Chapter Twenty-Eight
Unraveling
Banks
She said love.
She said she couldn’t be with someone who wouldn’t let her love them.
The words have been playing on repeat in my head for hours—a broken record, skipping and stuttering, refusing to let me rest.
She loves me. Or she could have loved me. Or she wanted to love me. I don’t know which tense applies anymore, and the uncertainty is eating me alive.
I’m lying on my couch at two in the morning, staring at the ceiling. The apartment is dark. Silent. The kind of empty that presses in on you, reminding you that you’re alone, that you’ve always been alone, and that you’ll probably die alone because you’re too goddamn broken to let anyone stay.
My phone is in my hand. I’ve typed and deleted approximately forty-seven messages to Winnie, each one more pathetic than the last.
I’m sorry.
Can we talk?
I didn’t mean to hurt you.
I don’t know how to do this, but I want to learn.
I think I love you too, and it scares the shit out of me.
Delete. Delete. Delete.
Nothing sounds right. Nothing captures what I’m feeling. How do you apologize for being fundamentally incapable of being what someone needs? How do you explain that every instinct you have is wrong, that your survival mechanisms are destroying the one thing worth surviving for?
So I send nothing.
She walked away today, and I deserve the silence. I know I deserve it.
But it’s killing me anyway.
Practice the next morning is a disaster.
I haven’t slept. My body feels like it’s been filled with sand—heavy, sluggish, disconnected from my brain.
I go through the motions, but I’m not really there.
I’m still on that sidewalk in Brooklyn, watching Winnie’s car disappear around the corner, Zayden’s hand on my shoulder the only thing keeping me from chasing her down the street.
“Banks!”
Coach’s voice snaps me back to the present. I’ve missed another drill. The puck is already at the other end of the ice, and I’m standing in the neutral zone like an idiot, my stick dangling at my side.
“Where’s your head at?”
“Sorry, Coach.”
“Sorry doesn’t win games. Get in the rotation.”
I get in the rotation. I try to focus.
The guys are giving me looks. Not the usual looks—the ones that say, “Banks is grumpy today” or “don’t talk to him before he’s had coffee.” These are different. These are suspicious. Uncomfortable.
Something has shifted, and I don’t know what it is.
Logan is the tell. Usually, he’s all over me—chattering, joking, asking a million questions about nothing. Today, he’s quiet. Distant. He won’t meet my eyes during drills, and when our lines cross, he skates wide to avoid being near me.
That’s when I know something is really wrong.
After practice, I corner Zayden in the locker room.
“What’s going on?”
Zayden looks up from unlacing his skates, his expression carefully neutral. “What do you mean?”
“The guys. They’re acting weird. Logan won’t even look at me.” I lower my voice. “What happened?”
Zayden sighs and glances around, ensuring no one is in earshot before leaning closer.
“Grayson’s been talking.”
My stomach drops. “Talking about what?”
“You and Winnie.” Zayden’s jaw tightens. “He overheard something—a conversation. I don’t know the details, but it was enough for him to figure out that you two weren’t… that it started as…”
“Fake.” The word tastes like ash. I blow out a breath. “He knows it was fake.”
“He’s telling everyone, making it sound like you both played the whole team.” Zayden shakes his head. “I’ve been trying to do damage control, but the story’s spreading. Some of the guys feel like idiots, like they bought into something that wasn’t real. They feel deceived.”
I think about Logan’s excited face at the team dinner: Banks has a girlfriend!
This is the best day of my life! I think about Archer’s quiet approval: She seems good for you.
I think about all of them welcoming Winnie into the group, treating her like family, believing I had finally found something good.
And now they think it was all a lie.
“It wasn’t—” I stop and start again. “It didn’t stay fake. It became real. Win and I—”
“I know that. You know that. But Grayson’s spinning it like you two were laughing at everyone behind their backs.” Zayden’s expression softens with sympathy. “It looks bad, Banks, especially since you two just had that blowup at Logan’s place. People are connecting dots.”
“What dots?”
“The fight. The fact that she left crying. The fact that you’ve been a ghost for three days.” He shrugs. “They’re saying you got caught, and that’s why she bailed—that the whole thing was an act, and when it fell apart, she couldn’t keep pretending.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“I know. But that’s the story circulating.”
I sink onto the bench, my head in my hands. This is a nightmare—an actual nightmare that I can’t wake up from.
“What do I do?”
“First, you might want to talk to Dana before she hears it from someone else.” Zayden puts a hand on my shoulder. “And maybe figure out what’s actually going on with you and Winnie. Because right now, even the people who want to defend you don’t know what’s true.”
Dana’s office feels smaller than usual.
Maybe it’s because I’m sitting in the chair across from her desk like a kid called to the principal’s office. Or because she’s looking at me with an expression that’s equal parts disappointment and exasperation. Or it’s because I know what’s coming, and I have no defense.
“Close the door.”
I close the door.
“Sit.”
I sit.
She lets the silence stretch—a power move designed to make me squirm. It works.
“You want to tell me what the hell is happening?” she finally asks. “Because I’ve got half the team whispering about fake relationships, the other half looking at our yoga instructor like she’s some kind of con artist, and you walking around like someone died.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Well then, uncomplicate it,” she snaps.
I don’t know how. I don’t know where to start. The whole situation is a tangled mess of good intentions gone wrong, and every thread I pull just makes it worse.
“The relationship with Winnie,” I say slowly, “started as… an arrangement. A way to get the guys to back off her.”
Dana’s expression doesn’t change. She’s listening. Waiting.
“And it worked,” I continue. “The guys stopped harassing her. Everything was fine.” I pause. “Until it wasn’t fake anymore.”
“When did that happen?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere along the way, the lines got blurry. Feelings got involved.” I stare at my hands. “I messed it up. I was dealing with the contract stuff, the trade rumors, and I didn’t tell her. She found out from someone else, and we had a fight. A bad one.”
“At Logan’s place. Yeah, I heard.” Dana leans back in her chair. “So the fake relationship became real, then imploded because you couldn’t communicate like an adult. Is that the summary?”
“That’s… accurate.”
“And now Grayson is spreading rumors that you played the whole team for fools, your maybe-girlfriend isn’t speaking to you, and you’re skating like you’ve never seen ice before.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “This is a mess, Banks. A complete and total mess.”
“I know. I’m sorry, okay? When you approved it…”
“I didn’t approve whatever the hell this became.” She waves a hand. “Feelings. Drama. Public blowups at teammates’ houses.”
I sit rigidly while Dana sighs again. “Here’s what’s going to happen.
You’re going to get your head on straight, whatever that takes.
You’re going to focus on hockey because we’re in a playoff push, and I need you functional.
And you’re going to sort out this mess with Winnie one way or another because I can’t have my yoga instructor and my defenseman circling each other like wounded animals for the rest of the season. ”
“She won’t talk to me.”
“Then figure out how to make her listen.” Dana’s voice softens slightly.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on between you two personally, and frankly, I don’t want to know.
But I’ve watched you both over the past few weeks.
Whatever started as fake didn’t stay that way.
Unless you’re the world’s best actor, you care about her.
And she obviously cares about you too. That’s worth fighting for. ”
“What if I already lost it?”
“Then at least you’ll know you tried.” She stands, signaling the end of the meeting. “Now get out of my office and go be useful. And Banks?”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever happens with the trade talks—and yes, I know about that too—don’t let it be an excuse. You’re still a Knight until you’re not. Act like it.”
The rest of the day passes in a blur. I try to talk to Logan after the afternoon session, but he brushes me off with a mumbled, “Not now, man,” and disappears before I can explain. I try to catch Archer’s eye in the weight room, but he’s focused on his reps, deliberately avoiding my gaze.
The team is a unit, and I’ve been cut out of it.
I’ve felt this before—the isolation, the sense of being on the outside looking in. It happened in Detroit, before the trade. It happened in Tampa, during the trade. That slow erosion of belonging, the way people pull back when they sense trouble, when they decide you’re not worth the investment.
I thought New York was different. I thought I’d finally found a place that felt like home.
Turns out I was wrong. Again. It hurts even more than I expected it to.
My phone buzzes. For a split second, my heart leaps—Winnie, maybe she’s finally responding to my last text—but it’s Rick, my agent. Probably with more bad news about the contract.
I don’t answer.
Instead, I sit in my car in the parking garage, engine off, staring at nothing.
Three days ago, I had a woman who wanted to love me, teammates who respected me, and a career that felt stable.
Now Winnie won’t speak to me, the team thinks I’m a liar, and I might be shipped across the country before the month is out.
I’m losing everything.
Again.
Just like I always knew I would.
This is why I don’t let people in. I was right to be afraid. I just wish being right didn’t feel so much like dying.