Chapter 45 Adrian
Adrian
The locker room reeks of sweat, rubber, and blood.
My skin is on fire from suicides, my lungs still burning like I swallowed ice.
Practice went long—Addison always wants more—and my legs are nothing but lactic acid.
I rip my jersey off and drop onto the bench, scraping a rough towel over my face with a groan.
That’s when it starts.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
My phone won’t quit, rattling against the wood like it’s possessed. I ignore it. Calls mean noise—agents, reporters, leeches who want a piece but never bled on the ice with me.
“Jesus, Hale,” Gio mutters from across the room, one skate still half-laced. “Your phone’s blowing up. Looks like Santa came early.”
“Santa can choke,” I mutter.
But I reach for it anyway. Swipe. My gut drops. Three missed calls from my agent. Two texts.
Answer your goddamn phone. It’s the call.
The call.
My pulse spikes so hard it makes me dizzy. I shove to my feet and storm out of the room. The hallway is colder, quieter—just cinderblock walls and the hum of fluorescent lights. My teammates’ voices fade behind the door. I hit redial with a thumb slick from sweat.
One ring.
“Finally,” my agent explodes. “Where the hell have you been? Listen to me—this is it. The front office wants you. They’re circling for the draft.”
The floor tilts under me. My dream. Right. Fucking. There.
“But,” he snaps, fast and brutal, “they need to know you’re clear.”
My throat locks. “Clear how?”
“You know how,” he spits. “Your old man’s reputation. The Chronicle photo. The whispers about your temper. They don’t want to inherit a headline. They want a franchise player. Can you give me that?”
For a second, all I hear is my heartbeat. Then I laugh, low and jagged. “You’re telling me my entire goddamn life comes down to whether or not I can convince them I’m not my father?”
“Exactly. You’ve got the talent. Everyone knows it. But talent doesn’t mean shit if the league thinks you’re reckless. Or compromised.”
His words hit harder than any body check.
I stagger back until my shoulders slam the wall, the cinderblock cold and rough against my skin.
My hand fists in my hair, pulling until pain sparks.
The NHL. My dream since I was a kid taping broken sticks together in the driveway.
Elation roars in my chest, electric and wild—until rage drowns it out.
Because even here, at the edge of everything I’ve worked for, I’m still chained to him.
Still fighting the ghost of his voice, his shadow, his blood in my veins.
My dream isn’t mine. Not yet. Not unless I kill him first.
I hang up before my agent can say another word. The phone clatters to the floor. My breath saws in and out of my chest, every muscle vibrating with fury.
I’ve never wanted the ice more. I’ve never wanted blood more.
Clara finds me twenty minutes later outside the rink, my back pressed against the chain-link fence, hands braced on the cold metal like I could hold the world back.
“Adrian?” Her voice is soft, cautious.
I look up. The floodlights throw silver across her hair. Her eyes are sharp, searching. She only needs one glance at my face before she knows. “It’s the call,” I rasp, my throat raw.
Her lips part. “The NHL?”
I nod once, the motion stiff. “They want me. But only if I’m clean. No father’s shadow. No Chronicle scandals. No fucking distractions.”
She steps closer, her boots crunching on gravel. Her fingers graze my arm, tentative. “You’re not a distraction. You’re building something they can’t ignore.”
A laugh tears out of me, sharp and ugly. “Tell that to the suits. They don’t see me, Clara. They see a Hale. My old man’s face in a younger body. His sins waiting to repeat.”
“Then prove them wrong.” Her voice doesn’t rise, but it cuts. She tips her chin up. “You already are.”
“Christ.” I drag both hands over my face. “My whole life comes down to optics. Not how hard I train, not the fucking blood I leave on the ice. Just whether I can convince them I’m not his son.”
She doesn’t flinch. She steps between me and the fence, her palms flat against my chest, grounding me. “Then let’s make optics our weapon. Again. We’ve done it before. We’ll do it bigger.”
Her gaze locks on mine, steady, relentless.
She’s not pleading; she’s demanding I remember who I am when she’s beside me.
The storm inside me shifts—not gone, but tethered, leashed by her certainty.
My pulse is still wild, but for the first time since the phone rang, I feel something like control.
Because she believes. And if she believes, maybe I can too.
That night, Clara’s stretched across my bed, still in her jeans and a thin camisole, sneakers kicked off. I’m pacing the room like a caged animal, the NHL call still buzzing under my skin, half ecstasy, half fury.
The door slams open. Gio barrels in, tie hanging loose, face pale. He doesn’t knock. Just shoves his phone out like it’s a live grenade.
“Bro,” he rasps. “You need to see this.”
I snatch it, already braced for impact. One glance and my stomach flips.
The air leaves my lungs, a cold, sickening void where the elation used to be.
The photo is grainy, but the damage is clear.
Me. Clara. Pressed against the wall in the gala corridor.
Her hand on me. My head tipped back, my face wrecked with need.
It’s proof—every rumor, every whisper, caught in pixels.
Behind me, Clara sits up fast. “What is it?”
I turn the screen toward her. Her lips part, but her eyes sharpen like steel.
“Where did this come from?” she asks, her voice low and lethal.
“Donor’s kid,” Gio mutters, shifting on his feet. “Saw him sneaking around. He’ll shop it to the Chronicle, maybe worse.”
My chest explodes with rage. I slam the phone down on the desk so hard it rattles. “I’ll kill him. I’ll drag him out by his throat and—”
“Adrian.”
One word. Her word. It cuts through the fire roaring in my skull. She’s standing now, bare feet silent on the tile, her presence pulling me back just enough to breathe.
“You put a fist through him, you give them exactly what they want,” she says. “A headline. A scandal. Proof you’re your father’s son.”
I’m still shaking, fists tight. “So what? We just wait until the Chronicle rips us apart?”
Her mouth curves, not a smile, something colder. “No. We make the photo worthless. We burn him before he burns you.” She steps closer, eyes glittering. “We leak something worse. Not about you. About him. About the donor. You have enemies, Adrian. Use them.”
The silence hums. Gio shifts awkwardly. My breath is ragged. Clara’s fire is steady enough to light the room. And then I laugh. Dark. Sharp. The kind of laugh that makes Gio look like he’d rather be anywhere else.
She's right. This stopped being about survival a long time ago. This is war.
An hour later, I have the phone pressed to my ear, Clara’s steady presence at my shoulder. My pulse is a predator’s rhythm now. The line clicks.
“This is Whitmore.”
I let a beat of silence stretch. “I saw the photo your son took.” My voice is calm, flat. The way a blade looks before it cuts.
A pause. A smug, brittle scoff. “Boys will be boys. And I imagine the Chronicle will have quite the payday.”
I smile, though he can’t see it. “Maybe. But you know what they’d pay more for? Proof your boy’s been buying blow off sophomores and running his mouth about it in the locker room.”
The silence that follows is sharp enough to slice. I lean into it, my voice dropping lower. “Imagine that headline. Your family name tied to coke and minors. Your board seat gone. Your wife humiliated. Your donors running for the hills.”
A ragged intake of breath. Then, strained, “What do you want?”
I glance at Clara. Her eyes glitter, sharp and certain. “Simple,” I say, my tone pure steel. “The photo disappears. And so does your son. He’s done sniffing around my life, my team, my girl. Pull him out of this world before I do it for you.”
A strangled noise. Anger and fear. I don’t give him the satisfaction of hearing more. I hang up. For a moment, the room is silent. Then Clara steps closer, her hand brushing mine.
“That,” she says softly, almost reverently, “was strategy.”
I look at her, my pulse still thrumming with the high of the kill. “No,” I murmur. “That was war.”
Later, we’re outside her dorm, the Audi cooling behind us, its metal ticking in the night air. The campus is hushed. Clara is perched on the hood, the denim of her jeans brushing mine. The photo’s gone, but the weight of it still lingers.
“You just weaponized your father’s world against itself,” she murmurs.
I study her profile—the sharp line of her jaw, the calm etched into her expression. My chest tightens. My arm slides around her waist, pulling her into me until she’s half on my lap. My voice comes out rough, scraped raw. “No. We did.”
Her hand comes up, resting flat over my heartbeat, staking her claim. “That’s the difference, isn’t it? Alone, you’re a weapon. With me…” Her eyes flick up to mine, a spark in them that dares me to deny it. “...we’re a war.”
The words hit harder than the call, harder than my father’s voice. Pride flares, sharp and certain, burning away the last of the doubt that’s been eating at me. I press my mouth to her temple, breathing her in. “With you,” I whisper, “I don’t just fight the battlefield. I own it.”
For the first time all day, the storm inside me quiets. Not gone, but leashed. Because with Clara at my side, it isn’t chaos anymore. It’s control.