5. Graham
Graham
Graham shouldered through the locker-room door with champagne drying against his face and soaking the compression shirt plastered to his back.
The arena air conditioning cut through the damp fabric before the door swung shut behind him, muting the celebration outside to a distant roar.
His socks squelched over the rubber mat as he crossed toward his stall, helmet tucked beneath one arm.
He tossed it onto the nearest chair and scrubbed a sticky palm over his forehead.
“Riley?”
No answer came from the back of the room.
Graham reached for the towel stacked beside his gear bag and dragged it through his hair.
Champagne had worked its way down his neck, beneath the collar of his shirt, leaving sugar on his skin.
Riley should have been here already. She always found a way through the postgame mess before anyone else, whether that meant arguing with security or flashing whatever credential the team had handed her that week.
“Where’d you put the shirts?” He pulled open the top of his duffel and shifted a pair of socks aside. “Riley, toss me a clean shirt from the bag. This AC is freezing.”
The only sound was the hum of the ventilation system.
He straightened and glanced toward the adjoining doorway.
Nothing moved beyond it. A few minutes ago, she had been pressed against the plexiglass with that look on her face—the one that said she had something important to tell him and expected him to drop everything for it.
He had given her one minute. One damned minute to finish the photographs the sponsors had been screaming about since before the final horn.
Apparently even that had been too much.
Graham rubbed the towel over the back of his neck and turned toward the door again.
The Cup celebration still thundered somewhere beyond the walls, teammates yelling over music and reporters chasing whoever they could corner.
Riley hated that crush of bodies. She hated strangers pushing microphones into their space, hated having to fight her way through people who treated her like another credential hanging from a lanyard.
“Whenever you win, I just want to be the first person you see when you get off the ice. That’s all I need.”
The memory came back in her voice, stripped of the arena noise around it.
His hand stopped on the towel.
For years, she had been the first person. Minor-league wins, ugly losses, overtime games when his legs barely carried him down the tunnel—Riley had always been there with water, a dry shirt, some complaint about his skates, and that look that made every miserable hour worth it.
Tonight had been different. Tonight had been the Cup.
And she knew what came with that.
Graham shoved the towel around his neck and bent over the duffel again.
He refused to let one sponsor photo turn the best night of their lives into another argument about Nicolle, cameras, or schedules.
Riley knew the deal. She knew those appearances paid for the condo, the travel, the future they had spent years chasing.
“Don’t tell me you retreated to the VIP lounge to dodge the traffic, Riley.” He pulled a clean polo from the bag and shook it open. “Today is not the day to sulk.”
He expected the door to open before he finished changing.
Riley was late, not gone.
Graham lowered the clean polo instead of pulling it over his head.
The VIP lanyard lay across the center of the bench.
He stared at it for a moment, trying to decide why Riley would leave the one thing she needed to move through the arena tonight. Then the overhead lights caught a small curve of silver beside the plastic credential.
Her wedding ring.
The polo slipped from his hand onto the open gear bag. Graham crossed to the bench and picked up the ring, turning it once between his thumb and forefinger. She hadn’t just dropped it. Riley had arranged it beside the lanyard where he would find both.
“What the hell, Riley?”
She was furious. Fine. She had earned the right to be furious after the argument at the hotel and the mess on the ice. But leaving her ring behind was theater designed to make sure he understood exactly how angry she was.
That made sense until he looked at the abandoned credential again.
Without it, arena security would treat her like any other person trapped inside a championship crowd.
Graham grabbed his phone from the wooden shelf and tapped Riley’s number. He closed his fingers tight around the ring while the call connected.
One ring.
Voicemail.
“Come on. Pick up.”
He ended the call before the greeting finished and tried to picture where she could have gone. The VIP lounge made sense. Maybe the hotel. Maybe she had found a team driver and told him to get her away from the arena before another camera landed in her face.
Except she would have needed the lanyard to reach the private transport corridor.
Graham dialed arena security.
“Bruno, pull the lower bowl feeds immediately. Riley dumped her credentials in my locker, and her cell is going straight to voicemail. I need a visual on her.”
“Stand by, Graham. I’m pulling the perimeter logs right now.”
The distant celebration kept rolling through the walls while Graham paced between the bench and the door. He placed the ring beside his phone for a moment, wiped the champagne from his palm on the discarded towel, then picked the ring back up.
Bruno came back on the line. “Got a hit. Loading dock camera caught her leaving through the service exit.”
“Was she alone?”
“Looks that way. She got into a cab. Give me a minute—I’m checking dispatch.”
Graham stopped beside the stall.
A cab was good. A cab meant she had transportation. Someone else was driving. She wasn’t wandering through the streets with half the city drunk and celebrating around her.
“Tell me she went to the condo.”
Keyboard taps carried through the phone, followed by a muffled exchange somewhere inside security.
Bruno returned. “Negative on the condo.”
Graham looked down at the ring.
“Where?”
“Cab dispatch confirmed the drop-off at the twenty-four-hour rental lot off the interstate. I got the manager on the line. Riley rented an SUV under her own name.”
Graham tightened his grip on the phone.
“Did she give them a destination?”
“No destination on the paperwork. Manager watched her pull out toward the highway.”
“Which direction?”
A brief pause followed.
“South.”
Graham stared at the open doorway while the Cup celebration continued without him.
She had taken an SUV south, and nobody knew where she was going.
Bruno’s voice stayed on the line another moment, waiting for instructions Graham no longer had.
“If anything changes, call me,” Graham said. “If she checks into a hotel under her name or the rental company gets a return notice, I want to know.”
“You got it. Security will keep the flag open.”
The call ended. Graham lowered the phone and watched the screen dim in his hand.
Riley was driving. She had a vehicle, a full tank, and enough sense to get herself out of the city before the streets became impossible. Whatever else this was, she wasn’t stranded outside the arena without credentials while half the population tried to pour into downtown.
That was what mattered.
He set the phone beside the open gear bag and looked at the ring still resting against his palm.
The silver edge had left a faint mark in his skin.
He rolled it between his fingers. Riley had known exactly what she was doing when she placed it beside the lanyard. She wanted him to walk into this room, find both objects, and understand that she was furious.
Fine.
Message received.
But driving out of the city on Cup night over one sponsor sequence was a ridiculous escalation.
He had spent years building everything they once begged for—security, money, access, a home where the furnace worked without being kicked twice.
None of that vanished because Nicolle wore a sweater for cameras.
“We have a private condo for a reason, Riley.” His voice carried across the empty room. “Staging a silent protest in the middle of a championship is ridiculous.”
The muffled celebration beyond the wall swelled as somebody opened a hallway door, then dropped again when it shut.
Graham stared at the lanyard.
She hated crowds. She hated the press. She hated every part of the machinery surrounding the team except the hockey itself. That had been true for years, long before Nicolle or the apparel campaign entered their lives.
“I hate how loud the arena gets on game day, Graham. It feels like I’m suffocating, like the machine is just swallowing us whole.”
She had said it after one of his first televised playoff games, curled into the passenger seat while he drove them home through traffic.
There it was.
The obvious explanation.
Tonight had pushed her too far. The Cup, the cameras, the family-photo chaos, the shouting handlers—it had all piled up until Riley needed distance. Once she got outside the city and found a quiet motel, she would sleep for a few hours, wake up embarrassed by the ring stunt, and start driving back.
Graham closed his fingers around the silver band and reached for the polo he had dropped across his bag.
Chasing her now would only turn the stunt into a negotiation. Worse, it would teach her that abandoning a wedding ring was an effective way to make him walk away from every obligation on his calendar.
He wasn’t rewarding that.
“Keep driving until you burn off the attitude. I don’t have the patience for this right now.”
The ring disappeared into his palm as he looked toward the closed door.
By morning, she would turn around.
The door swung open before Graham could decide where to put the ring.
Music spilled in from the hallway, followed by Miller in a dress shirt with the sleeves pushed to his forearms. Graham closed his hand around the silver band, then slipped it into his pocket before Miller reached the stall.
“You changing here or at the hotel?” Miller asked. “The buses are loading now.”
“Give me a minute. I’m getting out of this shirt.”