7. Nova
Chapter seven
Nova
My phone has seventeen notifications before I even get to the parking lot. I check in the elevator, put it away, then check again at the red light like the number might have changed out of mercy.
It hasn’t.
I don’t need to open anything to know what it is.
I open it anyway.
The piece is everywhere.
Mine.
My name on an article I knew was wrong and sent anyway because Griffin Novak said he had a source and I was still dumb enough to believe him. Because I wanted the story. Because wanting it felt easier, at the time, than asking better questions.
I have four minutes before I need to walk into that building.
So I open the piece.
Not the quick wince-and-close I’ve been doing. The whole thing. Top to bottom. Every line.
It’s way worse than I remembered.
The problem is not even that it reads cruel. Cruel would at least require conviction. This reads careful.
Calculated.
It lays implication over implication and lets the reader do the dirty work.
Clinical rehab absence tilted sideways until it starts to look like disciplinary action.
A quote from a source I never actually verified.
All that tidy, plausible phrasing built to say something ugly without ever quite having to stand behind it.
I see Griffin’s fingerprints all over the angle.
I see my own all over the execution.
That part is harder to sit with.
Because I knew better.
Maybe not enough to stop it, apparently, but enough to feel sick while it was happening. I lock the phone, unlock it again, then force myself to put it face down in the cup holder before I can keep reopening a wound I already know is there.
I get out of the car.
Brody’s read it.
I know because he’s the first person I see, and he’s doing that aggressively normal thing he does when he knows something bad and is trying not to make it worse. Too warm. Too fast. Too much eye contact. Brody’s version of grace.
I appreciate it more than I can say.
“You good?” he asks, already knowing the answer.
“Great,” I say.
He gives me a look that says sure you are and, mercifully, leaves it there.
Sebastian and Caleb either haven’t read it or have decided it’s above their pay grade, which is honestly generous of them. I get what I need for Tuesday’s practice notes and keep moving.
Liam Steele looks at me once across the ice.
Just once.
“You’re still here. Good.”
That’s it.
He skates away before I can decide whether that was comfort, approval, or Liam Steele’s version of telling me not to screw this up. It does something to me anyway. Liam Steele does not say things like that to anyone.
I write it down with slightly unsteady hands and keep moving, because that’s what you do when you are trying not to come apart in a room full of people who would absolutely notice.
I am very good at movement.
It has saved me before.
Water break.
He skates to the boards and stops in front of me. I have my recorder in my hand. My posture where it belongs. Every visible part of me arranged into something usable. He looks at me for a moment. Different from the way he reads a shooter.
Different from the practiced flatness he gives the rest of the world. Something quieter than that. More direct. It stays long enough to be felt. My hand tightens on the recorder.
I look back.
Neither of us says anything about Pittsburgh—the hallway, or the piece currently making laps around my nervous system.
“You came back,” he says.
Not accusing. Not surprised. Just there. Like he needed to hear himself say it.
“You noticed,” I say before I can stop myself.
He nods once.
Like that was the answer he wanted.
Then he pushes off and skates away.
I stay where I am for a second longer than necessary, staring at the ice like it might offer commentary.
My stomach does something I don’t have a clean word for.
Not panic.
Not relief.
Something warmer, which is probably the problem. I get through the next ten minutes on muscle memory and spite.
Then the text from Riley comes after practice.
My office. Both of you. Tomorrow morning. Don’t talk to anyone first.
Both of you.
The phrase settles wrong. Like my boss has spent more time thinking about me and Jax Mercer than I’ve allowed myself to.
There’s a hallway and a hand on my arm and four impossible seconds and a man who said you came back like it answered a question I didn’t know he was asking.
That’s not a thing.
I text back:
Confirmed.
Then I stay in the empty press area longer than I need to. The arena always sounds strange after. Not silent. More like the noise never really leaves; it just sinks into the walls and hums there.
I’ve stayed late in more arenas than I could count.
Long enough that it feels less like a habit and more like a reflex.
I used to think it was about work. Waiting for the room to clear so I could think.
Waiting for the building to become honest again after the performance of people. That’s probably part of it.
The rest of it’s simpler—more embarrassing. I’ve spent a lot of my life leaving places quickly. Sometimes I just like proving to myself I can stay.
So I sit there with the empty rink in front of me and Riley’s text still lit somewhere in the back of my mind and the memory of Jax Mercer’s voice saying you came back in a tone that makes me feel like I’ve missed part of the conversation.
Nothing clarifies.
I go home anyway.
Dina is on the steps right on time.
Gray, scarred-eared, ribby, unimpressed.
I put the bowl down three feet away and sit on the step above it.
She waits before approaching, because of course she does. Then comes forward and eats like she’s doing me a favor by continuing to participate in this arrangement.
I tell her about Riley’s text just to unload. She doesn’t care.
I say it anyway.
The piece making the rounds. The water break. The three words at the boards said low and calm like he had every right in the world to ask where I’d gone and whether I’d come back from it.
Dina keeps eating through all of it.
Fair.
When she finishes, she sits there for a second with her thin tail wrapped close. Then she takes one careful step toward me.
Stops.
Thinks better of it.
Disappears into the dark.
I stare at the empty step for a while after she’s gone.
Inside, I go to the kitchen, pour a glass of water, don’t drink it, set it down, pick it up again, then abandon it on the counter and head for the couch instead.
My bag is still by the door. My shoes are still on. I sit there anyway. Eventually I go get my notebook. Not because I’m trying to make more out of this. Just because if I don’t put the line somewhere, it’s going to keep circling until dawn.
I write:
He said you came back like it was the only thing he wanted to know.
I look at it for a long time.
That feels worse than it should.
Or better.
Which is probably the real issue.
I write one more line underneath it. I don’t cross either of them out.
Then I close the notebook and sit there with my hand on the cover like I’ve trapped something alive inside it.
That should feel dramatic.
It mostly feels true.