CHAPTER 16 — SPONSORS DONT BLEED
POV: Noah Bennett
I woke to the weight of Damon's arm draped across my waist and the cruel realization that, for a few seconds, my body had forgotten where it was before my mind caught up.
His room was still dark, cut only by the blue light filtering through the windows, and the smell of skin, warmed sheets, and rain trapped against the glass held me somewhere too dangerous to mistake for rest. Damon slept on his side behind me, his chest pressed against my back, his breathing heavy against my neck, his good hand splayed over my abdomen—as if, at some point during the night, he'd decided to keep me there even in his sleep.
I stayed motionless, not from fear of waking him, but because part of me wanted to memorize that fragile peace before the day found a way to destroy it.
The previous night hadn't resolved anything, and maybe that's why it had disarmed me so completely.
I was still angry. I still had my phone with Julian's threat hidden in the guest room.
I still knew my father was trapped in the past by choices I understood and resented in equal measure.
I still knew Damon could wake up, wear cruelty like a jacket, and decide that believing me was harder than wanting me.
Even so, his body behind mine felt like an answer I hadn't asked for—a wordless confession that warmed me and frightened me in equal measure.
Damon Blackwood, the man who had called me a traitor with devastating ease, slept holding my waist as if terrified I might disappear again.
When he stirred, I felt his hand tighten briefly over me before relaxing.
The reaction was instinctive, still caught in sleep, and that's exactly why it hit me so hard.
I turned my face carefully, just enough to see him in the half-light.
His black hair was messy, his mouth slack and unguarded, the shoulder bandage partially visible beneath the sheet.
The pain must have been there, waiting for the wrong movement to make itself known, but in that instant Damon just looked exhausted.
Not cruel. Not untouchable. Not captain.
Just a man who had learned too late that he might be wrong, and now slept like someone clinging to what he could still lose.
His phone vibrated on the nightstand before I could decide to get out of bed.
The low sound cut through the room like a cold hand.
Damon woke all at once, too fast for someone injured, and the hand on my waist disappeared as if it had been caught committing a crime.
I felt the loss of his touch with humiliating irritation.
He grabbed the phone, looked at the screen, and went still.
His face changed little, but enough to strip every trace of sleep from my body.
Julian, I thought, before I even saw a name.
“Problem?” I asked, sitting up slowly so the mattress wouldn't jostle his shoulder.
Damon locked the screen before I could see.
That was answer enough. The old irritation flared inside me, not because I thought I had a right to his phone, but because secrets, when they entered that bed, always arrived with the Blackwood name.
Damon ran a hand over his face, took a deep breath, and sat up too, moving too carefully with his shoulder to pretend he was fine.
“Julian called a meeting with sponsors and administration at ten,” he said, his voice hoarse with sleep and tension. “Wants to discuss 'reputational risk' before the next game.”
The phrase reputational risk made me laugh, though there was no humor in it.
It was such a Julian phrase that I could almost see him typing it, shirt cuffs perfectly adjusted, transforming threat into agenda item, control into governance, the destruction of people into crisis prevention.
I got out of bed and grabbed my shirt from the floor, pulling it on like insufficient armor.
Damon watched me in silence, and I felt his gaze on my back—not with the hunger of the night before, but with something heavier.
Maybe guilt. Maybe worry. Maybe the same absurd urge to ask me not to leave the room before the world came crashing in.
“Reputational risk—that's me?” I asked, turning to face him as I tugged the shirt into place. “Or your injury? Or the fact that a journalist found an inconvenient signature from your brother?”
“Probably all three, in that order, with fancier words.”
“And you're going?”
“I am.”
“Of course you are,” I said, grabbing my pants and trying not to let disappointment turn into attack before I understood the strategy.
“Because Julian calls, sponsors sit, administration plays neutral, and everyone expects Damon Blackwood to show up handsome, controlled, and hurt enough to inspire concern—but not human enough to ask the hard questions.”
He got out of bed carefully, and the movement left his shoulder bandage visible for an instant. I almost moved to adjust it. Almost. Damon saw the impulse, and the fact that I'd stopped myself mid-reach seemed to hurt us both in different ways.
“I'm going because if I don't, he speaks for me,” Damon said. “And I'm trying to stop letting Julian do that.”
The words silenced me. Not because they were enough.
Because they were new. Damon wasn't defending his brother out of reflex, wasn't asking me for silence, wasn't calling the meeting my exaggeration.
There was anger in him, yes, but for the first time it seemed aimed somewhere outside of us.
That should have relieved me. Instead, it scared me.
Damon angry at Julian could be useful or catastrophic, depending on how many seconds he could hold out before turning suspicion into a direct assault.
“Don't walk into that room looking for a fight,” I said. “Julian wants that. He wants you impulsive, wants to paint me as a bad influence, wants to make it look like your injury, your judgment, and your loyalty to the team were all contaminated by me.”
“Contaminated,” he repeated, and his jaw tightened. “Did he use that word?”
“Not yet. But men like Julian always get there, sooner or later.”
Damon crossed the room toward me. The space between us shrank slowly, without the urgency of the night before, but with a tension harder to name.
He touched my hand—just the fingers—as if testing whether he still could.
I should have pulled away. I didn't. His skin was warm.
His thumb brushed the base of my fingers once, and the memory of how he'd held me in his sleep came back hard enough to tighten my throat.
“You’re coming with me,” he said.
“As a physical therapist?”
“As the person Julian is trying to use against me.”
“Damon.”
“And as the person who might know when I’m about to do something stupid,” he added. The corner of his mouth almost twitched, but his face stayed serious. “You have recent experience in that area.”
I wanted to say no. I wanted to say that walking into that room would be stepping willingly into the mouth of a machine that had already chewed me up once.
I wanted to remind him that Julian had threatened my father, that my internship depended on appearing ethical, that last night was still too warm on my skin to fake neutrality in front of sponsors.
But the alternative was Damon alone with his brother, with administrators who preferred reputation to truth, and my name being spoken without me there to correct it.
I took a deep breath and pulled my hand back before the touch became a promise.
“I’ll go,” I replied. “But if you start raising your voice, I’m kicking your good shin under the table.”
“You call that protocol?”
“I call it preventive physical therapy for an inflamed ego.”
The meeting took place in the administrative building—a room with frosted glass walls, a long table, chairs that were too comfortable, and a perfect view of the arena in the distance, as if everyone there needed reminding that the ice was spectacle, asset, and product.
Julian sat at the head when we arrived, dressed in dark gray, his hair impeccable and his smile positioned exactly where rich men kept knives without looking armed.
Beside him were two sponsors I recognized from the open practice, the woman from legal, the athletic coordinator, and my father, seated two chairs from the head, wearing the expression of someone who’d slept little and calculated too much.
My father looked at me when I entered. Not like a coach.
For half a second, he was just Henry Bennett watching his son walk into a room where Julian Blackwood was smiling.
There was warning in his eyes, guilt too, and a silent plea that irritated me because it asked restraint from someone who’d already swallowed too much.
Then the mask returned, and he straightened in his chair.
“Damon,” Julian said, rising elegantly. “Thank you for coming. Noah, your presence will also be useful, considering part of the agenda involves the athlete’s medical management.”
“How thoughtful,” I replied, sitting beside Damon before anyone could direct me elsewhere. “I always appreciate when my usefulness comes wrapped in a crisis meeting.”
He settled in beside me, and the closeness under the table brought an absurd memory of his bedroom, his arm around my waist, the way his body had been warm before the phone buzzed. I forced my gaze toward Julian. It was safer to face the threat than the man the threat was trying to use.
“This isn’t about a crisis,” Julian said, taking his seat again. “It’s about institutional protection. Northaven is entering a decisive phase of the season, Damon is the face of the program, and Noah’s recent return to the medical department creates some concerns we need to address with maturity.”
“Is it my return that creates concern, or the existence of old documents with your signature?” I asked, before my father could stop me with a look.