Chapter 14
KEEGAN
For one breath after waking, I believe the worst is behind us.
Evie is warm against my side, one leg caught with mine beneath the sheet. Her hair covers half my chest. Morning light leaks through the cheap blinds and lays pale bars across her bare shoulder. My arm has gone numb under her, and I would let it die there.
Then my phone begins vibrating on the floor.
It stops. Starts again. Another device joins it from Evie’s bag in the living room. The sound crosses the small apartment like an alarm neither of us can turn off.
Evie wakes beneath my hand. “What time is it?”
“Early.”
“That is not a time.”
“It is on the morning after Game Seven.” I kiss her hair before I remember I have not been granted morning. My mouth stills against her. “Sorry.”
She does not pull away immediately. That mercy lasts until the phone vibrates a third time.
I slide out of bed and find my pants. The screen shows missed calls from the GM, the PR director, my agent, Jake, and numbers I do not recognize. Notifications stack beneath a link sent by all four of them.
Chloe’s face fills the article header.
Evie sits up with the sheet held across her chest. “What happened?”
I open the link. “She talked.”
The interview runs beneath photographs of Chloe outside the arena and the staged hotel image the world already owns.
The headline calls her the woman behind the captain’s secret relationship.
The first paragraphs frame her termination as retaliation by a powerful player and a team protecting its playoff run.
“Read it,” Evie says.
“You don’t need this before coffee.”
Her eyes sharpen. “Do not decide what I need while naked in my apartment.”
I hand her the phone.
She reads silently. I pull on my pants and sit at the end of the bed, close enough to see the color leave her face but not close enough to touch without asking.
Chloe claims our emotional relationship was mutual and serious.
That I told her my marriage had become an obligation.
That I wanted freedom but panicked when the photograph made private truth public.
She says the team forced her out after I decided saving my image required rewriting our bond.
She mentions my drinking, the guest room, the nights I said going home felt like walking into another interrogation.
She does not mention Alice, the duplicate key, my unconscious body, or the messages that show her plan.
Evie reaches the sentence about the guest room and stops. “Did you say this?”
“Not those exact words.”
Her gaze lifts from the phone. “Did you say the marriage felt like an obligation?”
I want the clean answer. Chloe has built the interview to make every truthful denial sound like strategy. “I said sometimes I stayed at the arena because home meant another fight.”
“That was not my question.”
The sheet is gathered beneath Evie’s fist. I make myself meet her eyes. “I told Chloe I was tired of being responsible for everyone.”
“Everyone.”
“The team. Sponsors. You.” The last word damages the room. “I made you part of the burden when you were asking me to show up.”
Evie looks back at the article. “She says you wanted out.”
“That is a lie.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.” The answer comes hard. “I never wanted a life without you.”
“You wanted one where I required less.”
The distinction closes around my throat. “Yes.”
My phone rings in her hand. The PR director’s name appears. Evie passes it back and wraps the sheet tighter around herself.
I answer. “Talk.”
“Do not leave wherever you are. Do not post, call media, enter the arena through a public door, or answer any question. We are preparing a statement denying the alleged physical relationship and addressing the employment process.”
While the PR director issues orders, Evie crosses to the living room and returns with her own phone, the sheet trailing.
“She left out the evidence.” I move away from the bed before anger turns my voice into a shout.
“We know. Counsel is reviewing what can be released. The GM wants you here in ninety minutes, through the service entrance. Until then, silence.”
“Her interview says the team fired her to protect me.”
“Which is why you do not improvise while angry.”
My eyes remain on Evie. She has reached the section about my alcohol use. “Send me the statement.”
“Keegan—”
“Send it.” I end the call.
The document arrives within seconds. Three clean paragraphs. The team denies any physical affair and state that Chloe was terminated following an internal review unrelated to retaliation. The final paragraph praises my leadership and requests privacy.
There was no affair, it says. The sentence erases the only part that was mine. “It’s a lie,” I say.
Evie’s thumb stops on the article. “Which part?”
“The team statement. They want to say there was no affair.”
“There was no sex.”
“There was an affair.” The word burns, but I hold it. “I gave her what belonged inside our marriage. If I let them deny all of it, I make you crazy in public after doing it in private.”
Something in Evie’s face shifts, then locks again. “And if you admit it, Chloe gets to make herself the wounded lover.”
“She already has.” My voice lands harder than I intend.
“Then release the evidence.” Evie sets her phone facedown on the bed as though the screen has grown hot.
“Not the messages. You asked me to keep them private.”
“The footage. The keys. Alice’s statement.” She counts each piece against the edge of the sheet.
“Counsel will use what they can.” I reach for her and stop with my hand suspended over the bed. “I can answer this.”
Evie looks at the hand, not my face. “You always can.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“You win rooms. You win cameras. You won last night.” She slides away from my reach and stands, carrying the sheet with her. “And somehow I am still the woman strangers will dissect to decide whether your affair was understandable.”
“I will not let them put this on you.”
“You cannot stop them.” Her voice lowers until each word arrives flat. “That is the part your power never understands.”
From the window comes the grind of a vehicle slowing below. Another follows. Evie crosses to the blinds and looks through one narrow gap. Her shoulders tense.
“Cameras,” she says.
I stand. “Stay away from the window.”
She turns with fury sharpening every line of her body. “Do not order me around in my apartment.”
“They can see through the gap.”
“Then say that.” She releases the blind. “Do not turn fear into command and call it protection.”
My hands want action: security, cars, counsel, every machine money can buy. The woman in front of me needs none of those things from my mouth. “You’re right.”
Evie stares as if agreement is another trap. Her phone begins ringing.
“I’m here,” she answers. Her eyes remain on me while Sienna speaks fast enough that I hear only fragments: people outside the studio, cameras at the bakery, don’t come down.
The private night is already evidence in someone else’s story. My jacket is folded on the sofa. The shirt with my number lies on the floor beside the bed.
“I can get you out through the rear,” I say when the call ends.
“I don’t want to get out.” Evie picks up my shirt and pushes it toward me. “I want you to handle the life you brought to my door.”
I take the shirt. She steps beyond the reach of my free hand before I can choose the wrong sentence.