My Hockey Heartthrob: A Promise in Overtime

Chapter Forty-One

They spend the next morning together, still in Mara's hotel room, working through the practical wreckage of the day before with the particular exhausted efficiency of two people who've decided, deliberately, to face a crisis as a unit rather than separately.

"Team PR wants to know if we're willing to do a single, controlled interview," Adrian says, scrolling through messages on his phone, propped against the headboard beside her. "Something that lets us frame the story ourselves, rather than letting every outlet keep running with fragments and speculation."

"Do you want to do that?"

"I don't know. Part of me wants to protect what's left of our privacy completely, refuse everything, let the story die from lack of new material. But another part of me thinks — maybe there's something powerful about actually owning it. Not every detail. But the shape of it. That we survived something hard, separately, and that we're choosing, now, to face what's left of it together."

Mara considers this for a long moment, turning the idea over carefully. "I think I understand that instinct. I spent five years being someone things happened to, without any control over the narrative. Maybe there's something healing about finally getting to say, in our own words, what actually happened, instead of letting strangers speculate about a version that isn't even accurate."

"That's sort of what I was thinking too. Not because we owe anyone an explanation. Because maybe we owe it to ourselves."

They talk it through for the better part of an hour, weighing the risks and the possibilities, and eventually agree on something careful and limited — a single, jointly-approved statement, released together, rather than a full interview that would open them up to further invasive questioning. It's Mara who ends up drafting most of it, professional instinct finally proving useful for something that actually serves her rather than just her byline, and Adrian who reads it over several times, adding small, careful edits, before they both agree it says exactly what they want it to say and nothing more.

Five years ago, circumstances beyond either of our control separated two people who loved each other deeply. In the years since, both of us carried private grief that neither fully understood the shape of until recently. We are choosing, now, to share only this: that what happened was painful, that neither of us handled it perfectly, and that we are grateful, beyond what words can capture, for a second chance to be honest with each other. We ask that our privacy, and the privacy of those who supported us through the hardest years of our lives, be respected going forward. Thank you.

They release it together that afternoon, and the response, while not instantly quieting every outlet's appetite for further detail, shifts something in the coverage's tone — less speculative gossip, more genuine, if occasionally sentimental, coverage of a story that reads, in the hands of more responsible outlets, like something closer to what it actually is: two people surviving something hard, choosing honesty over silence, finally.

Selene calls that evening, having read the statement online before either of them had a chance to send it to her directly.

"That was beautifully written," she says. "Both of you should be proud of how you handled that. Dignified, honest, without giving away anything you didn't want to give away."

"Mara wrote most of it," Adrian says, glancing at her with something warm in his expression. "I just tried not to mess it up."

"I believe that," Selene says, and Mara can hear the smile in her voice even through the phone. "How are you both holding up? Genuinely."

"Exhausted," Mara admits. "But better than yesterday. It helps, having released something on our own terms, instead of just absorbing what other people decided to publish about us."

"I'm glad. I've been worried all day." Selene's voice softens. "For what it's worth, I got a message from a producer this morning, asking if I'd be willing to do an interview about my role in all of this. I said no, obviously, but I wanted you both to know it's out there — apparently my connection to the story has been discovered too."

Mara's stomach tightens at the thought of Selene being pulled into the public spectacle alongside them. "I'm so sorry. You shouldn't have to deal with any of this."

"I chose to be part of your life, Mara, six years ago and every day since. If that means occasionally fielding an unwanted interview request, that's a small price for something that's given me so much more than it's ever cost me." Selene's voice carries genuine warmth. "Don't apologize for people wanting to know about the family we built. That's not something to be ashamed of. It's something to be proud of, honestly, even if the way it became public was ugly."

They talk for a while longer, the conversation drifting toward easier territory, and by the time they hang up, Mara feels something settling into place that resembles, for the first time since the headline hit her phone yesterday morning, something like peace.

That night, lying together in the quiet of Mara's hotel room, neither of them quite ready to return to their separate spaces, Adrian traces a slow, absent pattern against her hand, both of them processing the last two days in comfortable silence.

"I keep thinking about something you said," he says, finally. "About healing not being peaceful, just honest."

"What about it?"

"I think I finally understand what you meant. Yesterday was awful. Genuinely one of the worst days either of us has had in a long time. But underneath the awfulness, there was something real happening — we were actually facing it together, honestly, instead of one of us hiding something from the other or managing a crisis alone. That's different from before. That's new."

"It is," Mara agrees, quiet. "I think that's what I've actually wanted, this whole time. Not for nothing bad to ever happen again. Just for us to face whatever does happen together, honestly, instead of separately and in silence."

"I want that too," Adrian says, turning to look at her fully, something certain and steady in his expression that Mara hasn't seen from him in five years — not the careful, guarded composure he's worn all tournament, but something genuinely, fully present. "I know we still have a long way to go. I know one hard day, faced honestly, doesn't erase five years of getting it wrong. But I want to keep trying, Mara. However long it takes, however many hard days there still are ahead of us."

"I want that too," Mara says, and means it completely, and when he kisses her again, slow and certain in the quiet dark of the hotel room, she feels, for the first time since a stairwell six years ago, genuinely, fully certain that whatever comes next, they're going to face it together.