CHAPTER 5 #2
“We found Derek. He’s alive. We have the drive, and someone is following us.”
“Mhm. Of course they are.”
“This is not an mhm moment.”
“Share your location.”
I did.
Lars accelerated through a yellow light.
The sedan ran the red.
“Police are on their way,” Naomi said. “Do not drive home.”
“We’re going to Matteo’s,” Lars said.
“I did not agree to that,” I replied.
“You don’t know where he lives.”
“I know how to use a map.”
“His building has private security.”
“So did mine.”
His jaw tightened.
The sedan gained on us.
Then blue lights appeared at the next intersection.
The car behind us turned sharply down a side street and disappeared.
Lars slowed.
Neither of us spoke until we reached Matteo’s apartment.
Matteo Rossi opened the door wearing sweatpants, one sock, and an expression of profound irritation.
Then he saw our faces.
“What happened?”
“We need your computer,” Lars said.
Matteo looked at me.
“Hello to you too, Mrs. Halvorsen.”
“Not tonight.”
He stepped aside.
His apartment was warm, cluttered, and unmistakably occupied by someone who had never returned an item to its proper place. Hockey sticks leaned against the walls. Shoes blocked the hallway. A half-eaten pizza sat open on the coffee table.
We connected the drive to an isolated laptop.
The files opened without a password.
Hundreds of them.
Original evaluations.
Internal communications.
Payment records linking team executives to private physicians.
Spreadsheets tracking player symptoms alongside projected financial losses if they were placed on injured reserve.
Human bodies converted into columns.
Lars stood behind me as I read.
One folder carried his name.
He reached over my shoulder and closed it.
I reopened it.
“No.”
“Aaliyah.”
“You said everything.”
“That is personal.”
“So were the photographs of me.”
His face hardened.
Matteo looked between us.
“I am going to find another sock.”
He disappeared down the hallway.
I opened Lars’s folder.
The first file was an MRI report.
Then another.
A neurological assessment.
Symptoms listed in clinical language:
Memory lapses.
Hand tremors.
Light sensitivity.
Headaches.
Sleep disturbance.
Episodes of confusion.
A recommendation for immediate suspension from contact play.
The date was eighteen months old.
I turned slowly.
“You were told to stop playing.”
“It was one evaluation.”
“There are four.”
“Independent doctors disagree.”
“No, the team doctors disagree.”
He looked away.
I scrolled further.
His latest scan showed evidence of repeated trauma.
“What does significant risk of permanent neurological impairment mean to you?”
“That hockey is dangerous.”
“It means your brain is being damaged.”
“I know.”
The calmness of his answer broke something in me.
“You know?”
“Yes.”
“You knew this while you kept playing?”
“Yes.”
“You knew this when you refused to play for me?”
His expression sharpened.
“That was different.”
“No, it wasn’t. You turned your body into another weapon.”
“My body is mine.”
I laughed without humor.
“Now you understand that concept?”
His face went cold.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you have spent years making decisions about my career, my safety, and our marriage without asking me. But the moment your life is involved, suddenly no one gets a vote.”
“I did not want you to worry.”
“Of course not. Why allow your wife to participate in your life when you can preserve her in a drawer beside her old clothes?”
“Aaliyah.”
“No.”
I stood.
The anger shook through me.
“You did not protect me, Lars. You made me smaller without my consent.”
His eyes flashed.
“I gave you freedom.”
“You gave me loneliness.”
“I let you build your career.”
“You did not let me do anything.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
His voice rose for the first time.
“I know because I watched you build a life that had no room for me.”
“You pushed me out.”
“You left.”
“Because I was disappearing!”
“And what do you think happened to me?”
The room went silent.
Matteo had stopped somewhere in the hallway.
Lars stepped toward me.
“You think I wanted the hotels? The secret entrances? The empty apartments? You think I wanted to see my wife on television and pretend I did not know how she sounded when she came?”
My breath caught.
“You made the rules.”
“Because every executive around me told me they would destroy you if I did not.”
“And you believed them more than you believed me.”
“I believed what I saw.”
“What did you see?”
“A league that called you exotic when it wanted to sell photographs and aggressive when you asked hard questions. Men who looked at you like you were entertainment. Editors who praised your work and then fired you before breakfast.”
His voice broke.
Barely.
“But you trusted them with your future. Not me.”
“That is not fair.”
“No. None of this was fair.”
His hand trembled again.
He tried to hide it.
I caught his wrist.
He froze.
My thumb pressed against his pulse.
“How bad is it?”
“It comes and goes.”
“The memory problems?”
His jaw tightened.
“How bad?”
“I lose words.”
My anger faltered.
“Sometimes I wake up and do not know which city I’m in. It lasts a few seconds.”
“Lars.”
“I have headaches after games.”
“How often?”
“Most games.”
The room blurred.
I released his wrist and stepped back.
He misunderstood the movement.
Pain crossed his face.
I looked at the man I had loved since college.
At the scars beneath his eyebrow.
The crooked finger he had never repaired.
The body the league praised while quietly recording its decline.
“Take off your shirt,” I said.
His eyes darkened.
“That is an interesting change in direction.”
“This is not sexual.”
“It could be.”
“Take it off.”
He obeyed.
The sweater came first.
Then the black shirt beneath it.
I had seen his body eleven months ago.
But not like this.
Not under bright light.
Not with the truth beside us.
Scars crossed his left shoulder and ribs. A surgical line curved over his collarbone. Purple bruising spread along his side from the hit two nights earlier.
I stepped closer.
My fingertips traced the scar near his shoulder.
“When?”
“Second year.”
“You told me it was a minor repair.”
“It was.”
“This required twelve screws.”
His mouth tightened.
I moved to the scar on his ribs.
“And this?”
“Fractured lung.”
“You said bruised.”
“I recovered.”
“That is not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“That you lied to me about everything.”
He caught my hand against his chest.
“And you left me alone inside a machine that was killing me.”
The words were quiet.
Honest.
Cruel because they were true.
My eyes burned.
“I didn’t know.”
“You did not ask.”
“You would not have told me.”
“No.”
“Then how is that my fault?”
“It isn’t.”
His fingers tightened around mine.
“But I wanted you to know anyway.”
The anger between us changed.
It did not disappear.
It became grief.
I looked up at him.
“You should have trusted me.”
“I know.”
“You should have come after me.”
“I know.”
“You should have told the truth.”
“I know.”
His forehead lowered to mine.
“I know, wife.”
I kissed him.
This time, there was no collision.
No surprise.
I chose it.
His hand slid into my hair as his mouth opened over mine. The kiss deepened slowly, heat spreading through me in waves.
I pressed my palms against his bare chest.
His heart pounded beneath the scars.
Alive.
For now.
The thought made me grip him harder.
Lars groaned into my mouth.
He backed me toward the table.
The laptop remained open beside us, full of evidence that could destroy him.
I should have stopped.
Instead, I pulled my blouse over my head.
His eyes went dark.
“Tell me this is not pity.”
“It’s anger.”
“Good.”
“And grief.”
“I can work with both.”
His mouth closed over mine again.
He lifted me onto the edge of the table, sweeping papers aside. My skirt pushed high around my thighs as he stepped between them.
His hand moved beneath the fabric.
I caught his wrist.
“Do not confuse this with forgiveness.”
“I would never make that mistake.”
His fingers slipped beneath my underwear.
My breath broke.
Three years vanished.
His touch had not changed.
Slow where I expected impatience.
Precise where I needed pressure.
He watched my face as his fingers moved, remembering every response my body tried to hide.
“Still mine,” he said against my mouth.
“I am not property.”
“No.”
His thumb circled harder.
I gasped.
“You are my wife.”
The words should have angered me.
Instead, pleasure tightened low in my stomach.
I reached for the front of his pants and felt him hard beneath my palm.
His head dropped against my shoulder.
“Aaliyah.”
There was no command in my name.
Only need.
I unfastened him.
His cock pressed hot and heavy into my hand. He shuddered when I stroked him, his mouth moving against my throat.
“You have no idea,” he said roughly, “how many nights I imagined this.”