Chapter 9
BEA
“What am I going to do?” I whined, pacing the length of my apartment as Micah’s face filled my screen, her smile already starting to slip.
Even through a grainy FaceTime connection, I could see it—the exact moment she realized this wasn’t normal stress. Not me overthinking something small and fixable.
“Okay,” she said slowly, shifting where she sat, her camera tilting for a second before settling again.
The familiar background of her apartment came back into focus—textbooks stacked behind her, a half-empty coffee mug balanced dangerously close to the edge of her desk.
“I think I need some more to go on here.”
I dragged a hand through my hair and turned too fast at the end of the room, nearly clipping the arm of the couch.
Bento startled, blinking up at me like I’d personally offended him, before pushing to his feet with a long, dramatic stretch.
He circled once, deliberately ignoring me, then flopped down, tail giving a single, irritated flick.
“I got the job,” I blurted finally.
Micah blinked. “You—” Her brows shot up. “Wait. What?”
“I got it,” I repeated, the words coming out faster now, tripping over each other as if saying them slower would make them less real. “Frosthawks. PR. It’s official. Ezra worked some voodoo apparently. There was a meeting and—”
She held up a hand, her mouth already curving back into something like excitement. “That’s—Bea, that’s huge. Why do you sound like you’re about to throw up?”
“Because that’s not—” I let out a sharp breath, turning again, my socks sliding slightly against the hardwood. “That’s not all that happened.”
“What else happened?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Because how did you say this out loud without it sounding insane?
“They—” I swallowed, pressing my lips together before forcing the words out. “They assigned me a player.”
Her expression didn’t change right away. “Is that a problem? That’s…the job, isn’t it?”
“No,” I groaned immediately. “This is not—this is not normal. This is not onboarding. This is not ‘here’s the team, here’s the structure, welcome to the organization.’ This is—” I broke off, shaking my head, my chest tightening as the reality of it surged back up again. “This is damage control.”
Micah leaned forward, elbows braced on her desk now, her entire posture shifting from casual to locked in. “What does that actually mean?
I let out a breath that felt too thin to be useful. “Alois Müller.”
The name didn’t just land between us. It detonated.
Micah’s eyes went wide, her spine snapping straight like someone had just pulled a wire through her. “Holy hell,” she breathed, the words slipping out before she could catch them. “Are you serious right now?”
I pressed my lips together. “Yes.”
Her hand dragged down her face, slow and disbelieving. “No, Bea. Absolutely not. That man is—” She cut herself off, shaking her head like she needed to physically reset. “I watched that clip three times this morning. They keep replaying it between segments.”
“I’m aware,” I muttered.
Micah stared at me for a long second, recalibrating. Not as my best friend. As a hockey fan. As someone who knew exactly what kind of player we were talking about. Her gaze snapped back to mine, sharp. “Okay. Take me through this like I’m stupid,” she said slowly.
“I walked into a meeting,” I started, my voice tightening as the memory sharpened.
“Ezra, GM, head coach, legal, PR—everyone was there. And before I even had time to—” I stopped myself, inhaling sharply.
“I wasn’t even told I had the job. One second, I was in a chaotic mess, completely confused as to what was even happening.
And the next, I was being handed an assignment—handle Alois. ”
“Handle how?”
“Internally,” I responded, the word automatic, pulled straight from the way it had been presented to me. “PR, management—everyone is watching him right now. And if anything else happens, it escalates.”
“To the league,” Micah finished quietly.
I nodded once.
“So they hired you to…manage him?”
“I guess so.”
Micah exhaled. “That’s—insane.”
“I know,” I snapped, then immediately winced, dragging a hand down my face. “I know. I know, Micah, I know.”
“Hey.” Her voice softened, the edge dropping out of it completely now. “Talk to me. How bad is it?”
I let out a breath that didn’t go anywhere. “They want me with him all the time. As in…everything. Practices. Travel. Public stuff. Just—there. All the time.”
Her expression shifted, something sharper slipping in. “That’s not a job, Bea. That’s babysitting.”
“Tell me about it.”
“And they just—what? Decided that today? Day one, congratulations, here’s your problem child?”
I let out a short, humorless laugh. “Pretty much.”
Micah leaned closer to the screen, squinting at me like she was trying to read past what I was saying. “Why you?”
“Hell, if I know,” I snapped, then immediately dragged a hand down my face. “I don’t know. Char, new boss said it makes sense. Fresh face, easier to control the narrative—”
“Screw the narrative. That man just put someone in the hospital last night. And now they want you glued to him?” she pressed. “Bea, that’s not normal.”
“I don’t have a choice,” I said, quieter this time.
Micah went still for half a second, recalibrating. “All right,” she said slowly. “So what—he just shows up and you follow him around? That’s the plan?”
I hesitated.
Her eyes narrowed immediately. “Oh no. There’s more, isn’t there?”
I exhaled, my chest tight. “I am not officially dating Alois Reinhardt Müller.”
“You,” she pointed at the screen, like she could physically reach through it, “are dating a six-foot-something professional hockey player who just got arrested.”
“Yes.”
“And it’s your job.”
“Yes.”
Micah blinked at me. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was.”
She leaned back slowly, like she needed physical distance from the idea. “No. No, that’s—” She let out a disbelieving laugh. “That’s not real. That’s not a real thing that happens.”
“It is apparently a real thing that is happening to me.”
“Bea,” she whispered, leaning forward again. “You don’t know him. He’s—” She stopped, pressing her lips together, recalibrating again. “He’s not safe.”
That one hit. I couldn’t respond. My throat went dry. Nerves completely shot.
“I don’t mean like—” she added quickly, softer now. “I just mean…he’s unpredictable. You saw it.”
“I didn’t see it,” I said quietly. “I’m in it.”
“Bea—” she dragged a hand through her hair, shaking her head. “When does this start?”
My stomach dropped. “…Now.”
Her expression went still. “What do you mean, now?”
I glanced toward the door without thinking, the quiet of the apartment suddenly feeling thinner, more temporary.
“He’s coming here,” I replied.
Micah straightened. “Like your teeny tiny apartment.”
“That very one.”
“Like—” She looked past the screen instinctively, as if she could somehow see my apartment from Chicago. “To stay?”
I nodded.
Something in her face shifted again—not panic, not exactly, but something more grounded. More real.
She exhaled. “That’s—wow.”
“I was forced into this so fast,” I admitted, my voice dropping, the words finally landing in a way they hadn’t before. “I have no idea what to even do. How is any of this going to work?”
For a second, neither of us spoke.
Bento shifted on the couch behind me, stretching before hopping down, his paws silent against the floor as he moved closer, circling my legs once before settling just out of the path of my pacing.
Micah’s expression softened, but not in a way that tried to fix it. “At least you have the job,” she chortled quietly.
I huffed out a breath, something sharp and tired catching in my chest. “That’s not comforting.”
“It’s not supposed to be comforting,” she shot back gently. “It’s the thinnest sliver of a silver lining.”
I stopped pacing.
Just for a second.
Long enough to feel it.
I had the job. And before I could wrap my head around the entire situation I was now drowning in, a sharp knock rattled the door.
I froze.
On the screen, Micah’s eyes widened. “Is that him?”
Bento reacted before I did. His whole body went taut beside my ankle, ears pricking forward as he turned toward the sound. A second later, he slipped away from me entirely, moving low and silent toward the far end of the couch like retreat was the more intelligent option.
My pulse stumbled.
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
Micah leaned so close to her camera that half her face filled the screen. “You have to let him in.”
I stared at the door for one useless second longer, my hand tightening around my phone. Then I forced my feet to move.
I reached the door, inhaled once, and pulled it open.
Alois filled the frame.
Not just because he was tall—though he was, broad enough that the narrow hall outside seemed to shrink around him—but because his presence hit the space before he did.
Dark duffle bag hanging from one hand. A stack of books tucked under the other arm, the spines worn and creased, titles in French and German.
His coat was open, cold air still clinging to him, carrying in the faint scent of night and city and expensive soap under it.
His face looked exactly like it had in every too-sharp clip cycling through sports media all day—hard lines, pale eyes, jaw set like a locked door.
Except in that moment, he looked more tired than dangerous.
He didn’t step inside right away. His gaze moved once—past me, into the apartment, taking in the room in a quick, silent sweep. Couch. Kitchen. Window. Hallway that wasn’t really a hallway. Small space. No exits except the one he was filling.
On my screen, Micah went quiet for half a beat too long. Then, softly, “Oh. That’s… not what I expected.”
Heat climbed straight up my neck. I realized with a jolt that I was still holding my phone, standing in the doorway like my brain had detached from my body.
“Hi,” I stammered too quickly. “Sorry. Yes. Come in.”
Smooth, Beatriz.