15. Riley #2
Maisie caught Riley’s sleeve. “He’s going straight for the microphone. Turn the audio up, Riley. Wait for it.”
Graham reached the interviewer.
Riley raised the volume and stepped away from the siding with Maisie beside her, keeping the phone between them.
The crowd on the feed rolled through the speaker in bursts of static and applause as Graham took the microphone from the interviewer.
Riley shifted the phone into one hand and started pacing the short deck.
Graham faced the broadcast camera.
“Ice Royalty is fiction. This campaign was built from a marketing script.”
Maisie stared at the screen. “He’s actually saying it.”
“Let me listen.”
Riley turned and walked back toward the stairs.
“You were sold the idea that my edge came from VIP suites, studio shoots, and this partnership. It didn’t.”
Graham’s voice carried across the deck behind her.
There was no wink hidden in the delivery. No sponsor-friendly joke waiting to rescue the line. Graham stood there with the microphone in his hand and dismantled everything he had spent years protecting.
Riley reached the railing again and turned.
“My wife built my foundation in freezing minor-league locker rooms.”
She took her next step slower.
The live camera stayed tight on his face while the crowd noise shifted around him. Riley stopped halfway across the deck, the phone steady in front of her now.
“She sharpened my skates when we were counting every dollar. She kept the equipment running. She gave me the chance to become the player you know.”
She rested her free hand over the curve of her pregnancy.
He remembered.
Not the penthouse. Not the sponsor dinners or the catered suites. He had gone all the way back to the freezing rink, the broken machines, the nights when ten dollars from a sharpening job mattered.
“And when this organization decided that story wasn’t useful enough, I let them erase her.”
Riley stared at him on the screen.
That was the part he had never said before. He was not blaming Nicolle for taking advantage of the cameras. He was not blaming the handlers for following orders. He was putting the failure where it belonged.
On himself.
Maisie said nothing now.
Graham continued.
“I let them sell merchandise with a fake partnership because I told myself the money protected my family.”
Riley’s hand remained where it was.
Forty-eight hours earlier, she had stood on these stairs and accused him of running back to the same machine. Graham had taken every word and offered no defense. No explanation. No desperate attempt to make himself look better before he left.
Now she understood why.
“What it did was teach everyone around me that my wife could be pushed out of the picture as long as the numbers looked good.”
Riley glanced at the captions scrolling across the bottom of the screen.
He still had not said her name.
He had not mentioned Georgia. Copper Shank. The loft. Her pregnancy. Nothing that could point a reporter toward the gravel road below her.
He was telling the world what he had done while keeping her outside the story.
Not erased this time.
Protected.
“I’m done reading the script.”
Maisie grabbed Riley’s arm. “Listen to him, Riley. He’s slaughtering the front office.”
Riley barely registered the words.
Yesterday, she had watched Graham drive away and decided the departure proved everything she feared about him. She had mistaken his silence for surrender because that explanation hurt less than hoping again.
But there he was, standing beneath the lights he used to worship, tearing apart the lie with his own voice while refusing to give the press anything they could use to find her.
Riley went completely still.
He had gone back for her.
The camera angle shifted as Graham lowered the microphone. Riley stayed in the center of the deck, her attention fixed on the stage. Nicolle stood several feet away in the patched sweater, the same faded wool Riley had knitted through long nights when they could barely cover rent.
Maisie leaned closer. “He’s going after the sweater.”
“I know.”
Graham crossed the stage and stopped in front of Nicolle. Whatever she said to him vanished beneath the crowd and the frantic voices around the broadcast crew. He held out his hand.
“No. It belongs to my wife.”
Riley stared at the screen.
The sweater had once been hers to repair whenever Graham tore an elbow or snagged the cuff on a locker hook.
She had replaced stitches under bad apartment lighting, working the yarn through worn patches because buying another winter layer had been out of the question.
Years later, she had stood behind scratched plexiglass and watched him wrap that history around Nicolle’s shoulders for a photograph.
Now he kept his hand out.
Nicolle made no move to surrender it.
Graham spoke again.
“You didn’t bleed for it. You don’t get to wear it.”
With those words, Riley ran out of safe explanations.
This was not an apology drafted by a publicist. No sponsor would have approved him telling the face of their campaign that she had no right to wear its most recognizable prop.
No executive would have scripted a line that reminded millions of viewers the famous sweater belonged to a wife the brand had spent months pushing out of view.
Nicolle reached for the hem, pulling the sweater over her head while Riley squeezed the phone. Her hair snagged against the collar before she yanked the sweater free and shoved the bundle into Graham’s chest.
He caught it.
For a moment, the camera held on him with the faded wool gathered against his jacket. Graham adjusted it over his forearm and kept it there.