my hockey heartthrob

Extend cut

The buzzer sounds again. Louder this time. The sound rattles against the metal lockers, bounces off the concrete floor, and settles in my chest like a warning shot.

“Captain Cole? Two minutes, sir. Media staging is live.”

Mara’s voice is clipped, professional, the same voice she uses when she’s covering for me with the league office. She doesn’t know I’m in here. She thinks I’m in the film room, prepping sound bites.

Marcus doesn’t flinch. His eyes stay on mine, dark and steady, like he’s deciding if five years of distance is about to break in this 8x10 equipment room that smells like old tape, sweat, and floor wax.

I shift my weight. The recorder in my bag is still red. Still running. The little light pulses against my hip, a tiny accusation.

I could stop it. I don’t.

Some truths only exist if they’re caught raw.

“You can’t say that to me and then walk out,” I say. My voice sounds steadier than I feel. It’s the reporter’s voice. The one I use when I’m staring down a senator who’s lying to my face.

Marcus exhales through his nose, a short, frustrated sound. The sound he made in college when Coach benched him for talking back. “Watch me.”

But he doesn’t move toward the door.

He steps closer instead.

Close enough that I catch the faint smell of his cologne—cedar and something sharper, like he’s been trying to scrub the rink off his skin. Close enough that when he speaks, it’s barely above a whisper, meant for me and no one else.

“You think I don’t see it, Leo? You writing everything down. Keeping it professional. Keeping me at arm’s length like that night didn’t happen.”

“That night was five years ago,” I say. The words feel brittle.

“So was the promise,” he says back. His jaw tightens. “And promises don’t expire just because the league got involved.”

The door handle rattles. The lock is old. It’ll give if she tries hard enough.

“Cole! We’re live in sixty!” Mara’s voice is closer now. Panic edging in.

That’s when he breaks. Not with words.

He reaches out, grips my wrist, just above where my pulse is hammering against my skin. His hand is calloused from years of taping sticks and shaking hands for cameras. His thumb brushes over my pulse point once, deliberate, like he’s checking I’m real. Like he needs to feel that I haven’t gone cold on him yet.

“Turn it off,” he says.

I don’t ask what.

I know.

Off the record. Off camera. Off the script we’ve both been following since I showed up uninvited to his press day.

I pull the recorder out. The leather of the bag sticks to my palm. My thumb finds the switch without looking.

_Click._

The small red light dies. The room goes quieter, like we just cut the last tether to the outside world. Like the building itself is holding its breath.

Marcus lets out a breath he’s been holding since I walked into that interview room with a smile and a list of approved questions I never intended to ask.

“Okay,” he says. His voice is rough now. “Say it. Say what you came here to say. Because I’m not leaving this room until you do.”

I stare at him. The kid from the Subaru is still in there somewhere, under the suits and the PR training and the Captain C stitched to his chest in gold thread. He’s angry. He’s hurt. He’s still looking at me like I’m the only person in the building that matters.

Outside, Mara tries the door again. The handle jiggles, metal on metal.

“Cole! Now! They’re rolling B-roll without you!”

Marcus doesn’t look away. He doesn’t blink.

“Your call, Leo. Off camera. No rewrites. No edits. No clean-up crew waiting to sanitize it for the league website.”

The buzzer goes one last time. A long, insistent wail that echoes down the hallway.

Then silence.

The kind of silence that happens right before a fight, or a confession, or both.

Five years ago, I told him I’d follow his story wherever it went.

I didn’t say I’d stop being in love with the storyteller.

So what do you say to the guy who became everything you thought he would… and walked away from you to get there?

The weight of it sits between us, heavier than any microphone, heavier than the contract he signed, heavier than the cameras waiting outside.

The door is still locked.

The clock is still running.

And for the first time since I walked in, Marcus isn’t the captain. He’s just Marcus.