The Hockey Star’s Black Wife

CHAPTER 1

The Wife Nobody Knew Existed

The first time I saw my husband in eleven months, he had blood on his mouth.

Not much. Just a dark smear at the corner of his lower lip, half-dried beneath the white glare of the press-room lights. It made him look exactly like the man the league had spent eight years selling to the public.

Violent.

Cold.

Unreachable.

Lars Halvorsen sat behind a long black table in a charcoal suit that looked too expensive to wrinkle and too fitted to hide what he was underneath it.

Six feet four inches of hard-earned menace.

Broad shoulders. Pale blond hair pushed carelessly back from his forehead.

Deep blue eyes fixed somewhere beyond the cameras, as if every person in the room had already disappointed him.

On the television screens mounted above the media pit, the replay of his hit ran again.

Damon Keller of the Montreal Royals crossing the blue line.

Lars coming in from the left.

Shoulder down.

Impact.

Keller spinning sideways and crashing into the boards hard enough to leave the whole arena silent.

Then the fight.

Two Montreal players coming for Lars.

Lars dropping his gloves.

Blood on the ice.

The clip cut before the part where Lars stood over one of them and looked almost bored.

“League officials are currently reviewing the incident,” said the Norsemen’s public-relations director, a tense man named Howard Kline. “Mr. Halvorsen will answer a limited number of questions.”

Limited meant approved.

Approved meant useless.

Around me, reporters shifted in their seats and refreshed their phones. The Boston Norsemen had the largest media room in the league, though it still felt cramped whenever Lars entered it. His presence changed the dimensions of a space. Everyone leaned toward him even while pretending not to.

I sat in the third row with my notebook resting against my crossed knee.

My press badge read:

AALIYAH GRANTSENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENTTHE ATHLETIC LEDGER

No mention of Mrs. Halvorsen.

There never was.

A reporter from SportsNet raised his hand. “Lars, do you believe the hit was clean?”

“Yes.”

The room waited.

That was all he gave them.

Another reporter leaned toward his microphone. “Keller remains under neurological observation. Do you have any concerns about his condition?”

Lars’s jaw tightened.

“Yes.”

Again, silence.

The reporter frowned. “Can you elaborate?”

“No.”

A few people laughed nervously.

I didn’t.

I knew the difference between Lars being rude and Lars being afraid. They looked almost identical to everyone else.

Howard pointed to a woman near the front. “Next.”

“Lars, this is your third major penalty this season. There are renewed concerns that your style of play has become reckless. How do you respond to critics who say you’re a danger to other players?”

Lars lifted his eyes.

“Critics don’t play.”

A low murmur rippled through the room.

The man beside me muttered, “What an asshole.”

I kept my face neutral.

Lars had always been gifted at making people hate him before they could ask why he was angry.

Howard glanced down at his list. His eyes passed over me, then returned.

He did not want to call on me.

Nobody in the Norsemen organization liked when I asked questions. They liked it even less when Lars answered them.

I raised my hand anyway.

Howard pretended not to see me.

Lars did.

His gaze found mine across the room.

It should not have affected me after all this time.

It did.

His face did not change, but something sharpened in his expression. A private recognition. The faintest pull in his shoulders, as if some invisible thread between us had gone taut.

I had spent years learning how to look at my husband like he was only a subject.

Lars had never learned how to look at me like I was only press.

“Aaliyah Grant,” he said.

Howard looked annoyed. “We’ll take one final question.”

Every head in the room turned toward me.

I stood.

“Do you regret the hit?”

The question was simple.

The room expected another one-word answer.

Lars stared at me long enough that the air seemed to thicken.

I knew that stare.

It belonged to a kitchen in Minneapolis three years ago.

To a shattered coffee mug.

To my suitcase waiting by the door.

To him saying, If you leave tonight, don’t expect me to beg you to stay.

To me answering, Then I guess we both get what we want.

Lars leaned toward the microphone.

“I regret every time I failed to hit back.”

The reporters stirred.

Howard cleared his throat. “That concludes—”

“What does that mean?” someone called.

“Is that directed at the league?”

“Are you suggesting provocation?”

Lars stood.

He buttoned his jacket with one hand. His eyes remained on me.

Only me.

Then he walked out.

I sat down slowly.

The reporter beside me gave a quiet whistle. “That guy really hates you.”

I closed my notebook.

“Seems that way.”

My phone vibrated before I reached the hallway.

Three missed calls from my editor.

One message from an unknown number.

You’re looking at the wrong player.

I stopped walking.

Around me, the arena was emptying in layers. Staff wheeled equipment cases through service corridors. Security officers watched clusters of reporters gather near the elevators. Somewhere below us, skates cut faintly across fresh ice as the backup players finished a late practice.

I opened the message.

There was an attachment.

A compressed folder containing forty-three files.

Medical evaluations.

Internal emails.

Scanned waivers.

The first document carried the Norsemen logo at the top and the name DEREK COLE beneath it.

I had been trying to get Derek Cole to speak with me for six months.

Former forward. Thirty-three years old. Retired after a series of concussions the team had publicly described as “minor upper-body injuries.” He had vanished from public life after an interview in which he forgot the names of his own children.

My pulse accelerated.

Another message arrived.

Ask why Halvorsen signed the statement.

I opened the next document.

It was dated four years earlier.

A public assurance from several players affirming their trust in the Norsemen medical staff.

At the bottom, beneath three other signatures, was my husband’s.

Lars Halvorsen.

I read it twice.

Then a third time.

A service door opened behind me.

I locked my phone and turned.

Lars stepped into the corridor alone.

Without the cameras, he looked less polished and more dangerous. His tie was loose. The cut on his mouth had opened again. A bruise was beginning to darken along his right cheekbone.

We stood fifteen feet apart.

Neither of us moved.

“You shouldn’t be here alone,” he said.

His voice was lower in private. Rougher.

“I’m in a professional sports arena, not an alley.”

“That doesn’t make it safe.”

“I didn’t ask for your concern.”

“You never do.”

He approached me slowly.

I hated that my body still recognized his before my mind could defend itself. The width of his chest. The clean, sharp scent of his cologne beneath the faint metallic smell of blood. The way his left hand curled when he was trying not to touch me.

His wedding ring was still there.

Plain platinum.

Scratched from years of wear.

My own hung beneath my blouse on a thin gold chain, hidden against my skin.

Lars stopped a few feet away.

“You cut your hair.”

“Six months ago.”

“I know.”

Of course he knew.

I folded my arms. “Were you trying to send me a message in there?”

“If I wanted to send you a message, you’d understand it.”

“That sounded like a threat.”

“It was not meant for you.”

“Then who?”

His eyes narrowed slightly.

Before he could answer, Howard pushed through the door.

“There you are. Lars, upstairs. Now. Graham wants everyone in the executive suite before you leave.”

Graham West.

President of hockey operations.

The man who smiled like a father and negotiated like an executioner.

Howard looked between us. “Ms. Grant.”

“Howard.”

His expression carried the careful politeness organizations used when they wanted women to know they were tolerated, not welcomed.

“Media exit is on the east side.”

“I know where the exit is.”

Lars’s mouth nearly moved.

Not a smile.

Lars did not smile in public.

Howard turned to him. “Now, please.”

Lars ignored him.

“What are you working on?” he asked me.

“Nothing involving you.”

“That was not my question.”

“And you’re no longer entitled to answers.”

Something cold passed through his face.

Not anger.

Worse.

Hurt, quickly buried.

Howard exhaled. “Lars.”

My phone started vibrating again.

Then Howard’s.

Then the security officer’s at the end of the hall.

A strange ripple traveled through the corridor as people began looking down at their screens.

The sort of collective shift that only happened when the world changed all at once.

Howard checked his phone.

The color drained from his face.

“Oh, shit.”

Lars took his phone from his pocket.

I looked at mine.

There were twenty-seven new notifications.

Then forty.

Then sixty-three.

My editor.

My sister.

Three colleagues.

A college friend I had not spoken to in years.

The top notification came from a sports gossip account with nearly eight million followers.

brEAKING: BOSTON NORSEMEN STAR LARS HALVORSEN HAS BEEN SECRETLY MARRIED TO JOURNALIST AALIYAH GRANT FOR EIGHT YEARS.

Beneath it was a photograph.

I knew that photograph.

I had spent years trying to forget how happy I looked in it.

I was twenty-one, standing outside the Hennepin County courthouse in a simple ivory dress that had cost sixty dollars.

My curls were pinned loosely at the back of my head.

Lars stood beside me in a black suit borrowed from his college roommate.

One arm circled my waist. His mouth was pressed to my temple.

In the next picture, I was laughing.

In the third, he was kissing me against the courthouse wall.

In the fourth, our marriage certificate filled the screen.

Names.

Date.

Signatures.

Public record.

Private life.

Gone.

The corridor blurred around me.

Howard swore again and began dialing.

Lars did not move.

His face became utterly still.

“Who had these?” he asked.

I could barely hear him over the sudden ringing in my ears.

“No one.”