29. Nova
Chapter twenty-nine
Nova
Carson Webb corners me before warmups.
Not in the press area. Not in a hallway where anyone could see. In the hall outside the equipment room — the one that dead-ends at the supply closet, the one where the cameras don’t reach. He’s been here long enough to know where the cameras don’t reach.
I know what this is before he says a word.
My brain does the thing it does when something is wrong — goes very quiet and very fast at the same time. Military kid emergency response. Read the room. Read the exit. Keep your face neutral.
“Nova Shaw.” He says my name like he’s been practicing it. “V. North. Same person.”
Keep your face neutral.
“I have photos,” he says. “You and Mercer. Candid. Private. Moments I don’t think you knew anyone was watching.
” He pulls out his phone. Shows me three.
I look at them just long enough to confirm what they are — long enough to feel my stomach drop and my face stay exactly where I put it.
“My offer is simple. Confirm the relationship on record — full access, personal angle, your words — or I run it as a scandal. Journalist sleeping with subject for access. Career-ending framing. Your call.”
I’ve been on the other side of this choice before.
Different city. Different man.
Griffin fed me a story and I ran it and now Griffin’s instrument is standing in a dead-end hallway showing me photos of the man I — of Jax — and asking me to choose.
Same move. Different hands.
“I need twenty-four hours,” I say.
He looks at me. “Twelve.”
“Twenty-four.”
He puts his phone away. “Clock’s running.”
He walks away.
I stand in the dead-end hallway.
Great.
Great job, Nova.
Out loud.
To nobody.
I open his contact.
Jax Mercer.
My thumb hovers over the call button long enough for the screen to dim.
One tap and he answers. I know that. Probably before the second ring. Already asking if I’m okay. Already making himself steady enough for me to lean on.
Across the ice, he rolls his shoulder once and settles deeper into the ritual. Number 31. Thirteen wraps. Blocker last. The wall, already building himself for the game.
I lock the phone.
I don’t tell Jax.
I know I’m not going to tell him the moment I walk back into the press area and see him across the ice in warmups, the ritual running the way it runs before every game. I know it the way I know all the things I know about myself that I’m not proud of.
I handle things alone.
I’ve been handling things alone since I was eight years old moving to a new base and figuring out the room before anyone could figure me out. Pack light. Say goodbye clean. Don’t make it harder than it has to be. I got so good at it that I stopped noticing I was doing it.
I said I didn’t want to pack.
That was last week.
I pull out my phone. Call my editor. Get the legal team’s number. Make three calls in the hall outside the press area while warmups happen on the ice without me.
Professional. Methodical. Alone.
The legal call is not reassuring.
Webb has the photos. They’re not illegal. The V. North framing is defamatory but proving it before he runs it is a different problem — the kind that takes weeks I don’t have. My options are confirm on my terms, deny and let him frame it however he wants, or say nothing and watch it land.
I sit in a bathroom stall with my phone and my legal team on speaker and think about Jax in warmups, not knowing any of this is happening.
About the ritual.
The thirteen wraps.
The ghost quiet.
V. North wrote about that ghost like it was a character flaw.
I named it for him in a tunnel.
Now Carson Webb is about to tell the world both of those things happened and connect them, and I am sitting in a bathroom stall deciding which version of this I can live with.
I know which version I’m choosing.
I’m choosing it right now.
I am doing the thing I always do.
Moving first.
Leaving clean.
Turning pain into logistics before it can turn into a plea.
Somewhere in this building, Jax is finishing warmups and putting on his gear.
And he has no idea.
I flush the toilet I didn’t use.
Walk back out.
Pick up my camera.
Go to work.
The Cyclones win Game 2.
3-1. Aiden scores twice. Brody scores once on a shot that has no business going in and the building loses its absolute mind. I photograph every second of it — the goals, the celebrations, Liam’s face when the final buzzer goes, Aurora in the family section with both hands over her mouth.
I am doing my job.
I am completely somewhere else.
There’s a moment in the third period — Aiden sets up Brody perfectly, the assist so clean it’s almost choreographed, and the puck goes in and the whole building reacts at once and I have my camera up and I’m getting the shot and for one second — one actual second — I almost let it land.
The joy of it. The city. The team. This thing they built.
Then the bathroom stall comes back. Then Webb’s phone with three photos on it.
I take the shot. File it. Move on.
The locker room celebration is loud and champagne-soaked and exactly what it should be. I move through it — camera up, recorder on, professional — and I am managing two separate bombs simultaneously and I have done this before and I am very good at it.
Jax comes out of the Aiden cluster and his eyes go to where I usually am. Press area, left side, camera at eye level.
I’m not there.
I moved without deciding to — ended up right side, near the equipment carts, worse angle, more distance. Old habit. When something is wrong I drift to the edges. Make myself harder to find before anyone knows they’re looking.
He looks at Aurora. Aurora looks around the room. She doesn’t find me either.
He goes still.
I know that stillness. I’ve been watching him for months — the crease stillness, the pre-shot stillness, the stillness when something is wrong and he’s making a calculation. This is the last one. Something is wrong and he knows it and he doesn’t know what yet.
I lower my camera.
I should go to him. I don’t.
He finds me in the tunnel.
I’m on the equipment crate. I’ve been here long enough for the celebration to go muffled, long enough for my eyes to stop cooperating with the face I’ve been holding all day. Not crying. Just — done holding.
He sits down next to me.
The way he always does.
He doesn’t say anything. Just sits there and waits and I think — he’s going to wait as long as it takes — and that’s what finally does it.
Not the photos. Not Webb. Not the story about to drop.
Just him sitting next to me in a tunnel being patient and present and certain and I am so tired of being the person who handles things alone.
“Carson Webb cornered me this morning,” I say. “Before warmups. He has photos of us — candid, private. His offer was confirm on record or he runs it as a scandal. Journalist sleeping with subject for access.”
He doesn’t move.
“I spent the day handling it. Legal call. Editor call. Going through my options alone.” I stop. “I didn’t tell you because that’s what I do. I handle things alone.
The tunnel is quiet.
“And there’s something else.”
He looks at me.
This is the part.
This is the part I’ve been carrying since day one — the thing that’s been sitting in my chest under everything else, the reason I came here as Nova Shaw and not V.
North, the reason I named the ghost in a tunnel without a recorder, the reason I’ve been trying to make it right every single day since I walked into this building.
“The piece from two seasons ago,” I say. “About you. About the ghost. I wrote it.” My voice is steady. I don’t know how. “Under a pen name. V. North. I came here knowing I wrote it and I didn’t tell you and I’ve been carrying that since day one.”
He goes still.
Not the crease stillness. Something else.
“Griffin fed me the angle,” I say. “I didn’t know what he was doing until it was too late. I ran it anyway. I was wrong. I knew I was wrong the moment I sent it. And then I came here and I — I was trying to make it right. Not to fix it. Just to be better than that byline.”
He’s quiet for a long time.
“You should have told me.”
“I was protecting you.”
“From what.” Not a question. “My own story?”
“From the circus. From the—”
“Nova.”
Just my name.
I close my mouth.
He looks at the wall across the tunnel. Not at me. At the wall. I watch his hands — still on his knees, the scarred ones, the certain ones — and I wait for him to move. Stand up. Walk out. Do the thing people do when the room changes and there’s no fixing it.
He doesn’t move.
“I was scared,” I say. “Of being the reason something bad happens to you again. I thought if I could manage it quietly it wouldn’t touch you. I thought I could fix it before you ever had to know.”
“You handled it alone,” he says.
I flinch.
He keeps looking at the wall. “Same as the piece two years ago.”
He’s right.
“I’m not mad about the photos,” he says after a second. “I’m not mad about the piece.”
The celebration is three floors up. Down here it’s quiet enough that every word lands whole.
“I’m mad that when it got hard your instinct was to shut me out.”
I wait for him to stand.
He doesn’t.
Just sits there with his hands on his knees and his jaw set and all that hurt held so tight I can feel it from a foot away.
I have a script for the part where he leaves.
I don’t have one for this.
“Say something,” I say.
“I am.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“No.” His eyes stay on the wall. “It’s not.”
A long second.
Then another.
I keep waiting for movement that never comes.
“I don’t know what you want me to do with that,” I say quietly.
He looks down at his hands. Flexes them once. Stops.
“Sit here,” he says.
That hits harder than if he yelled.
I look at him.
He still hasn’t stood up.
Still hasn’t looked away.
Still here.
I don’t know what to do with that.
So I do the only thing I’ve got.
I stay where I am.
The story drops an hour later.
I know because my phone lights up and doesn’t stop.
Both our names. Every sports outlet, and accounts with blue checks and bad opinions.
The V. North angle exactly the way Webb said it would land — journalist sleeping with subject, pen name revealed, conflict of interest, career ethics questions.
The facts are twisted. The framing is wrong.
None of that matters because it’s out there now and Jax is sitting on the crate next to me, reading.
His thumb goes still on the edge of his phone.
Riley: My office. 8AM. Don’t speak to anyone first.
He reads the message over my shoulder. Doesn’t say a thing.
The city is celebrating above us — 2–0 in the Cup Final, a sold-out building full of people who believed before it was reasonable.
The trophy is still two wins away.
He hasn’t moved.
I’m sitting in a tunnel with everything I should have done differently and every version of this I could have chosen and the specific exhausting truth that I have been making the same choice since I was eight years old and I said I didn’t want to pack and I packed anyway.
Just differently.
Just with secrets instead of suitcases.
He’s still here.
I don’t know what to do with that.
I sit there for a long time.
So does he.