Chapter 5: What She Knew
1742 Words
I stared at the message so long that Sawyer noticed.
"What is it?" he asked.
I turned the phone toward him without a word. He read it once, then again, his expression darkening with each pass.
"Don't respond to her," he said.
"I wasn't planning to."
"I mean it, Nora. Whatever she has to say, it's not going to help you. People like Bianca don't reach out to clear the air. They reach out to control it."
I knew he was probably right. But there was a small, stubborn part of me that had spent four years being the last person to know anything about my own relationship, and I was tired of it.
"What if she actually knows something?" I asked. "What if there's a piece of this I'm missing?"
"Does it matter?" Sawyer's voice was steady but firm. "He cheated. On camera. In front of thousands of people. What context could possibly change that?"
He had a point. But questions have a way of living in your chest even after you've decided not to ask them out loud, and mine wasn't going anywhere just because Sawyer disapproved.
"I need to hear her out," I said quietly. "Not because I owe her anything. Because I owe myself the full picture before I close this chapter completely."
Sawyer studied me for a long moment, jaw tight, clearly holding back more than he was saying. Finally, he exhaled.
"Then don't do it alone."
"Sawyer…"
"I'm not asking to sit in on the conversation. I'm asking you to tell someone where you're going and when. That's all." His eyes didn't waver. "You don't have to protect yourself from everyone by yourself anymore."
Something about that steadied me more than I expected. I nodded. "Okay."
*****
I met Bianca two days later, at a small coffee shop far enough from the arena that no one would recognize either of us. She was already seated when I arrived, stirring her coffee slowly, none of the smug confidence she'd worn outside the tunnel that night.
"You came," she said as I sat down.
"I almost didn't."
"I wouldn't have blamed you." She wrapped both hands around her cup like she needed something to hold onto. "I know you probably hate me."
"I don't hate you," I said, and meant it, mostly. "I don't know you well enough to hate you. I just know what I saw."
She flinched slightly at that. "What you saw wasn't the first time. But it also wasn't what you think."
"Enlighten me."
Bianca took a breath, like she was steadying herself for something she'd rehearsed but still dreaded saying out loud. "Derek's been seeing me for four months. But he told me you two were already broken up. That you'd agreed to stay together publicly for sponsorship reasons until after the season ended."
The words landed like a slap. "That's not true. We were together. Actually together, not just for cameras."
"I know that now." Her jaw tightened. "I found out the same night you did. I saw the way he looked when your stream caught us. He wasn't panicked because he got caught cheating on some arrangement. He was panicked because he got caught lying to both of us."
I sat back, my coffee forgotten, trying to process what she was telling me. Four months. He'd been building an entire second relationship on a lie he'd told her, while telling me nothing at all.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
"Because I deserve to know the truth too, and figuring it out cost me my dignity in front of the whole internet." Her voice cracked slightly, the first real emotion I'd seen from her. "And because I heard you're seeing Sawyer Kane now, and I wanted you to know what you're dealing with before you trust the wrong man twice."
Something in her tone shifted, sharper now, less confessional and more pointed.
"What does Sawyer have to do with any of this?" I asked carefully.
"Derek and Sawyer have hated each other since college. It's not just rivalry, Nora. Derek stole a scholarship offer that was supposed to go to Sawyer's brother, back before either of them went pro. Sawyer's been waiting years for a way to get back at him." Bianca leaned forward. "What better way than taking his girlfriend the same night his image collapsed?"
The words sat heavy in my chest, ugly and plausible enough to make my stomach turn.
"You're saying this is revenge," I said slowly. "That none of it is real."
"I'm saying you should ask him yourself before you fall any further." She sat back, some of her old composure returning. "I'm not trying to hurt you. I've done enough of that already, apparently, without even meaning to. I just don't think you should walk into another relationship built on something you don't fully understand."
I left the coffee shop twenty minutes later, my mind spinning faster than I could process. Part of me wanted to dismiss everything Bianca said as manipulation, a last attempt to control the narrative now that her own reputation was in ruins. But another part of me, the part still raw from finding out how much Derek had hidden, couldn't fully let it go.
I thought about Sawyer's face outside the tunnel that night. The way he hadn't hesitated to step between me and Derek. The way he'd said ‘this isn't about hockey’ with something fierce behind his eyes.
Had it been about hockey the entire time? About a scholarship stolen years ago, a rivalry that ran deeper than either of them ever explained to me?
My phone buzzed as I reached my car. Sawyer.
‘How did it go?’
I stared at the message for a long moment, thumb hovering, unsure how to even begin.
‘We need to talk,’ I finally typed. ‘In person.’
‘Everything okay?’
‘I don't know yet. That's why we need to talk.’
Three dots appeared immediately, then vanished. Then appeared again.
‘I'm at the rink. Come whenever you're ready. I'm not going anywhere.’
I sat in my car outside the coffee shop for a long time before starting the engine, replaying every interaction with Sawyer since that first night in the tunnel, searching for cracks in what I'd believed was simple honesty.
I didn't find any. But that didn't mean they weren't there.
- Writer
