Iced Out

Chapter 4: The Shark in the PR Office

COLE

I didn’t even make it to my truck.

I was halfway across the player’s parking lot, the cold Chicago wind biting through my hoodie, my left shoulder throbbing with a dull, vicious ache that Dr. Nova Calloway had noticed in under three minutes. My blood was still running hot from her office. *I don’t make threats. I make clinical observations.* She had looked right through me. And worse, she hadn’t blinked when I tried to intimidate her.

“Harrington!”

I stopped, closing my eyes for a fraction of a second and swallowing a curse. I turned around to see Diane’s assistant, a terrified-looking kid named Toby, jogging toward me with a tablet clutched to his chest.

“Diane needs you,” Toby panted, stopping a safe three feet away. “Upstairs. Right now.”

“I have film review,” I lied flatly.

“She said to tell you...” Toby swallowed hard, looking like he’d rather be standing in front of a ninety-mile-per-hour slapshot without pads. “She said to tell you the Onyx Casino photos just dropped, and if you aren’t in her office in two minutes, she’s pulling your captaincy herself.”

Every muscle in my body locked. The cold wind suddenly felt like absolute zero.

“Tell her I’m on my way,” I said.

Three minutes later, I pushed open the glass doors of the executive suite. Diane’s office was at the end of the hall, a pristine, sterile environment of white leather and chrome that looked less like a hockey franchise’s PR department and more like a war room.

Diane was standing behind her desk, arms crossed, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. She didn’t turn around when I closed the door behind me.

“I spend my life building gods, Cole,” she said softly. It was the quiet tone that meant I was in real trouble. “I craft narratives. I take sweaty, foul-mouthed kids who hit each other with sticks, and I turn them into heroes. Into role models. Into brand ambassadors.”

She finally turned, her eyes narrowed into lethal slits. She picked up a remote from her desk and clicked it.

The flat-screen monitor mounted on the wall flared to life.

It was a tabloid site. The headline took up half the screen in screaming yellow font: GLACIERS CAPTAIN ON THIN ICE? COLE HARRINGTON’S LATE-NIGHT CASINO BENDER.

Beneath it were three grainy, neon-washed photos. Me, sliding into a VIP booth at the Onyx. Me, sitting across from a blonde woman in a dress that was barely there. And the worst one: the woman leaning in close, her hand resting high on my thigh, whispering into my ear while I looked down, my face hidden by the shadow of my baseball cap.

To the world, it looked exactly like what the headline implied: a reckless, arrogant athlete blowing off steam with a random cocktail waitress at 3:00 AM.

To me, it was a nightmare.

The woman wasn’t a hookup. She was a runner for the syndicate. She had been leaning in to tell me that my latest payment for Marcus’s debt was fifty grand short, and that if I didn’t make up the difference by the end of the month, they were going to start breaking things I cared about.

“It’s not what it looks like,” I said, keeping my voice dead level.

“I don’t care what it is, Cole. I care what it *looks* like,” Diane snapped, tossing the remote onto her desk. “You’re two seasons away from a potential retirement. You are the face of this franchise. You have a squeaky-clean, tragic-hero narrative because of what happened to Marcus, and this?” She jabbed a manicured finger at the screen. “This destroys it.”

“It’s one night out. Let them write what they want.”

“It’s not just one night! It’s the third time this month you’ve been spotted in places you have no business being. You look reckless. You look unstable.” Diane stepped out from behind her desk, pacing like a caged shark. “The league ethics committee called me an hour ago. Victor Raines called me twenty minutes ago.”

My jaw clenched at the owner’s name. “What does Victor want?”

“He wants to know if his multi-million-dollar investment is having a meltdown. He’s looking for an excuse to step in, Cole. You know he never liked you having this much power in the locker room.” Diane stopped pacing and leveled a glare at me. “And Frost-Lyte just threatened to pull your individual sponsorship. They are a family-friendly sports drink. They don’t do business with casino degenerates.”

I stared at the photos on the screen, feeling the invisible noose tightening around my neck. *If I lost the Frost-Lyte endorsement, I lost a massive chunk of my income. If I lost that income, I couldn’t make the syndicate payments. If I couldn’t make the payments...*

“Fix it,” I said, my voice rough. “That’s what you do, Diane. You’re the shark. Fix it.”

“Oh, I’m going to fix it,” she said, leaning against the edge of her desk. The lethal anger in her eyes was suddenly replaced by something much worse: cold, calculated strategy. “But you’ve burned through all my easy fixes. A charity hospital visit won’t bury this. An apology press conference makes you look guilty.”

I crossed my arms, suppressing a wince as the movement pulled at my torn rotator cuff. My mind briefly flashed to Dr. Calloway, sitting in her office, holding my career in the palm of her hand with that silver pen. *I was fighting fires on every front.*

“So what’s the play?” I asked.

Diane smiled, and it was entirely devoid of warmth. “We change the narrative. We don’t just put out the fire. We drown it in something the media loves more than a scandal.”

“Which is what?”

“A redemption arc,” she said smoothly. “Anchored by a good, old-fashioned, high-profile romance. You need a girlfriend, Cole. And not a VIP-booth blonde. You need someone wholesome. Stable. Trustworthy. Someone who proves you aren’t spiraling.”

I stared at her, waiting for the punchline. When she didn’t laugh, my stomach dropped. “Absolutely not. I don’t have time to date, Diane. And I’m not dragging some poor actress into my mess for a PR stunt.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Diane replied, her voice turning to steel. “And it won’t be an actress. An actress looks like a stunt. We need someone the press will believe is grounding you. Someone respectable. Someone who inherently commands authority and trust.”

A terrible, sinking realization hit me as I watched Diane’s eyes flick toward the ceiling, specifically, in the direction of the floor above us, where the medical staff had their offices.

“No,” I said, the word tearing out of my throat. “No way in hell.”

“She’s brilliant, she’s beautiful, and she is the absolute picture of professional stability,” Diane continued, practically purring now.

“She’s the team psychologist!” I roared, pushing off the doorframe. “She hates me, Diane! I was just in her office, and we were five seconds away from ripping each other’s throats out!”

“Perfect,” Diane said, looking thoroughly delighted. “Passion translates beautifully on camera. And more importantly, if you’re dating the woman hired to evaluate your mental state, nobody can argue that you’re spiraling. She is the ultimate character witness.”

“She will never agree to it.”

“Everyone has a price, Cole. And lucky for you, I hold the team’s budget.” Diane picked up her iPad, tapping the screen to clear the scandalous photos. “I’ll draft the proposal tonight. You’re going to go in there tomorrow, and you are going to charm Dr. Nova Calloway. Because if you don’t...”

She looked up, her expression deadly serious. “...Victor Raines is going to strip your ‘C’, and your career is over.”