ONE BED WITH MY HOCKEY ALPHA ENEMY

Chapter 1 The league lawyer slides a plastic evidence bag across the table and my whole body goes cold. I know that camera. I know the duct tape on the strap, the dent in the corner from when Chase dropped it in the parking lot two Thanksgivings ago, the dumb little keychain of a fish he clipped on because he thought it was funny that a photographer's fish looked like a bad drawing. Six months. Six months I've been telling myself I lost it somewhere. That it fell out of my bag in a stairwell and a janitor swept it into a trash can and it's sitting in a landfill in Jersey right now. That I didn't just leave the single most important piece of evidence in my life in a locker room while I was busy having a breakdown. Turns out the arena staff turned it in the next morning. Turns out the league has had it for eight weeks. Turned out they've been watching me sweat. "Ms. Reid." The lawyer's name is Fennick and he has the voice of a man who has never been told no in his life. "Do you understand what's on this device?" "I'm a photographer." I keep my hands flat on the table so they don't shake. "I understand what's on a camera." "Then you understand the position you're in." Here's the thing about an office at the league headquarters: the chairs are too nice to be comfortable. They're leather and they're cold and they make you sit straight up like you're at a job interview for a job you already know you're losing. I'm supposed to be at the diner in forty minutes. My apron's in my bag. My feet hurt and my nails are bit down to nothing and there's exactly forty-seven dollars in my checking account until Thursday. "Let's be clear about the facts," Fennick says. He opens a folder like he's reading me a bedtime story. "Two seasons ago, Knox Wolfe delivered a check that ended Chase Bennett's career. Public consensus is that the hit was dirty. Half the league said so. The internet definitely said so." "He spent four months in a wheelchair with a spinal fracture," I say. "So yeah. Consensus." "Consensus isn't evidence." He taps the bag. "This is. This angle was never released. Nobody's ever seen it. And what it shows is that the contact was clean — shoulder to shoulder, inside the rules, and Bennett was already off balance because he was playing on a dose of performance enhancers that's currently on a federal schedule." My mouth goes dry. "I didn't know," I say. "About the drugs. I never knew." "Charming." He doesn't look up. "The league doesn't care what you knew. The league cares about what happens if this gets out. Because if this gets out, the story becomes: the league buried the only clean angle for two years to protect a marquee player, and a kid in a wheelchair got thrown under the bus for it. That's not a hockey story. That's a network news story." "Okay," I say slowly. "So don't release it." Somebody in the corner laughs. It's the first time I've noticed there's a third person in the room — a woman in a gray suit leaning against the wall like she owns it. She has the kind of face that makes you check your hair. "She's quick," she says. "She's desperate," Fennick says, in the same tone. "Look." I lean forward. "I'm a photographer who edits wedding photos at two in the morning. I'm not a journalist. I'm not a whistleblower. I don't want the video out, I don't want the story, I don't want any of this. I want my camera back and I want to go to work." "We can't give you the camera back." "Why not?" "Because the moment it's in your hands, it's leverage. And leverage in the hands of someone who needs money is a liability." He shuts the folder. "So. Here's what's happening instead." And this is the part where the floor drops out. "Your mother owns property in Bergen County. Two-bedroom, assessed at four hundred and eighty thousand. There's a second mortgage, a tax lien, and a notice of foreclosure that's been sitting at the county clerk's office for eleven days. Am I correct?" The blood drains out of my face so fast I have to grab the armrest. "Don't," I say. "If this footage is released by anyone other than this league, at any time, in any form," Fennick says, "the league's legal team pursues every available avenue against every party involved in its acquisition and distribution. That's you. That's your mother, as the owner of the device's storage location. That's anybody you've ever told about it." "I didn't tell anybody—" "Legal fees alone would bury you before the first hearing. You'd lose the house. You'd lose your car. You'd lose the ability to get a job that requires a background check, because there's nothing a company loves less than an employee named in a sports litigation." The woman in gray checks her watch. "Fennick. You're scaring her." "She should be scared." "She's not going to do anything," the woman says. She looks at me. "Are you." It's not a question. It's a wall. I want to be the kind of person who stands up. Who says try me. Who says my boyfriend can't walk right and my mom's about to lose her house and you want me to sign something so I'll shut up? I want to be that person so bad my chest hurts. But my mother's name is on a piece of paper at the county clerk's office, and the only thing I have in this world that's worth anything is my ability to keep that house. "No," I say. "I'm not going to do anything." "Good." Fennick actually smiles. It's worse than the frown. "But that's not enough. Silence is passive. We need active." "Active." "You're going to be part of the story," he says. "Instead of the leak in it." The woman in gray sits down for the first time. She puts a second folder on the table — this one with a photograph paper-clipped to the front. And I don't need to open it, because I already know the face in that photograph. Everybody in this city knows that face. Everybody in this city has watched that face say no comment into eleven different microphones while kids in his jersey screamed his name. Knox Wolfe. Number eleven. Captain. Six-four, two hundred and thirty pounds, jaw like a door closing. "The season starts in three weeks," the woman says. "Wolfe's contract is up for renegotiation. He's been good, but the press around him is radioactive — the hit, the wheelchair, the lawsuits. Sponsors are nervous. The team needs a story that doesn't involve blood. So we're giving them one." "No," I say. "Whatever this is. No." "You haven't heard it." "I don't need to hear it. I know what you people do." "You're going to move into his house," she says, "and you're going to be his girlfriend." The words land in the room and just sit there. I stare at her. Then at Fennick. Then back at her. Somewhere down the hall a phone rings twice and stops. "You're out of your mind," I say. "You're the only angle," she says. "That's the joke of it. You're the person who has the footage. You're the person who was close to the victim. If you — of all people — end up on his arm, then the story isn't did he do it. The story is if she forgives him, there's nothing to forgive. You become the proof." "I hate him." "Perfect. Hate sells better than love. Love looks paid for." She taps the folder. "Sixty-four million people watched that hit. You think they won't watch the girl who came back from it?" "He broke my—" I stop. Breathe. "He ended Chase's career. Do you understand what that did to him? To his family? He can't sleep through the night. He can't—" "Chase Bennett is currently a co-owner of a rival franchise," the woman says, "and his lawsuit was settled for eight figures, and he moved to Aspen. I'd pace myself on the tragedy." "That's not—" "Ms. Reid." Fennick folds his hands. "You can take the deal, or you can take the lawsuit. There is no third option. There's a car downstairs and a contract in this folder. You have until the end of the day." I don't cry. I've gotten real good at not crying in rooms with nice chairs in them. It's a talent. "You're asking me to live with him," I say. "We're asking you to be seen with him." "For how long?" "Full season." "That's seven months." "That's seven months," she agrees, "of someone else paying your mother's mortgage." She says it like she shouldn't have to. I look at the camera bag on the table. Duct tape. Dented corner. Bad fish keychain. Chase laughing when he clipped it on, saying now your camera's got a personality. Chase in a hospital bed, gray as paper, staring at the ceiling and asking me if his legs were still there. "Where is he now," I say. "Wolfe. Is he even going to agree to this?" "Mr. Wolfe has been informed of the situation." Fennick closes the folder and pushes it toward me, along with a pen. "He's here, actually. We thought it would save time." My hand stops over the pen. "He's here," I repeat. "Down the hall. We wanted you both to hear it from—" The door opens behind me. I feel it before I hear it — some change in the air, like when the AC kicks on and the whole room drops ten degrees. The woman in gray straightens. Fennick's mouth does something nervous. I turn around. He's bigger in person. That's the first thing. Six-four on TV is a number. Six-four standing in a doorway with his shoulder against the frame, hands in his pockets, is a weather event. Dark hair, jaw like a door closing, gray eyes that land on the camera bag and then on me, and stay on me like I'm a bill he's been handed. He looks at me the way people look at a stain they've just noticed on a good shirt. "This her?" he says. Nobody answers. Knox Wolfe pulls his hands out of his pockets and walks in, slow, and he doesn't sit down, and he doesn't shake my hand, and when he gets close enough the room smells like cold air and cedar and something underneath that makes the hair on my arms stand up for no reason I can name. "Great," he says. "She looks thrilled." Chapter 1 Ends