Power Play

Chapter 7 - The story no one asked for

The reporter's name was Sam Delgado, and she arrived at Tuesday's practice accompanied by a photographer, displaying a lanyard from the Star Tribune, and wearing a smile that Reese recognized immediately as the professional variety — warm, practiced, and concealing no information regarding the content of the forthcoming article.

"We're doing a feature," Coach Halloran told the team before practice, in the specific tone he used for things he had already decided and wasn't interested in discussing. "A statewide article regarding the current season is being prepared. They have requested several player interviews, specifically mentioning you, Kellan."

Reese was aware, upon entering this program, that the term "historic" was accompanied by certain obligations, and these obligations manifested in moments such as this. Twenty individuals on the ice engaged in the sport of hockey while she was required to step aside to explain her experience about what it felt like to be the story instead of just a player in it.

"You don't have to do it," Cole said, low, catching her at the boards before the interview. "I can tell Halloran to push it to someone else."

"It is fine." It was not, particularly, but she had become adept at articulating that phrase. "It is part of the agreement. I committed to the historical aspect. One cannot express dissatisfaction when history presents itself with a notepad."

"You can complain to me," he said, and the sheer certainty of the sentence took her by surprise, more than she was willing to acknowledge.

The interview went fine, mostly. Delgado asked good questions, better than Reese had expected, about her development path and her read on the defensive zone and whether the transition had been what she had expected. It was the last question that landed wrong.

"And regarding your living situation," Delgado stated, briefly consulting her notes as if it were an afterthought, a notion that Reese found unconvincing. "You are sharing accommodations with Cole Ashford, the team captain and a projected first-round draft pick. How is that dynamic functioning, both on and off the ice?"

Reese felt that the question landed somewhere in her chest like a bad hit, the kind you don't see coming until it's already happened. "It's a housing assignment," she said carefully. "Same as anyone else on the roster. We're teammates."

"Some may consider this assignment to be unconventional, particularly in light of the heightened focus on the program this year."

"Some may express a variety of opinions," Reese stated, perceiving the sharpness in her own tone and finding it difficult to retract. "I'm here to play hockey. That's the whole story, as far as I'm concerned."

Delgado wrote down something but Reese had no idea about it. She spent the rest of practice under the fear that a story is getting written about her life by someone who'd spent fifteen minutes in it.

---

The piece ran online that Friday under the headline **NORTHBRIDGE'S HISTORIC SEASON — AND THE ROOMMATE STORY NO ONE ASKED FOR**, and it was worse than Reese had braced for, which was saying something, because she'd braced hard.

It wasn't exactly cruel. It was something even more unsettling. It was intrigued that transformed two people living in a cozy two-bedroom apartment due to a housing shortage into a storyline filled with implications neither of them had intended. It quoted an anonymous teammate — Reese had a strong hunch it was Devon Marsh — mentioning that the arrangement had "raised some eyebrows in the room." It even featured a photo of her and Cole from the bench during that memorable road trip win, the one where he held the stick-tap just a beat too long, and cheekily captioned it chemistry on and off the ice?

She read it while curled up on the couch with her knees drawn to her chest, and she continued to read it when Cole returned home from a late film session and discovered her there, phone in hand, with her jaw set.

"You saw it," he said. Not a question.

"Everyone saw it, Cole. That's the whole point of it running in the *Star Tribune*."

He came around the couch and sat down, not close, careful about the distance, which she noticed and didn't know what to do. "I'm sorry. I should have pushed harder to keep you out of it."

"It's not your fault." She scrolled back to the photo, the stick tap, the caption, and felt something hot and humiliated climbing her throat. "This is what I signed up for. I just didn't think it would be — " she searched for the word " — this. I thought they'd write about my shot. Not about who I live with."

"They should have written about your shot," Cole said, and there was real anger in it, banked, the kind she had only heard him direct at Devon Marsh in the equipment room. "Your shot's the best thing on this roster. That reporter had a real story sitting right in front of her and she wrote gossip instead, because gossip sells better than a woman being good at her job. That's not about you being unprofessional. That's about her being lazy."

Something in Reese's chest loosened slightly at the force of that— not necessarily the content itself, but rather the fact that he had expressed it so freely, without any hesitation or consideration of what it might cost him to say it.

"The team's going to talk," she said. "More than they already do."

"Let them talk." He said it with a flatness that told her he meant it completely, and it startled her, because six weeks ago this was a man who has built his entire personality around not letting anything become a distraction, and here he was volunteering to absorb one.

"That's a change of policy, captain."

"Yeah, well." He looked at her, and there was something unguarded in his face, something he usually kept locked down tighter than anyone she'd ever met. "Turns out some things are worth being a distraction."

Neither of them said anything else for a moment. The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the faint tick of the radiator working against the October cold. Reese was aware, with an intensity that felt almost dangerous, how close he was sitting, of the two inches of couch cushion between his hand and hers, of the particular gravity that seemed to exist around him now that hadn't existed in August.

"For what it's worth," she said softly, "I don't regret the housing assignment. Whatever the article says. I just wanted you to know that."

Something moved across his face — relief, maybe, or something closer to hope than he probably wanted to admit to — and for a second she thought he was going to close the distance between them on that couch, the way she'd thought he was going to on the sidewalk outside the bonfire.

He didn't. He exhaled, slow, and looked away first, and said, "Get some sleep, Kellan. Early skate tomorrow," and the moment folded itself shut, gentle and frustrating in equal measure, both of them once again choosing the safer, slower road instead of the one that scared them.

But Reese noticed, walking to her room, that he watched her go the whole way down the hall, and she noticed, closing her door, that some new and reckless part of her didn't want him to look away anymore.