Chapter 17
EVIE
The C tears crooked, taking a white mouthful of jersey with it.
On the studio television, Keegan sets the mangled letter beneath the microphones. Sienna stands beside my workbench with both hands over her mouth. The broadcast cuts between his face, the torn place on his jersey, and the room erupting around him.
“He actually did it,” she says.
I cannot answer. My hands are locked around a polishing cloth I have twisted into a rope.
The torn hole over Keegan’s heart keeps flashing behind my eyes.
He could have surrendered the title with a signature in a quiet office.
Instead, he made the loss visible enough that no one could pretend it had been taken from him.
Keegan tells the cameras I demanded none of it. He tells them to leave my studio and home alone. He names the emotional affair without letting Chloe turn it into love, then walks away before anyone can ask whether spectacle has purchased his wife.
The screen returns to people explaining him.
Sienna lowers the volume. “Are you all right?”
“No.”
“Useful answer.” She removes the cloth from my hands before the seam gives way and smooths it across the bench. “Do you want me to stay?”
The bell at the front door rings.
We both turn. Beyond the frosted lower glass, a broad silhouette waits alone. No cameras. No team security. Keegan wears a dark sweatshirt instead of the torn jersey, his hands visible at his sides.
Sienna looks at me. “I can stay.” She waits while I stare at the shape on the other side of the glass.
“I know.” My fingers find the dead bolt but do not turn it.
“I can also leave.” Her coat remains over her arm. The choice is mine all the way through.
I unlock the door. Keegan’s eyes find mine, pale and stripped of the command that filled the broadcast. “May I come in?”
“Sienna is here.”
“Then I can wait outside.”
My sister picks up her coat. “I suddenly have somewhere else to be.” She pauses beside Keegan. “If you make her regret opening this door, I will sell the torn C online and fund your destruction.”
“Fair.”
When she is gone, Keegan enters only after I step back. The studio feels smaller around him. He looks toward the muted television and winces at the still of his face beside a panel of people discussing him.
“You resigned.”
“Yes.” He does not dress the word in pride.
“I told you not to destroy your career.” Behind him, the broadcast rolls the press-conference footage again, the stitching tearing in silence.
“I didn’t.” He keeps three feet between us. “I gave up authority I had stopped deserving. I’m still playing.”
“You offered to leave when the contract ends.”
“If staying costs the marriage.” The old Keegan would have crossed the space by now, using height and heat until the room bent toward him. This one keeps his boots beside the door and lets the distance stay mine.
“That sounds like a choice you put on me.”
“It isn’t.” His shoulders settle as if he prepared for the blow. “If you divorce me tomorrow, I still decide what hockey costs me—inside this marriage or outside it. You do not carry my retirement.”
The distinction refuses the anger I had ready. I fold my arms. “Why are you here?”
“To tell you what I did without cameras.” His gaze flicks once toward the dark lens of the studio security camera, then returns to me.
“I watched.”
“Not the press conference.” Keegan reaches into his pocket and removes a folded sheet. “My lawyer.”
He places it on the nearest display case but does not push it toward me. The page lies between a tray of unfinished silver and my reflection in the glass. “I told counsel I will not contest the petition, challenge your choice, or use money to exhaust you. If you proceed, they cooperate.”
The studio goes very quiet. “You agreed to the divorce.”
“No.” The refusal is immediate, the first flash of the man who rips letters off jerseys rather than surrender what he loves quietly. “I will never tell you I want it. I will not sign a lie saying I agree our marriage should end.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“That I will not cage you with the law because I can afford a stronger cage.” His voice breaks rough across the last word. “I can fight the divorce or fight for the marriage. I choose the marriage. That means your no has to remain possible.”
My throat closes. The public sacrifice was built for cameras even if he meant every word. This costs him where no one can applaud. He has put the weapon down and stepped away from it while I am still holding the blade.
Keegan lowers himself to one knee.
“Don’t.”
He stops there, one knee pressed to the hard studio floor. “Tell me to stand.”
I should. Instead I look at the man the entire arena knows kneeling on my studio floor beside the bench where I built a life he once forgot to ask about.
“I am not asking you to withdraw anything tonight,” he says. “I am asking for the work. However long you make it. Whatever access you choose. If the answer stays no, counsel follows your instructions and I live with what I did.”
“You would let me go.”
His face tightens until the words have to force their way through. “I would not stop you.” A pulse beats high in his throat.
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.” He looks up at me without hiding. “I don’t know how to let you go. I know how not to imprison you.”
My knees fail before my judgment does. I sink in front of him, still out of reach. The floor bites through my jeans. We are level now, but his body remains drawn tight around all the things he will not take from me.
Keegan’s hands remain on his thighs. “Evie.”
“You do not get an answer because you tore off a letter.” I keep my hands in my lap, because touching him would answer something I have not decided how to say.
“I know.” His voice is scraped raw.
“Or because you finally told the truth.”
“I know that too.” His restraint is not calm. I can see the cost of it in the rigid line of his shoulders, in the breath he releases one measured inch at a time.
“Stop saying that.” Anger is easier when he pushes. Without the push, it has nowhere clean to land.
“Tell me what to say.”
I touch the paper on the display case. “Say you understand that I might still go through with this.”
The fear in his eyes is naked. “You might still go through with it.” He says it without looking away, and the effort hollows his voice.
“Say you will not punish me.”
“I will not punish you, obstruct you, shame you, or turn love into leverage.” Each promise lands without ornament.
“Say you hate it.”
His breath shudders. “I fucking hate it.” The words bow his head for one second. He forces it back up.
The honesty breaks the last clean edge in me. I move close enough to frame his face with both hands. His scruff catches my palms. Keegan closes his eyes, and the need that crosses his face is so fierce it hurts to witness, but he does not lean into the touch until I pull him.
“This is not yes,” I whisper.
“No.”
“It is not no either.” My thumbs rest beneath his cheekbones. His pulse beats hard against the heel of my hand.
His eyes open. Hope moves through them, fierce enough to frighten me, and he holds every inch of his body still.
I settle square in front of him, knees to his. Not an answer. Not yet.
His other knee finds the floor. He doesn't move closer.
But nothing is holding the distance now.