Chapter 14
Carrie
The knock came at eleven forty-seven. I know because I was staring at the clock, counting the minutes until this day was legally over.
I'd already changed. Washed off an hour's worth of makeup. Pulled my hair down. Wrapped myself in the faded college shirt that was the furthest thing from a black dress I owned, because I wanted to be as far from the woman I'd been tonight as cotton and distance could get me.
Bob barked at the door, tail going, his happy bark, the one that meant he'd recognized a friend.
I looked through the peephole.
Matt. Still in the tuxedo, but it didn't look the way it had in the ballroom.
It looked like wreckage. Bow tie hanging undone.
Jacket rumpled. Hair standing up in spikes from where he'd been running his hands through it, and his eyes carrying a kind of anger I hadn't seen before, the kind with hurt loaded behind it.
His hands hung at his sides, and even through the peephole I could see they were shaking, and something inside me went cold because I'd watched those hands hold me with absolute steadiness two weeks ago.
I'd felt them trace my skin like I was something worth being careful with.
I opened the door on the chain.
"Why would you do that to me?"
Not hello. Not can we talk. Just the accusation, raw, delivered in a voice that sounded like it had been holding the words for an hour and couldn't hold them anymore.
"Matt—"
"Why?"
"I was doing my job." It came out defensive. Sharper than I wanted.
"Your job." He repeated it slowly. Tasting it. "That's what this was."
"My boss asked me to arrange a meeting. I arranged a meeting."
"You whispered in my ear, Carrie. You walked across that room in a dress designed to stop my heart. You made me think—" He stopped. Jaw locked. "You knew exactly what I would think. What I would hope for. And you used it."
I had. Of course I had.
And standing on the other side of the chain lock, watching the hurt work through his face, I couldn't even retreat into the argument that it was just business.
Because the dress wasn't business. The whisper wasn't business.
The way I'd pressed into him in that parking lot, his mouth on my neck, his hands pulling me flush, none of that was in the job description and we both knew it.
The worst part was that it had been real.
Not all performance. Not all strategy. When I'd leaned into him in that parking lot, my body hadn't been acting.
It had been remembering. And I'd let Kyle's plan and my own want bleed together until I couldn't tell where the assignment ended and the wanting started, and that was the thing I couldn't say to him.
That I'd meant it AND used it, simultaneously, and both were true.
"I'm sorry," I said. My voice cracked on the second word and I hated it.
"For what part?"
"For how it happened. The way it looked. I didn't—"
"You used what we had to get me alone. Whatever it was. Whatever you want to call it. You turned it into a tool."
"It was a transfer proposal, Matt. You can say no. You can tell Kyle you're not interested. It's not—"
"You have no idea what you did." His voice dropped. Quieter. More controlled. Worse. "You genuinely have no idea."
He looked at me, and the anger shifted into something I recognized from the other side of every bad campaign I'd ever watched crater. It was the look of a person who'd trusted the narrative and just learned it was manufactured.
Disgust. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just the quiet, settled kind that doesn't come back from.
And the contrast hit me like a physical blow, because I'd seen this face look at me with want, with tenderness, with that quiet almost-shy expression he'd worn in the candlelight before he kissed me.
I'd had the full range. And watching it narrow down to this one expression felt like watching a door close on a room I'd never be allowed back into.
"Matt—" I reached through the gap.
He stepped back from my hand. One step. Small. Final. And the rejection of my touch burned more than anything he'd said. Words you can argue with. A man pulling his body away from yours is a verdict.
"Good luck with your career, Carrie." Flat. Final. "Hope it's everything you wanted."
He walked away. No slam. No explosion. Just his footsteps down the hall and the sound of my building's front door closing behind him, and the quiet that followed was worse than any noise he could have made.
Because a slam you can respond to. A slam is an invitation to fight.
This was just absence, filling the hallway and then my apartment and then the hollow space behind my ribs that had been getting larger all evening.
I'd chased him across two parking lots. I'd called him when he wouldn't pick up. I'd held his hand to keep him from leaving. Every time he'd walked away, I'd gone after him.
Not this time. This time I was the reason he was walking, and there was no version of chasing him that wasn't just more of the thing I'd already done.
Bob ran to the door and pressed his nose against the gap, whining. Tail still going. Still waiting for the man to come back and play with him.
"He's not coming back, buddy."
Bob's tail thumped once. Hopeful. Trusting.
I locked the door. Leaned against it. Pressed my forehead to the wood and listened to my own breathing and tried to tell myself I'd done the right thing.
My phone rang.
Kyle.
"Carrie! Congratulations!" Too loud. Too cheerful. The voice of a man who'd just watched his plan execute perfectly. "The CEO is thrilled. You were brilliant tonight. The dress, the approach, the timing. Absolutely brilliant performance."
Performance.
The word landed on something that was already bruised and kept pressing.
That's what I'd done tonight. Performed.
Picked the dress, rehearsed the walk, timed the whisper, hit every mark Kyle had drawn for me.
And the sickening thing was that Kyle was praising the exact same behavior Matt had just walked away from in disgust. Same actions.
Same woman. One man calling it brilliant. The other calling it betrayal.
"Kyle, I didn't do anything that significant—"
"Go online. Right now. Check the hockey blogs, check Twitter, check everything. Then call me back."
He hung up.
I opened the browser with hands that weren't steady.
Searched "Matt Baker White Hearts."
The results loaded, and my stomach went through the floor.
Photos. Dozens. Me crossing the ballroom toward Matt's table, the dress catching light, my stride reading as confident and targeted.
Me leaning into his ear, lips close enough to touch, his face in that moment captured perfectly.
Surprised. Hopeful. Wanting. And I knew, with a specificity that made my chest physically hurt, that I had put that expression there.
I had manufactured hope on a man's face.
Built it with perfume and proximity and a whisper designed to make him believe I wanted him, and the worst part was that I did want him, and it hadn't mattered.
I'd used the wanting like a tool and the camera had caught the exact second it landed.
Then the parking lot. Matt with his belt half-undone. Kyle appearing, hand extended. And me walking away with that grin I'd thought was clever and was now going to live on the internet permanently.
The headlines ran underneath like a ticker.
"WHITE HEARTS MAKE AGGRESSIVE MOVE FOR brUINS' STAR"
"MATT BAKER CAUGHT IN SECRET MEETING WITH RIVAL"
"MYSTERY WOMAN IN BLACK LURES BAKER TO TRANSFER TALKS"
"IS BOSTON'S FUTURE CAPTAIN JUMPING SHIP?"
I am a media strategist.
I have a degree in this. I studied campaigns, optics, narrative placement.
I know how planted stories work. I know how you seed doubt through imagery.
I know that the photograph of a man meeting with a rival team does more damage than any actual contract negotiation ever could, because the photo lives forever and the denial never catches up.
I know all of this. It is literally my field.
And I hadn't seen it. I'd been too busy picking a dress and rehearsing my walk and telling myself I was just arranging a meeting.
Just doing my job. Just following orders from a boss who had played me exactly the way I'd played Matt, and the only difference was that Kyle had known the full playbook and I'd only been given my page.
The White Hearts didn't need Matt to say yes. They didn't even need to make a real offer. They just needed the photo. The headline. The seed of doubt planted inside a locker room that ran on trust, that lived or died on the belief that everyone was in it together.
And I'd been the delivery mechanism. The blonde in black smiling on camera, performing a betrayal I hadn't known I was committing.
My phone buzzed.
Kyle again. Brilliant work tonight. The CEO wants to meet Monday to discuss a promotion.
A promotion. For this.
Then another text. Unknown number.
You got what you wanted. Hope it was worth it. - M
I stared at it. Typed a response. Deleted it. Typed another. Deleted that too.
Because what could I say? That I was sorry? That I hadn't known? That I'd been used too?
None of it would undo the photos. None of it would repair what those headlines were already doing to his team, his coach, the locker room that ran on a trust I'd just helped shatter.
Bob was still by the door. Head on his paws. Ears up. Waiting.
I sat on the floor beside him and pulled my knees to my chest and felt the full weight of it settle.
Not just the guilt. Not just the shame. The specific, professional horror of a media strategist who'd been out-strategized by her own boss, who'd missed every signal because she'd been standing too close to the story to read it.
But underneath that, something older. Something that had been waiting for exactly this moment to surface.
I'd spent years building walls against this.
Against being the woman who uses people.
Against being the girl who takes what she can get and moves on, who treats people like stepping stones, who smiles while she's calculating the angle.
I'd watched my mother do it. Watched it hollow her out. Promised myself I'd never be that.
And tonight, in a black dress with a whisper and a walk and a wicked grin, I'd been exactly that.
I'd built campaigns like this. I'd studied them in textbooks. And when it was my turn to be the asset instead of the architect, I hadn't recognized a single frame until the photos were already online.
My phone glowed on the floor beside me. Matt's text. Kyle's congratulations. The promotion I'd earned by being exactly as useful as they'd needed me to be.
My eyes burned. I blinked hard. Refused to let the tears fall. Crying felt like something I'd forfeited the right to do.
Bob pressed his nose into my hand.
At least one of us still thought I was worth trusting.