16. Under Oath #3
Coach got a hand to Noah’s back and another to Owen’s shoulder, steering the players toward the side exit. Reed followed close, face thunderous. Jace muttered something that sounded deeply unprintable as a boom mic nearly clipped his ear.
Talia stayed where she was until the first wave passed. She would not trail after them like attachment. She would not let this become theater with her as set dressing.
Still, through the break in bodies, she caught one last look at Noah.
He turned his head once in the crush.
Found her.
No smile. No plea. No secret softness anybody else could decode.
Just a look carrying the full bruised force of what had happened in that room and what it would cost outside it.
She gave him the smallest possible nod.
Not absolution.
Recognition.
Then he was swallowed by cameras and winter light.
By dusk, the ruling landed.
Not final disposition. Interim eligibility suspension pending further review, conference notification, staff administrative leave, emergency audit expansion. University language polished to institutional death. Every sentence designed to look procedural while the campus bled under it.
The team facility felt colder than the weather.
Noah came through the players’ entrance to the rink with snow in the seams of his coat and the decision memo folded in his pocket like a blade.
The lobby was mostly empty this time of evening, but TVs over the concession stand were already running his face under breaking-news banners.
His own voice—flat, disciplined, impossible to misread now—rolled silently beneath captions.
MERCER ADMITS DELETION.
ELIGIBILITY SUSPENDED.
PROGRAM UNDER EXPANDED REVIEW.
He kept walking.
The hallway to the locker room smelled like melting ice, detergent, and old tape.
Familiar enough to hurt. A trainer’s cart sat abandoned against the wall, towels half-folded.
Somewhere deeper in the rink, a puck hit boards in a distant echo from a youth practice finishing late.
The sound went through him clean as memory.
He pushed into the room.
Silence met him first.
Then the room stood.
Nobody had to tell them to.
Younger guys. Veterans. The ones still eligible, the ones waiting on rulings, the ones whose season had been ripped open by adults with titles and players with bad judgment.
Every stall lit. Every nameplate in place.
Sticks stacked. Gear airing out in the dry heat.
The smell of sweat ground into padding and hockey tape and the cold mineral bite of ice still clinging to skates.
Team as family, stripped of sentiment and left with the hard part.
Noah stopped inside the doorway.
For one dangerous second, emotion surged so hard it almost knocked the breath out of him.
Owen crossed the room first.
No speech. No grand display.
He just put a hand on the back of Noah’s neck, squeezed once, and said, “You idiot.”
Noah let out a cracked laugh. “Yeah.”
Reed came next, eyes red-rimmed with anger that had nowhere simple to go. “Still with us?”
“If you’ll have me.”
Reed looked at him like the question offended him on principle. “Shut up.”
Jace, predictably, made it uglier to keep it survivable. “You really know how to ruin a media cycle, man.”
That got a few rough huffs around the room.
Then Coach stepped in behind him and the laughter died down into attention.
Coach looked at all of them, then at Noah. “The board made its interim call. We adjust. We skate short if we have to. We play who’s available. We stop waiting for rescue.” His gaze swept the room. “And we do not confuse being angry with being undisciplined.”
The words landed where they needed to.
Noah knew then, with the cold certainty of pain after impact, that he would not be in the lineup if they were called tomorrow. Might not be again in a North Lake jersey. Might have handed the clean professional future he’d worked toward over to a process that would never love him back.
He also knew, just as clearly, that if given the same hour again, he would still walk into that hearing and tell the truth.
That was new.
That was hers, partly—no matter how carefully they had both refused to name what sat between them. Not because she had changed his code. Because she had forced him to stop worshipping the broken use of it.
His phone buzzed.
The room blurred at the edges for one beat as adrenaline finally started to ebb. He pulled it out.
One message.
From Talia.
Board memo is already being misquoted online. I’m going to the forum to stop a procedural riot from becoming policy by chant. A beat later, the second message came. If students and press are both there, this could get ugly fast.
Noah stared at the screen.
Around him, the locker room hummed back into motion—equipment thudding into stalls, low voices, the raw ordinary work of keeping a team from cracking in two.
Coach was already at the whiteboard. Marker squeaked.
Someone snapped fresh tape off a roll with their teeth.
The ice machine down the hall roared to life.
He looked up at the room he had always tried to protect.
Then back down at her words.
The next message came before he could answer.
And this one made his blood go cold.
They’re saying someone leaked witness names.