My Hockey Heartthrob: A Promise in Overtime

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The photo doesn't fade the way Mara hoped it might. If anything, by the following morning, it's gotten worse — picked up by two additional outlets overnight, the speculation growing more specific with each new repost, someone somewhere having apparently connected enough dots to float, in a comment thread Mara makes the mistake of reading at six in the morning, the phrase college sweethearts alongside a screenshot of an old, half-forgotten social media photo neither of them had thought to make private years ago.

Callum calls again before nine, and this time there's no ambiguity in his tone at all.

"Okay," he says. "I think we need to talk about actually doing this properly."

"Doing what properly?"

"The Cole feature. The real one. Bennett, this story's already out there, whether either of us likes it or not — the internet has decided there's history between you two, and right now that history is being written by tabloid aggregators with zero actual information and a lot of speculation. You have the actual story. The real one. Don't you think it's better for you to tell it accurately than to let a bunch of anonymous commenters keep making things up?"

Mara feels something cold settle in her stomach, the specific dread of watching a private grief get repositioned, by someone she trusts professionally, as a business opportunity. "Callum, this isn't a story I'm willing to tell. Not like this."

"I'm not asking you to expose anything you're not comfortable with. I'm asking you to get ahead of it. A carefully handled piece, written by the one person who actually has real context, versus letting a hundred outlets speculate wildly for the next two weeks — which do you think serves Cole better? Which serves you better, honestly?"

"You're asking me to write about my own life."

"I'm asking you to do your job, using material you happen to be uniquely positioned to have." His voice carries genuine conviction, the specific confidence of an editor who believes, sincerely, that he's offering good professional advice rather than asking something impossible. "Look, I know this is complicated. I know there's clearly real personal history here. But you're a professional, Bennett. You've written about hard things before. This isn't different just because it's closer to you."

"It's entirely different because it's closer to me." Mara's voice comes out sharper than she intends, five years of careful composure straining under the weight of a conversation she never wanted to have. "Callum, there are things in my history with Adrian Cole that are not public information, that I have no intention of making public information, and that have absolutely nothing to do with hockey. I'm not writing that piece. I'll write you a feature about his captaincy, his leadership style, his tournament performance. I will not write about our relationship."

There's a pause on the line, long enough that Mara can hear him weighing how hard to push.

"Okay," he says finally, though his tone suggests reluctant retreat rather than genuine agreement. "I hear you. But Bennett — think about this. If you don't write it, someone else eventually will. Maybe not accurately. Maybe with real damage attached, to both of you. I'm not trying to pressure you into something you're not comfortable with. I'm trying to make sure you understand the landscape you're actually standing in right now."

He hangs up, and Mara sits alone in her hotel room, phone still in hand, feeling the full weight of exactly the position she's found herself in — a journalist whose professional obligations and personal history have collided in a way that has no clean solution, only a series of increasingly difficult tradeoffs between competing loyalties she never signed up to have to weigh against each other.

She spends the rest of the morning turning the conversation over in her mind, unable to focus on anything else, and by early afternoon, unable to sit with it alone any longer, she calls Selene.

"He's not wrong, exactly," Selene says, once Mara's laid out the whole situation. "About the landscape, I mean. If the story's already circulating, someone's going to write some version of it eventually, accurate or not."

"So you think I should write it?"

"I didn't say that." Selene's voice is careful, weighing the question with real seriousness. "I think you need to ask yourself what you're actually protecting by not writing it. Is it Adrian's privacy? Your own? The relationship, whatever it currently is? Because those are different things, Mara, and they might call for different answers."

Mara considers the question, walking a slow loop around her hotel room, phone pressed to her ear. "I think I'm protecting all three. But mostly — I think I'm protecting the fact that whatever's happening between us right now is still ours. Still private. The second I write about it, even carefully, even fairly, it stops being something that belongs just to us and becomes something that belongs to everyone who reads it. I don't know if I can survive that. I don't know if we can survive that."

"That's a real answer," Selene says, gentle. "That's the actual reason, underneath the professional justifications. I think you should trust it."

"What if Callum's right, though? What if not writing it just means someone worse gets to write it first?"

"Then you'll deal with that if it happens. You don't have to solve every possible future today, Mara. You just have to decide what you're willing to do right now, with the information you actually have." Selene's voice softens further. "For what it's worth — I don't think you should write it. Not because of professional ethics, though those matter too. Because I think some part of you wants an excuse to finally say all of this out loud, in some safe, controlled, professional format, instead of just saying it to him, honestly, the way it actually needs to be said. And I think that's the coward's way out, and I love you too much to let you take it without at least naming it."

Mara stands very still, the observation landing with more force than she expects, uncomfortably, undeniably true.

"That's harsh," she says, finally.

"It's honest. Those aren't always the same thing, but sometimes they are." Selene's voice carries real warmth despite the bluntness. "You don't need a byline to have the conversation you actually need to have, Mara. You just need to be brave enough to have it without one."

Mara doesn't have an answer for that, not one she's ready to say out loud, and after they hang up, she sits with Selene's words for a long time, feeling the particular discomfort of being seen, accurately, by someone who loves you enough to say the hard thing anyway.

She doesn't write the feature that day. She doesn't write it the next day either. But she thinks, more than once, about exactly what it would take to have the real conversation instead — the one without a recorder, without a deadline, without any professional justification standing between her and the truth she's spent five years both chasing and avoiding in equal measure.

She isn't sure, yet, that she's brave enough for it. But for the first time since she landed in this city, she's starting to suspect she might not have a choice much longer.