Chapter 22 #2
Calls layered over emails, conversations half-finished and picked back up again mid-stride as I moved through the space, each one feeding into the next without pause. There was no moment where I stopped. No point where I let myself step back far enough to feel the weight of any one thing.
I kept it moving.
Kept it exactly where it needed to be.
When Alois stepped into the hallway outside media, I was already there. Notes in hand, talking points clean and minimal, every possible direction mapped out before he even crossed the threshold into my space.
“They’re circling,” I whispered, pitched low enough that it didn’t carry past us. “Tunnel footage surfaced.”
His eyes flicked to mine, immediate, sharp, reading everything I wasn’t saying as easily as what I was.
“Problem?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
There was the smallest shift at the corner of his mouth. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I stepped in just enough to adjust his collar, smoothing fabric that didn’t need smoothing, creating a reason to be there without calling attention to it.
“Short answers,” I murmured. “No attitude.”
“I don’t—”
I lifted my eyes to his.
He stopped. Exhaled once. “Fine.”
Questions came faster, sliding and climbing over the other, less interested in the game than everything orbiting it.
I stayed just off to the side, posture straight, expression neutral, tablet anchored in my hands as I tracked every word.
Every answer.
Every shift in tone.
Every glance that lingered a fraction too long.
He did exactly what I needed him to do.
The rest of the afternoon didn’t unfold so much as layer.
One thing over another over another until there was no clean separation between them—calls bleeding into messages, conversations picked up mid-thought and dropped just as quickly, constant monitoring of something that refused to fully ignite but wouldn’t die out either.
The arena felt different the moment I stepped back into it for the game—not louder, not busier, but charged in a way that settled under my skin before I could name it.
The noise wasn’t a single thing—crowd murmur building into something restless, the sharp slice of skates carving into fresh ice, the hollow knock of pucks ricocheting off boards—each sound stacking over the next until it became a steady, living pulse that moved through the building itself.
Light poured down in hard, deliberate beams, catching on the ice and throwing it back in bright, unforgiving reflection, a clean, untouched surface that refused to acknowledge anything happening above it.
From the PR box, everything resolved into something deceptively simple.
Structured. Manageable. Like every collision, every misstep, every fracture could be contained inside painted lines and blown whistles.
Across the ice, the Denver Mountaineers didn’t rush their warmup.
They moved with intention—measured, unhurried, each pass placed exactly where it needed to be, each shift of position deliberate enough to feel like a choice rather than instinct.
It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t loud. It was controlled in a way that made you pay attention.
New team.
New system.
Built differently.
My fingers curled lightly around the railing as I stepped closer to the glass, my gaze dropping automatically to the ice.
Alois moved the way he always did—contained, deliberate, nothing wasted. Every shift of weight purposeful. Every movement measured.
Untouchable from up here.
Distant.
Removed.
And for the first time all day—
I felt it.
Not the whispers.
Not the work.
Not even the pressure.
The crack.
It widened—slow at first, then all at once—splitting straight through the careful structure I had spent the entire day building around it.
“You’re going to want to see this.” The voice came from behind me.
My grip tightened on the railing, just enough that the metal pressed into my palm before I forced my fingers to release.
Char stood a step behind me, tablet in hand, her expression composed in that way that never quite read as neutral. There was always something underneath it. Calculation. Assessment. A quiet, waiting kind of certainty.
She didn’t hold the tablet out right away.
She let me look at her first.
Then she handed it over.
No commentary.
No warning.
Just the problem. It wasn’t the same image. Not even close.
I was staring down at a video. Grainy. Cropped. Pulled from someone’s phone—angle off, audio distorted just enough to make it feel invasive.
It was the same tunnel, on the same night. It was the fight.
Only now—it moved.
My voice carried first, sharper than I remembered it, cutting through the static. His followed, lower, harder to catch but no less present. Close. Too close. The kind of proximity that didn’t read as professional even if you stripped the sound away entirely.
“I hate you!” my voice crackled through the tinny speakers. “I can’t wait until this assignment is over.”
The video looped. And again.
“How many?” I asked, my voice steady in a way that didn’t match the way my pulse had started to climb.
Char didn’t hesitate. “No one. Yet.”
Below us, the puck dropped. The sound of it cracked clean across the ice, the game snapping into motion like nothing above it mattered.
Like nothing was unraveling in real time.
“You have to bury that,” I whispered.
“I have it contained,” Char replied evenly.
I stopped. Turned. Holding her glare and matching her fire. “You videoed that didn’t you,” I said, my voice controlled.
“Don’t ask questions you do not want answers to,” she state flatly. Like she was telling he to tie my shoes.
I turned back to the tablet, rewinding the clip, isolating the moment, the angle, the timing.
“I’m not letting this turn into something it’s not,” I growled, my voice steady in a way that took effort now.
“It already is,” she replied. “People don’t care what it is, Bea. They care what it looks like.”
Below us, the Mountaineers pressed hard into the zone, bodies colliding along the boards, sticks clashing, momentum shifting in a way that was impossible to stop once it started.
“You’re too involved. Too emotional. And you don’t even see it happening.”
I blinked at her.
“Stop caring,” she added, almost conversationally. “Your life will get significantly easier once you learn how to do that.”
“Is that what you did?” I asked.
All she did was shrug. Fuck her.
“Stopped caring?” I continued, my mind racing are it clicked the last piece to the puzzle into place. “Is that how you got like this? Turn yourself into a self-serving cunt because feelings are too hard?”
“You think this is about me?” she asked.
“No,” I chuckled, holding her gaze. “I think you want it to be.”
Below us, the crowd surged, a roar building as the Frosthawks pushed back, the sound rising and crashing against the glass in waves.
“You’re going to get burned,” Char hissed finally.
“Maybe.” I blew out a breath, then handed the tablet back to her. “And maybe I’ll still be standing here when it’s over.”
She didn’t respond. She just eyed me for a second longer, something unreadable passing through her expression before she turned and stepped back into the controlled chaos of the PR box like nothing had shifted at all.
Below us, Alois drove into the boards, clean, controlled, the impact echoing up through the structure.