My Glory on Live TV Made Him Rich

Chapter 2 An Undelivered Command

I slept. Deeply. For the first time in what felt like years, I didn’t wake up at 3 a.m. with a racing heart, my mind already crunching numbers for the next practice, worrying about Chase’s knee or his mood or the subtle dip in his shot-per-game average. There were no ghosts in my dreams, no phantom commentators whispering his name. There was only the dreamless, heavy quiet of a system that had finally been powered down.

The morning light was a pale grey, filtering through the blinds of the apartment we shared. His side of the bed was empty, which meant he’d likely crashed at a teammate’s place after the "celebrations." It was his classic move after one of our fights: physical distance as a form of punishment, forcing me to be the one to text first, to apologize for having feelings.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I let it go. It buzzed again. And again. A rapid-fire triplet of notifications. I knew the cadence. It was Chase, his impatience bleeding through the digital ether.

I finally reached over and picked it up. Three messages, stacked neatly on the lock screen.

*Chase: Where the hell are you?*

*Chase: I'm at Miller's. He's pissed about the tablet. Fix it.*

*Chase: Look, I’ve decided to forgive your little scene last night. We won. Let’s not ruin it. I need my game jerseys washed for the press tour tomorrow. And I need the preliminary data models for the Nationals by noon. Send them over. We’ll talk tonight.*

I read the messages twice, a strange sense of detachment washing over me. It was like reading an artifact from a dead civilization. The language was familiar, but the power behind it was gone. *I’ve decided to forgive you. I need. Send them over.* These weren't requests; they were commands from a king to a subject whose rebellion was seen as a temporary and tiresome glitch.

He still believed he had a cloud backup. That I, his ever-dutiful archivist, had naturally saved everything. He couldn't conceive of a world where I would burn the entire library.

I didn’t reply. Instead, I got out of bed, walked to my closet, and pulled out the duffel bag I kept packed for away games. I began to fill another, larger suitcase with my clothes, my books, my laptop. Everything that was mine. I left his championship rings on the dresser. I left the framed photo of us from his rookie year. I left the girl who had built her entire world inside the four walls of his ambition.

An hour later, I was standing in the cavernous, cool, and quiet lobby of the Northwood Arena. Home of the Vipers. Our archrivals. The team we had just vanquished. The air here smelled different—less like stale beer and cheap victory cigars, more like clean ice and disinfectant. It was sterile, professional, and blessedly free of ghosts.

A security guard led me to an elevator that took us to the executive level. The hallway was lined with silver-framed photos of Vipers legends, their faces grim and determined even in victory. It was a hall of warriors, not celebrities.

The door at the end of the hall was marked with a simple plaque: Julian Thorne, Team Captain.

I knocked. A voice, calm and low, said, “Come in.”

Julian was nothing like Chase. Where Chase was a storm of dark-haired, explosive charisma, Julian was the steady, unyielding pressure of a glacier. He was tall and leanly muscled, with pale blonde hair and eyes the color of a winter sky. He was the only player in the league whose on-ice movements I had never been able to fully model. He was unpredictable because he was cerebral, a chess master on skates.

He was sitting at a large oak desk, watching game footage on a monitor. He looked up when I entered, and his expression wasn't surprised, just… expectant.

“Harper,” he said, his voice even. “I was wondering when you’d get here.”

I blinked. “How did you know?”

“I saw the broadcast.” He gestured to the chair opposite his desk. “And I’ve played against Chase for six years. I know he’s not smart enough to come up with a play like that ‘Desperation Gambit.’ That had your signature all over it. The calculated risk, the exploitation of the far-side defenseman’s fatigue… it was brilliant. And he gave the credit to a cheerleader.”

He didn't say it with pity. He said it like a fellow professional stating an undeniable fact. For a moment, I felt a ridiculous urge to cry, not from sadness, but from the simple, shocking relief of being seen.

“I’m here about the offer,” I said, my voice coming out stronger than I expected.

Two months ago, after a particularly brutal regular-season game where our team had narrowly won, Julian had caught me in the tunnel. He hadn't said a word to Chase. He’d looked directly at me and said, “What he’s paying you isn’t enough. When you’re ready for a real job, call me.”

It had been a lifeline I never thought I’d need.

He nodded slowly, his gaze intense. “The offer still stands. Head of Analytics and Strategy. Assistant Coach designation. Full access to the team, the data, the budget. Your only report is to me and Coach Davies. You answer to no one else.”

He slid a folder across the desk. A contract. My name was already printed on the top line: Harper Pearce.

“Chase’s entire playbook is a house of cards built on your models, isn’t it?” he asked, though it wasn’t really a question.

“It was,” I said. “The house isn’t there anymore.”

A flicker of something—respect, maybe even admiration—crossed his face. He leaned back in his chair. “The Nationals are in three weeks. He’s going in blind. We’re not.”

I opened the contract. The salary was nearly triple what Chase gave me as an "allowance." The terms were clear, the responsibilities defined. It was real. It was a career, not a codependent relationship disguised as one.

I took the pen he offered and signed my name.

“Welcome to the Vipers, Harper,” he said, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. He stood up and walked over to a door I hadn’t noticed. He opened it.

Inside was an office. Not large, but it was sleek and modern, with a glass wall overlooking the empty rink. A massive monitor was mounted on one wall, a new ergonomic chair was tucked into a minimalist desk, and on the desk was a brand-new, top-of-the-line tactical tablet, still in its box. Next to the door was a small, silver nameplate. It was blank.

“Your space,” he said. “Tell me what you want on the nameplate. ‘Pearce’? ‘Head of Analytics’? It’s your call.”

My call. The concept felt foreign. For five years, my title had been an unspoken, invisible one: ‘Chase’s Girlfriend.’

“Just ‘Harper Pearce’ is fine,” I said.

“Good.” He handed me a keycard. “This gets you everywhere you need to go. We have a team meeting at 1 p.m. to review last night’s game film. I’d like you to be there. I want the team to know who’s in charge of our strategy from now on.”

He was putting me in front of the players. On day one. Not hiding me in a back room. The contrast was so stark it was dizzying.

As he walked me out, my phone, which I’d put on silent, lit up in my hand. A string of missed calls from Chase. A dozen more from Coach Miller. A few from our mutual friends, no doubt sent as his messengers.

I ignored them all. I felt a sense of peace settle over me, the calm that comes after a controlled demolition. The old structure was gone, and something new, something solid, was being built in its place.

We were standing by the elevator when my phone began to ring again. This time, the caller ID made me pause: Coach Miller. Chase’s coach. A man who had treated me with a kind of benevolent dismissal for five years, like I was the team’s unofficial emotional support mascot.

Julian glanced at the screen, then at me. “You don’t have to answer that.”

“I know,” I said. But this was different. This was a loose end. A final bit of data I needed to collect.

I answered, putting the phone on speaker.

“Harper, thank God!” Coach Miller’s voice was a strained bark, stripped of its usual booming confidence. “Stop playing games. Chase is a wreck.”

“Hello, Coach,” I said coolly.

There was a pause. My tone had clearly thrown him. “Listen, whatever fight you two had, you need to put it behind you. This is bigger than some lovers’ quarrel. This is about the championship.”

“I agree,” I said. “Which is why I’m here.”

“Here? Where are you? Are you on your way to the rink? Good. Because Chase refuses to come out of the locker room. He says he can’t run the recovery drills without his performance metrics from last night. He says the tablet is wiped and there’s no backup. Tell me he’s wrong, Harper. Tell me you have it.”

The desperation in his voice was thick. He, too, had been coasting on my invisible labor, happy to let Chase take the glory as long as the wins kept coming.

“He’s not wrong, Coach,” I said, my voice echoing slightly in the quiet hallway of the Northwood Arena. “The data is gone.”

“What?” The word was a choked gasp. “What do you mean, gone? Why would you do that? We have Nationals!”

Julian leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching me with that same unnervingly calm expression. He was letting me handle it.

“That sounds like a problem for the Lions’ brilliant captain,” I said. “And for his inspiration. Maybe Chloe has some intuitive feelings about lactate thresholds and muscle fatigue.”

A sputtering sound came from the phone. Before Coach Miller could form a response, I delivered the final line of code.

“I have to go now, Coach. The Vipers have a team meeting, and I’m presenting.”

I hung up. The silence that followed was absolute.

Julian pushed himself off the wall. He didn’t smile, but his eyes held a new light. He simply nodded, once, and pressed the elevator button for me. The doors slid open, revealing the path down. The path away.