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Chapter 35 — A Question Without an Answer

Autor: Rovelt Vell
last update Data de publicação: 2026-08-14 01:11:07

SKY’S POV

Thursday’s session started with hockey, the way most of them did now, and somewhere in the middle of talking about playoff pressure, I asked her something I hadn’t planned to ask at all.

“Is it normal,” I said, “to depend on someone the way I’ve depended on you this year?”

She looked up from her notepad, a careful look crossing her face. “Define depend.”

“I don’t know. Needing someone’s voice in my head before a big moment. Feeling steadier just because they’re in the room. Noti
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  • Behind the Ice Wall    Chapter 45 — A Secret Investigation

    SKY’S POV Reyes found me before practice the next morning, coffee in hand, glancing down the hallway before he spoke as he’d already decided this conversation shouldn’t happen anywhere with cameras. “I thought about what you said,” he told me. “About finding proof instead of just suspecting.” “And?” “And I think you’re right that we need to try. Quietly. If we go to Marcus with a theory and nothing behind it, Damian spins it as harassment before we’ve even started.” He kept his voice low. “So we do this carefully. No accusations out loud. Just information.” “What kind of information?” “Meeting schedules. Who had access to what, and when. If the leaks are timed to internal meetings the way I think they are, there should be a pattern showing exactly who was in the room each time.” • We started small, which felt strange given how large the problem had become. Reyes pulled meeting logs he had legitimate access to as coaching staff — nothing confidential, nothing that would raise

  • Behind the Ice Wall    Chapter 44 — Someone Inside

    SKY’S POV I called Reyes before practice, too early for it to be a casual conversation, and he must have understood that from the tone of my voice because he told me to come straight to his office instead of the locker room. “You read the article,” he said, not a question. “Somebody close to the organization. That’s a pretty small circle, Reyes. Who has access to whether my sessions got discontinued?” “HR. Legal. Marcus’s office. Damian, obviously.” He rubbed his forehead. “That’s still six or seven people minimum, and that’s assuming nobody talked to somebody who talked to somebody else.” “It’s not random anymore. First it was a photo. Then rumors. Now specific details about my therapy sessions that only people inside this building would know.” I sat down across from him. “This isn’t bad luck. Somebody’s doing this on purpose.” “I agree with you,” he said, quieter than I expected. “I’ve thought that for a while now. I just didn’t have anything solid enough to say it out loud.”

  • Behind the Ice Wall    Chapter 43 — Losing Control

    SKY’S POV Thursday’s game started wrong and never fully corrected itself. I felt it in warm-ups already, a heaviness in my legs that had nothing to do with conditioning, my glove a half-step slow on shots I would normally read without thinking twice. I told myself it was fatigue. I told myself a lot of things that week that didn’t hold up once the puck actually dropped. First period, I let in a soft one. Not a bad shot, not a screen, just a wrist shot from the top of the circle that I should have had and didn’t, my angle slightly off, my reaction slightly behind where it needed to be. The bench went quiet in that particular way benches go quiet when nobody wants to say what everyone’s thinking. • Second period, it got worse before it got better. A two-on-one broke in clean, and I overcommitted to the pass, left the shooter an open net, and watched the puck go in from an angle I should have covered without any real effort. Two goals now, both on me, both the kind of mistake tha

  • Behind the Ice Wall    Chapter 42 — The Empty Chair

    SKY’S POV The new psychologist’s name was Dr. Whitfield. He had a firm handshake, a leather notebook, and an office that had been a spare conference room before someone decided the team needed continuity of care while Amira’s leave played out. “Sky. Good to meet you.” He gestured at the chair across from his desk. Not the low armchair Amira used. A regular office chair, the kind you’d get called into for a performance review. “I’ve read your file. I want you to know I’m not here to replace anyone. Just to help however I can during this transition.” “Sure,” I said, and sat down, and felt the wrongness of the room before he’d said another word. • He started with breathing exercises, the same basic ones I’d learned years ago before Amira ever taught me anything real. Box breathing. Four counts in, four held, four out. I did it because refusing seemed like more trouble than it was worth, but my chest stayed tight the whole time, like my body knew this wasn’t the same conversation ev

  • Behind the Ice Wall    Chapter 41 — Under Investigation

    SKY’S POV She didn’t call back the next morning. Or the one after that. Three days of nothing, and I told myself that was normal, that a woman facing a formal HR investigation had better things to do than update me on her decision. I told myself a lot of things that week that I didn’t fully believe. I found out what happened the way I found out most things lately — from Reyes, standing outside the equipment room, choosing his words like he was walking across ice he wasn’t sure would hold. “They put her on leave,” he said. “Effective this morning. Pending the outcome of the investigation.” “Leave. As in—” “As in she’s not allowed in the building. Not allowed to see players. Not allowed to do her job until this gets resolved.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “They’re calling it a neutral administrative step. Damian’s calling it exactly what he wanted from the start.” I stood there a second, trying to make the words line up with something that made sense. “She didn’t do anything.”

  • Behind the Ice Wall    Chapter 40 — No Turning Back

    SKY’S POV At the time, I had no idea Amira was thinking about leaving the organization. All I knew was that something had changed. The silences on her end grew longer. The version of her voice I caught in passing hallway moments sounded thinner than it used to. Weeks later she’d tell me she’d already been considering walking away, back around this same stretch. At the time, all I had was the silence itself, and the growing sense that something on her end had changed too. We weren’t supposed to be texting at all anymore. That made the silence easier to explain, but somehow harder to live with. I kept my phone in my pocket most nights instead of on the nightstand, like distance from the object itself might make the rule easier to keep. I broke it once, a single line asking how she was holding up under the ongoing scrutiny, telling myself a plain check-in didn’t count as the kind of contact we’d agreed to avoid. It sat unanswered for two full days before a short reply finally came b

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