CHAPTER 12 #2
“Public place,” he said slowly. “Luke nearby. Noah recording. I choose the time.”
“I want a second exit and no direct contact if the man has a weapon history.”
“Agreed.”
The negotiation left us both unsettled.
Ben looked down at his notes. “You know you can care without winning every argument.”
“I am learning.”
“Olivia?”
“Partly.”
“Mostly.”
I did not answer.
He smiled faintly. “You have loved her for years.”
The word landed differently from my own private recognition.
“I do not know what I call it,” I said.
“You call it surveillance, aggression, and security planning.”
“I am aware those are poor substitutes.”
“Then find a better one.”
Before I could respond, Olivia texted the location of the old rink and a photograph of Eleanor’s brass key.
Meet at eight. Luke and Noah included. I decide when we leave.
The conditions were deliberate.
I replied: Agreed.
No demand to arrive early. No attempt to send security ahead without permission. I hated every part of the restraint and wanted to deserve the next invitation.
At seven fifty-nine, I waited outside the old rink entrance with Luke and Noah. Olivia arrived at eight exactly.
She looked at me, then at the envelope I had brought containing the jealous photograph.
“What is that?”
“Another attempt to make me interfere with your choices.”
She read the message and studied my face. “Did it work?”
“Yes.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“I wanted to find Thomas. I did not.”
“Why tell me?”
“Because hiding the impulse makes the restraint meaningless.”
Olivia returned the photograph. “For the record, Thomas and I attended that dinner as colleagues.”
Relief hit.
She saw it and almost smiled. “Also for the record, it would not matter if we had dated.”
Relief disappeared.
“That was unnecessarily cruel.”
“It was educational.”
Luke opened the rink door before our argument became another kind of intimacy.
We went to the old rink with Luke and Noah. Olivia chose the team because she did not want to be alone with me after the elevator argument, and because both men could secure the building without reporting to Robert.
Eleanor’s brass key opened a narrow box beneath the former coach’s office.
It contained no medical file.
Inside were a handwritten ledger, a microcassette, and a photograph of four people: Eleanor, Robert, Richard, and Gerard Mills.
On the back, Eleanor had written:
They all know. Alex does not.
Olivia read it twice.
“She protected you,” she said.
“Or used me as a clean courier.”
The ledger listed payments from the foundation to doctors, youth players, and shell companies. Several entries matched betting dates. Richard had been paying for information and outcomes long before Evan died.
One entry carried Robert’s initials.
Another carried Eleanor’s.
Noah photographed every page. Luke checked the hallway.
The microcassette required an old recorder. Coach Davis found one in equipment storage.
Eleanor’s voice emerged through static.
“Richard believes Evan’s clearance will protect the program.
Robert believes exposing it will destroy the team.
They are both wrong. The original cardiology report proves the physician was pressured.
I placed it inside the scholarship packet given to Alex Morgan because no one searches the poor boy carrying everyone else’s equipment. ”
The recording clicked.
Then continued.
“If Alex still has it, he does not know. If he returned the packet to administration, Martin Vale may have intercepted it.”
Olivia closed her eyes.
Vale.
The security chief had worked in administrative logistics before joining Robert’s personal team.
“He took it,” she said.
“Or Parker did,” Noah replied.
The tape continued one last time.
“Robert, if you hear this after I am gone, do not protect the Titans from the truth. Protect Olivia from Richard.”
Silence filled the old office.
Olivia left before anyone could speak.
I followed her to the empty rink floor. She stopped at center, beneath the dark scoreboard.
“My mother knew she was in danger,” she said.
“Yes.”
“My father still covered it up.”
“Yes.”
She turned on me. “Stop giving me one-word answers.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“That this is not real. That my father did not choose a hockey team over her life.”
“I cannot.”
“I know.”
Her voice broke.
I crossed the distance and stopped inches away.
“Tell me what you need.”
“I need to stop feeling like every man in my life has decided what truth I can survive.”
“I cannot change what I did.”
“No.”
“I can give you every choice from here.”
She looked up at me. “And if I choose something you hate?”
“I will hate it.”
“If I choose Thomas?”
My jaw tightened.
Her eyes flashed. “There. That.”
“I would hate him.”
“You already do.”
“I would not stop you.”
“Would you threaten him?”
“No.”
The answer cost enough that she believed it.
“And if I choose you?” she whispered.
Everything in me went still.
I did not touch her.
“You have not,” I said.
Her fingers closed around the front of my shirt.
“I am choosing this.”
She kissed me.
The kiss was different from Denver. No camera we knew about. No storm, no old argument forcing the first collision. Olivia chose the pressure, the angle, the hand she slid into my hair.
I let her lead until the restraint became unbearable.
“May I?” I asked against her mouth.
“Yes.”
I backed her against the boards, one hand at her waist, the other beside her head. Her mouth opened beneath mine. She made a sound that nearly stripped the last of my reason.
My hand moved beneath the hem of her sweater and stopped against warm skin.
“Still yes?”
“Yes.”
The word trembled.
I kissed her throat, feeling her pulse race beneath my mouth. She pulled me closer, then caught my wrist when my hand moved higher.
I froze.
“Not here,” she whispered.
I stepped back immediately.
The loss of her body hurt.
She watched me obey.
Something tender and terrified entered her expression.
“This does not fix anything,” she said.
“No.”
“I am still angry.”
“I know.”
She almost hit me.
I smiled for the first time that night.
Her phone rang.
Ben’s name.
Olivia answered on speaker.
“I found Gerard,” he said. “Or he found me.”
My smile vanished.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“At Noah’s place. He left a package downstairs.”
“What package?”
“A hospital bracelet. Evan Hale’s.”
Olivia gripped the phone.
Ben continued. “There is a note.”
“Read it,” she said.
He hesitated.
“Ben.”
“Alex was there the night Evan died. Ask him why he left before the ambulance came.”
Olivia looked at me.
I had no memory of that night.
But somewhere beneath the missing years, fear opened like a door.