds only counted when they stained reputations.
“I'll think about it,” I said.
“Think fast. Delay creates narrative, Damon. And narratives are harder to correct when the public falls in love with them.”
I hung up without saying goodbye.
The idea stayed with me all day like slow-acting poison.
On the way back to the penthouse, in the elevator, in the kitchen without Noah, in the office where the safe held the Bennett folder.
Distance him. Temporary neutrality. Mature statement.
Julian was right about one thing: it seemed reasonable.
That's what made it dangerous. The worst decisions of my life hadn't always arrived disguised as cruelty. Some came dressed as prudence.
I opened the safe late in the afternoon to check if the folder was still there.
It was. Next to it, inside an envelope I'd tucked away months before and forgotten about, was the old photo.
The same one Noah had found in my playbook.
The two of us sitting on the wall behind the arena, too young, too close, smiling as if the world hadn't yet learned how to use us.
I picked up the photo and sat on the office floor.
I looked at it for a long time.
I'd said I kept it to remember where I went wrong.
At the time, it was a lie and the truth at the same time.
I'd kept it because I couldn't throw it away.
Then, because I needed to transform longing into proof of betrayal.
Then, because hating Noah became easier when I had that happy face of his to silently accuse.
Now, looking at the photo, I saw something else: Noah leaning toward me, confident, open, with that light in his eyes that I'd helped extinguish.
I saw my own hand, near his, not touching.
Always almost. Always waiting for someone braver to decide.
I didn't throw the photo away at eighteen because I already wanted him.
I didn't throw it away at nineteen because I hated him.
I didn't throw it away at twenty-three because some part of me, stubborn and stupid, still hoped to understand how both things could live in the same body without killing it.
Julian's statement died there, on my office floor.
Not in a beautiful way. Not because I knew the right move in its entirety.
It died because if I distanced Noah now to seem neutral, I'd be repeating the same gesture from that old hallway, just dressed in legal language.
I'd be following Julian once more while Noah held the truth on the other side.
I could lose the team, the image, sponsors, minutes on the ice.
I couldn't keep losing the same person to cowardice and call it responsibility.
I picked up my phone.
Mason had sent three messages, all variations of “don't do anything idiotic without warning me so I can film or stop it.” I ignored them for now.
I opened Valerie Cross's contact. I didn't have the number saved; she'd messaged me weeks before asking for an interview, and I'd never responded. I responded now.
“I want to see everything you have on my brother.”
I stared at the sent message for a few seconds. Then I wrote another, harder one, to Noah. I deleted it twice before accepting that no phrase would be enough.
“You were right. I hesitated. I'm not going to distance you. I'm not going to let Julian tell this part either. When you can hear me, I'll say this looking at you.”
I didn't ask him to come back. I didn't ask him to respond. I didn't ask for anything that would put the weight of consoling me on him.
The phone stayed silent in my hand.
Through the office window, Northaven remained lit, the arena glowing in the distance as always. But something had shifted inside me. It wasn't forgiveness. It wasn't a solution. It was direction.
And this time, I didn't intend to let Julian decide where I would look.