My Hockey Heartthrob: A Promise in Overtime

Chapter Twelve

Mara catches Marcus Cross in the mixed zone the next morning, still in his practice gear, hair damp, the easy grin from the tunnel yesterday fully back in place like it never left.

"Bennett, right?" he says, when she introduces herself properly, offering a hand. "The journalist."

"That's me."

"Figured. Word travels fast around here." Something flickers behind his eyes, quick and knowing, gone before Mara can decide whether to acknowledge it, and she understands, watching him decide not to say anything else about it, that whatever happened in the tunnel yesterday has apparently made the rounds through at least part of the locker room already. "What do you need?"

She works through her prepared questions — line chemistry, what it's like playing alongside Adrian, the specific texture of a captain's leadership style from a teammate's perspective rather than the man's own careful accounting of it. Cross is a good interview, generous with detail in the way younger players sometimes are before they've learned to be as guarded as their captains, and Mara gets a genuinely usable quote about tournament pressure within the first two minutes.

It's the fourth question that gets her something she didn't ask for.

"How long have you played with him?" she asks. "Cole, I mean."

"Two seasons at the club level, this is my first call-up with him internationally." Cross considers the question a moment longer than it strictly requires. "He's a good captain. Best I've played for, honestly. Fair, direct, doesn't play favorites."

"Has he always been like that? That direct?"

Something shifts in Cross's expression — a small recalibration, like he's deciding how much he's actually allowed to say about a subject he clearly understands is more complicated than a standard captain profile requires. "Honestly? From what the older guys say, he's been different since forever. Like — I only know him as this guy. Controlled. Doesn't let much through. But apparently that's not always how he was."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't really know the details. Above my pay grade, and honestly not my business." He shrugs, easy again, the careful moment passing. "Just, one of the guys who's known him since juniors mentioned once that he used to be looser. More fun, I guess, before he became — this. Whatever changed him, changed him a while ago. Before my time with him, definitely."

Mara writes it down, careful, professional, her hand steadier than the sentence deserves. Used to be looser. Before my time. Five words that mean nothing to Callum's feature piece and everything, quietly, devastatingly, to the version of this story that only Mara actually knows the shape of.

"Anyway," Cross says, glancing toward the tunnel, where a staffer is visibly waiting to usher him toward his next obligation, "that's not really a story, is it? Guys change. That's just getting older."

"No," Mara agrees, closing her notebook. "That's just getting older."

She doesn't believe it, not entirely, not about this particular version of getting older, but it's a fine, professional thing to say, and Cross seems satisfied enough by it to head off toward the tunnel with an easy wave, leaving Mara alone with a quote she's never going to be able to use and a small, sharp ache settling somewhere under her ribs that has nothing to do with anything she can put in a byline.

Her interview with Dominic Voss is scheduled for two o'clock, arranged through the Canadian federation's press office as part of the broader tournament feature package Callum has her building, and Mara arrives at the designated conference room with roughly the professional neutrality she'd bring to any interview subject she's never met before.

That neutrality lasts about four seconds past the moment Voss actually walks in.

He's tall, broad through the shoulders in the way elite hockey players tend to be, with an easy, athletic confidence that reads, even before he's said a word, as fundamentally different from Adrian's careful containment. Where Adrian enters a room like a man bracing for something, Voss enters like a man who's never once found a room he couldn't win over.

"Mara Bennett," he says, before she's even introduced herself, extending a hand with a grin that suggests he already knows the effect it has on people. "I read your piece on the opening ceremony. Good work. Better than the usual scene-setter garbage most of you turn in, no offense to your colleagues."

"Some offense taken on their behalf," Mara says, and he laughs, genuine and immediate, settling into the chair across from her with the loose, unhurried ease of a man who has never once worried about giving away too much.

The interview, when it gets going, is a study in contrast so complete it's almost comedic. Where Adrian answered every question with clipped, careful economy, Voss talks freely, generously, offering color and personality with every response, clearly enjoying the exercise of being interviewed the way some athletes genuinely do. He's funny. He's self-deprecating in a way that reads as calculated but not unpleasantly so. He tells a long, entertaining story about a junior tournament disaster involving a lost equipment bag that Mara knows, even as she's laughing, is going to be the best quote in her entire tournament package.

"You're good at this," she says, somewhere past the twenty-minute mark, meaning it as professional observation.

"I like people," Voss says, simply. "Most guys in this sport treat the media like an obstacle. I think it's part of the job. Might as well enjoy it." His eyes hold hers a beat longer than the observation strictly requires, something warm and unmistakably interested moving behind them. "Might as well enjoy the company too, when the company's good."

Mara feels the shift in the room's temperature and recognizes it instantly for what it is — not unwelcome, exactly, not unprofessional in any way she could actually object to, just entirely, disarmingly direct in a way that stands in such sharp relief against every guarded, careful exchange she's had with Adrian this week that she finds herself, for a moment, genuinely unsure how to respond.

"I appreciate a good interview subject," she says, professional, deflecting lightly, and watches him register the deflection with easy good humor rather than any wounded ego.

"Fair enough." He leans back slightly, still grinning. "For what it's worth, your Cole piece is going to be the one everyone's talking about tomorrow, not mine. Whole tournament's buzzing about that press conference exchange. You should know — you're covering the story everyone actually wants."

"Is that so."

"Guarded guy, big comeback narrative, half the press corps convinced there's something personal going on underneath it." He says it lightly, watching her with a raised eyebrow, clearly testing to see if she'll bite. "You'd know better than any of us, I imagine, since you're the one actually getting time with him."

Mara keeps her expression perfectly neutral, five years of professional discipline holding steady even as something in her chest tightens at the observation. "I get time with everyone I'm covering. That's the job."

"Sure." Voss's grin widens, unbothered, entirely too perceptive for Mara's comfort. "I'll drop it. For now." A beat, and then, lighter, deliberately shifting: "Buy you a drink sometime this week? Strictly for research purposes. I've got great material on international tournament pressure that doesn't make it into official interviews."

"I'll think about it," Mara says, which is neither yes nor no, and Voss seems entirely satisfied with the ambiguity, standing to leave with the same easy confidence he arrived with.

"Take your time," he says, at the door. "I'm not going anywhere. Well — I'm going quite a lot of places, tournament schedule being what it is. But you know what I mean."

He's gone before Mara can decide whether the exchange has left her amused or unsettled, and she sits alone in the conference room for a long moment afterward, notebook full of genuinely good material for tomorrow's coverage, and a small, uncomfortable awareness settling in alongside it — that somewhere in this building, three floors up or down or across some corridor she hasn't found yet, a man who has spent five years giving her nothing but careful, guarded fragments of himself is very possibly about to find out exactly how easily someone else gave her, in twenty unguarded minutes, everything he never could.

She isn't sure, packing up her recorder, whether that thought makes her feel powerful or simply, quietly, sad.