My Hockey Heartthrob: A Promise in Overtime

Chapter Thirty-Two

The quarterfinal press conference is bigger than anything the tournament's produced so far, the room packed with double the usual credentialed press now that elimination hockey has raised the stakes on every storyline, including, Mara understands with a sinking feeling the moment she walks in, the one that isn't actually about hockey at all.

She takes her usual seat, careful to sit further back than she has all tournament, mindful of Callum's request for professional distance even as she recognizes, watching the room fill around her, exactly how little distance is going to matter if someone decides to make an issue of it directly.

Someone does.

It comes four questions into the availability, from a broadcaster Mara doesn't recognize, representing an outlet she's fairly certain specializes more in gossip than actual hockey coverage, his tone carrying the particular practiced casualness of someone who knows exactly how loaded his question actually is.

"Adrian, there's been some speculation this week about a personal relationship with a member of the press corps — specifically Mara Bennett, who's been covering the tournament. Care to comment on the nature of that relationship?"

The room goes very quiet, the particular quiet of two hundred reporters simultaneously realizing they're about to witness something more interesting than they expected from a routine quarterfinal presser. Mara feels her whole body go rigid, every instinct screaming at her to look anywhere except at Adrian, and she keeps her eyes fixed carefully on her notebook, pen motionless against the page, aware of nothing except her own suddenly too-loud heartbeat.

Adrian doesn't answer right away. When Mara finally risks a glance up, she finds his expression controlled but unmistakably angry, a version of the sharpness she overheard in the tunnel weeks ago, now aimed at a much larger audience.

"That's not a hockey question," he says, flat.

"With respect, it's a question a lot of people are asking."

"With respect," Adrian says, and something in his voice has gone genuinely hard now, "Ms. Bennett is a credentialed journalist doing her job professionally and well, and I'm not going to stand up here and turn her into tabloid material because a photo taken out of context got picked up by outlets more interested in speculation than actual reporting. If you have a hockey question, I'm happy to answer it. If you don't, I think we're done here."

The room shifts, a low murmur moving through the assembled press, several reporters exchanging glances that suggest the moment has already become its own story, regardless of anything else discussed today. The original broadcaster, visibly caught off guard by the directness of the response, tries once more.

"So there's no truth to the speculation—"

"I said we're done," Adrian says, and there's enough finality in it that even the federation's press liaison steps in, smoothly redirecting to the next raised hand, the moment closing as abruptly as it opened.

Mara sits through the rest of the presser in a kind of stunned, grateful silence, aware of exactly what Adrian just did — publicly, unambiguously defended her, at genuine cost to himself, in front of a room that's now going to spend the next several news cycles discussing exactly why a national team captain got that protective about a specific reporter's professional integrity.

She doesn't get a chance to speak with him after. Team PR whisks him away the moment the presser ends, clearly aware of the fresh complications his answer has just created, and Mara is left standing in an emptying press room, notebook clutched tight, feeling something complicated and enormous settling in her chest.

Adrian's evening, by contrast, is spent almost entirely in a series of increasingly tense conversations with his team's public relations staff, who make clear, in careful but unmistakable terms, exactly how much cleanup his answer has generated.

"You basically confirmed there's something there," the PR director says, not unkindly, but with real professional concern evident in her voice. "You didn't have to answer the question at all. A simple 'no comment, let's talk hockey' would have shut it down without adding fuel."

"I wasn't going to let a stranger turn her into a punchline in front of two hundred reporters," Adrian says, unmoved by the professional critique. "I'd make the same call again."

"I understand the instinct. I'm just telling you the practical consequences. This story isn't dying down now. If anything, you just handed it new life."

He listens to the rest of the briefing with visible patience wearing thin, and by the time he's finally alone in his hotel room that night, exhausted from a day that somehow contained both a quarterfinal win and a media crisis in equal measure, he finds himself replaying the moment in the press room with a clarity that surprises him.

He hadn't thought about the consequences at all, answering that question. He'd thought about exactly one thing — the specific look on Mara's face, the careful stillness of someone bracing to be publicly humiliated, and the immediate, total, unthinking need to make sure that didn't happen, professional consequences be damned.

It frightens him a little, sitting alone with the realization. Five years of careful, controlled decision-making, of weighing every choice against consequences and optics and the specific fear of history repeating itself — and it had taken exactly one loaded question, one flash of protective instinct, to override all of it completely.

He thinks about the last time he felt something this immediate, this unthinking — a stairwell, six years ago, the specific certainty of I choose you, that's not up for negotiation — and understands, sitting in a hotel room three thousand miles from that stairwell, that whatever he told himself over five years of careful distance about having moved past all of it was never quite as true as he needed it to be.

He picks up his phone, types a message to Mara, deletes it, types another.

I'm sorry if that made things more complicated for you.

Her reply comes fast, faster than he expects.

Thank you. For defending me. I know it wasn't the easy answer.

It was the only answer I could actually live with, he types back, and means it more than he's meant almost anything he's said in five years.

Can we talk? Actually talk. Not in a conference room. Not with anyone else around.

He stares at her message for a long moment, feeling something in his chest shift — five years of careful deflection finally, genuinely running out of road.

Yes, he types back. Tomorrow. I'll find a time. I promise.

Okay, she replies, and then, after a pause long enough that he can picture her hesitating on the other end: I'm ready to tell you everything, Adrian. Whenever you're ready to hear it.

He sits with the message for a long time after it arrives, feeling the weight of it settle over him — five years of silence finally, unmistakably, coming to an end, whether he's fully prepared for what that ending is going to cost him or not.

I'm ready, he types back, finally. I should have been ready five years ago. I'm sorry it took this long.

He doesn't sleep well that night, but for the first time in longer than he can remember, the sleeplessness carries something other than dread underneath it. Something closer, he thinks, staring at the ceiling in the dark, to hope.