The Hockey Alpha Rejected His Plus Sized Mate

Shattered Bond

Chapter Two: Shattered Bond

Nora's POV

The drive home took eleven minutes. I counted every one of them just to keep my hands steady on the wheel.

My phone buzzed the second I stepped through my apartment door. Kenzie's name lit up the screen.

I answered without thinking. "Don't."

"Don't what? I haven't said anything yet."

"Don't ask if I'm okay. I can hear it coming."

"Fine. Are you home?"

"Yes."

"Do you want me to come over?"

"No."

"Nora—"

"I need to be alone right now. I can't perform okay for anyone tonight, not even you."

She went quiet for a second. "I saw what he said. Everyone saw what he said."

"I know."

"He's a coward."

"He's an Alpha with sponsors and a family name to protect. There's a difference, even if it doesn't feel like one right now."

"Don't defend him."

"I'm not defending him. I'm just too tired to be angry yet. Give it a day."

"Call me the second that changes. I mean it, Nora."

"I will."

I hung up before she could say anything else kind, because kindness was the one thing I couldn't survive without falling apart completely.

My phone buzzed again almost immediately. My mother this time.

I let it ring twice before I picked it up. "Hi, Mom."

"Baby, are you home? I tried calling the second I heard."

"I'm home. I'm fine."

"You don't have to be fine. Not tonight."

"If I'm not fine tonight, I don't know when I will be."

"Your father would have driven straight to that arena and dragged that boy off the ice by his collar."

That pulled something close to a laugh out of me, small and tired. "I believe you."

"He'd have told you the same thing I'm telling you now. That boy's decision says nothing about your worth. It says everything about his fear."

"I know that. Knowing it and feeling it are different things right now."

"Do you want me to come stay with you?"

"No. I just need quiet."

"Promise me you won't do anything tonight you'll regret. No applications, no resignation letters, nothing final."

"I'm just packing some things, Mom. That's all."

"Packing what?"

"Dad's notebooks."

She went quiet on the other end. "Don't put those away because of him, Nora. Those notebooks were never about proving anything to anyone watching tonight."

"I know. I just need them out of sight for a while. I can't look at them and think about hockey right now without thinking about what happened on that ice."

"That's fair. Just don't let tonight decide what happens to them permanently."

"I won't."

"Call me in the morning."

"I will."

I set the phone down on the counter and let the silence settle back over the apartment, heavier now that both voices had gone. I walked to the bookshelf where my father's notebooks lived, twenty-three of them, each one filled with his handwriting, his diagrams, his careful notes on power plays and breakaways. I'd carried them through every rejected coaching application, every interview that ended in a polite smile and nothing more.

I pulled the first one down and held it against my chest.

"You'd be disappointed in me," I said to the empty room. "Twenty-four years old, and I let one man's decision convince me I don't belong here."

The room didn't answer. It never did.

I packed the notebook into a box, then a second, then a third, my hands moving slower than my thoughts. Somewhere between the fourth and fifth, I stopped pretending the tears weren't falling and just let them.

I thought about the years I'd spent studying film after everyone else had gone home, the nights I'd rewritten power-play diagrams until they made sense in a way no textbook had ever managed, the quiet satisfaction of watching a strategy I'd built work exactly as I'd designed it, even when no one in that arena knew my name.

None of it had mattered the moment the cameras found my body and decided that was the only story worth telling.

I reached for the sixth notebook and stopped. This one was different, the cover worn soft at the corners, the spine cracked from years of handling. I opened it to the first page and found my father's handwriting from the year I turned twelve, the year he first let me sit beside him during practice instead of watching from the stands.

Nora caught something today during line changes that even Coach missed. Told her so. She just shrugged like it was nothing. It wasn't nothing.

I closed the notebook and pressed it flat against my chest, like it could hold the rest of me together if I just held on hard enough.

"I tried, Dad," I whispered. "I really tried."

A sharp knock cracked through the apartment.

I froze, notebook still pressed against me. Nobody knocked on my door after midnight. Nobody had bothered to check on me since I'd walked out of that arena.

The knock came again, harder this time.

"Who is it?" I called, not moving from the floor.

No answer. Just a third knock, steady and patient, like whoever stood on the other side had no intention of leaving until I opened it.

I set the notebook down carefully, wiped my face with the back of my hand, and stood. My legs felt unsteady beneath me, the weight of the night finally catching up all at once.

"I know someone's there," I said, closer to the door now. "I can hear you breathing."

Still nothing.

I gripped the handle, my heart hammering harder than it had all night, harder even than when the marks first burned across my wrist.

"If you're a reporter, I have nothing to say. You already got your story tonight."

A low voice finally answered, rough and unfamiliar. "I'm not a reporter."

"Then who are you?"

"Open the door, Nora. I think you and I need to talk."

"It's the middle of the night."

"I know. I wouldn't have come if it could wait until morning."

"Everything could wait until morning. I just watched my whole life end on live television a few hours ago."

"That's exactly why I didn't wait."

"How do you know where I live?"

"It wasn't hard to find. You're not exactly hiding."

"That's not comforting."

"I'm not here to comfort you. I'm here because I think you and I want the same thing, and neither of us is going to get it sitting on opposite sides of this door."

"And what is it you think I want?"

"A chance," he said. "The same one nobody's given you all year."

"Plenty of people have made me offers tonight. None of them came at midnight."

"None of them meant it. I do."

"You don't know me well enough to make that promise."

"I know enough. I watched the Black Falcons win three championships running plays I'd bet my whole career you designed. Nobody builds something like that and just disappears because one man got scared in front of a camera."

"You make it sound simple."

"It's not simple. It's just true."

Something about the steadiness in his voice made me stay exactly where I was instead of stepping back.

"How do you know my name?"

"Everyone knows your name tonight," he said. "I'm just the only one knocking instead of laughing."

I held the notebook a moment longer, my father's handwriti

ng still warm under my fingers, and then I set it down on the table beside the door.

"If this is some kind of trick—"

"It's not."

"It better not be."

I opened the door.