Chapter 2: The First Cut
1538 Words
The morning light slipped through the blinds too early.
Claire knew before she even opened her eyes that nothing was going to be normal again.
Her phone wouldn’t stop buzzing.
The hallway video was everywhere.
Her teammates were sharing it. Strangers were reposting it. People were cutting it into shorter clips and adding their own captions.
Claire made the mistake of reading the comments.
Dramatic.
Unstable.
Attention seeker.
Some of the people saying those things were people she’d known for years. People she’d trained with. People she thought knew her.
Ryan looked calm in every clip.
She looked angry. Out of control.
That was all anyone saw.
And apparently, that was all they believed.
Claire sat up slowly and reached for her phone. Out of habit, she opened the team analyst group chat.
Her name was gone.
She stared at the screen.
She refreshed it once.
Then again.
Nothing.
They had removed her without saying a word.
No message. No explanation.
Nothing.
She grabbed her laptop and tried opening the staff portal.
Access denied.
Her team email was next.
Locked.
Her badge was deactivated too.
They had cut her off while she slept.
The team that had once felt like family had erased her in less than twelve hours.
Her parents called before nine.
Her father sounded serious.
“Come home. We need to have a family meeting.”
“Why?”
“We need to handle this properly, Claire. Everyone needs to be on the same page.”
He didn’t ask if she was okay.
That hurt more than she wanted to admit.
Claire drove to the house with a heavy feeling in her chest.
She already knew what the meeting was about.
Still, some small part of her hoped someone would take her side.
She knew better.
But she hoped anyway.
The living room was already full when she arrived.
Her father stood near the fireplace. Her mother sat on the couch with a box of tissues beside her.
Sophie was there too.
She sat on the edge of an armchair like she had every right to be there.
Ryan stood behind her, one hand resting on her shoulder.
Claire stopped in the doorway.
Seeing them together in her parents’ house made her hands tighten into fists.
Her father was the first to speak.
“The video has caused a serious problem for the team.”
Claire said nothing.
“We need to handle this carefully.”
“Handle what?”
He looked at her.
“You need to apologize publicly.”
Claire stared at him.
“For what?”
“To Ryan and Sophie.”
Her stomach dropped.
“For the good of everyone,” he added.
There it was again.
The team.
The sponsors.
The reputation.
He kept talking about all of it. How one bad situation could affect everyone. How people were already talking. How the family needed to stay together.
But he never asked Claire what had happened in the lounge.
He never asked why she’d been crying.
He never asked what Ryan had done.
That was what hurt the most.
Sophie started crying halfway through the conversation.
The tears came easily as she wiped her face.
“I never wanted any of this to happen,” she said, her voice shaking. “Ryan forced me into the situation. I didn’t know what to do.”
Claire stared at her.
“What?”
Sophie lowered her eyes.
“I was scared. I felt trapped.”
Claire couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
This was the same girl who had stood in that lounge the night before and apologized to her.
Now she was telling a completely different story.
“I never meant to hurt you,” Sophie continued. “But when you came in, everything got worse.”
Claire looked at her mother.
Her mother had already reached over and taken Sophie’s hand.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “You were brave to tell us.”
Something twisted inside Claire.
Her mother squeezed Sophie’s hand.
“No one should ever feel forced into something.”
Then she looked at Claire.
The expression on her face was the same one Claire remembered from when she was a teenager and had talked back.
“Claire, you need to take responsibility for your part in this.”
Claire blinked.
“My part?”
“Stop making everything about you.”
Claire looked at Sophie.
“She’s clearly the one hurting the most,” her mother added.
Claire didn’t answer.
She looked at her mother holding Sophie’s hand.
Then at her father standing beside Ryan.
That was when she understood.
The decision had already been made.
They had chosen the story that protected the team and the family name.
There was no room for her pain in that story.
So they had simply pushed it aside.
Claire stood.
Nobody stopped her.
She walked out of the living room and went upstairs to the guest room where she still had a few things.
She opened the closet and pulled out a small bag.
A couple of shirts.
Her toiletries.
The old hoodie she used to wear to early morning practices when she was still a junior.
She packed everything quickly.
She left the rest behind.
None of it felt like it belonged to her anymore.
When she came back downstairs, her father was waiting in the hallway.
His eyes dropped to the bag over her shoulder.
“You’re being dramatic.”
Claire kept walking.
“You need to think carefully about your future.”
She stopped for a second.
Then continued toward the front door.
“Claire.”
She didn’t turn around.
She got into her car and drove away.
The house she had grown up in.
The house that no longer felt like home.
She had nowhere to go.
Her apartment didn’t feel safe either.
After everything that had happened with the video, she couldn’t stand the thought of sitting there alone while thousands of strangers decided what kind of person she was.
So she drove.
She didn’t really know where she was going.
Eventually, she found herself heading toward the old rink on the edge of the city.
She had trained there as a junior.
Before the professional contracts.
Before the family pressure.
Before every decision she made had to be measured by how it looked to everyone else.
The parking lot was almost empty when she arrived.
The building looked smaller than she remembered.
Claire parked near the side entrance and turned off the engine.
For a while, she just sat there.
She didn’t cry.
She didn’t move.
She simply stared through the windshield.
The sky slowly darkened.
The temperature dropped.
Claire pulled the old hoodie tighter around herself and leaned back in the driver’s seat.
She tried to sleep.
But every time she closed her eyes, she saw Sophie crying on her mother’s couch.
Then she heard her father’s voice again.
“For the good of everyone.”
Claire opened her eyes.
Around midnight, she checked her phone.
The messages were still coming.
A few were from old teammates asking if she was okay, but somehow they didn’t feel like they were actually worried about her.
They felt curious.
A few reporters were asking for comments.
Nothing from her parents.
Nothing from the coaching staff.
Claire placed the phone on the passenger seat and rested her head against the window.
The hours passed slowly.
Her back started hurting from the way she was sitting.
Her feet were freezing.
She looked toward the rink.
She remembered all the early mornings she’d spent inside that building as a teenager.
She used to push herself harder than everyone else because she believed talent and hard work would be enough.
She had believed that if she worked hard enough, she could control what happened to her.
She had been wrong about a lot of things.
Around three in the morning, her phone lit up the dark car.
Unknown number.
Claire picked it up.
One message.
You’re better than that car. Address is in the next text. Gate code is your old junior number.
Claire stared at the screen.
She read it again.
Then once more.
Whoever had sent it knew where she was.
They knew about her old junior number.
And somehow, they knew exactly when she needed somewhere else to go.
She had no idea who they were.
She had no idea how they had found her.
And she definitely didn’t know if she could trust them.
A second message came through.
An address.
Claire stared at it for several seconds.
She could stay in the freezing car until morning.
She could go back to her apartment and face the messages.
Or she could take a chance on a stranger.
At least the stranger wasn’t telling her to stay quiet.
Claire saved the address.
Then she started the engine.
A few minutes later, she pulled out of the empty parking lot and followed the directions on her phone.
She had no idea where she was going.
She only knew she couldn’t stay where she was.
And whatever was waiting for her at the other end of that address was about to change everything again.
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