Chapter 4: Rivals

Noah POV

The doctor caught me before I could get away, his voice calm in the clinical way that made everything worse.

"The memory loss is severe." He tapped his clipboard like it was a verdict. "Forcing a recall could cause permanent damage. He needs time, not pressure. No reminders. No pushing. Let his brain heal on its own timeline."

I looked at the floor and said nothing, because everything I wanted to say would have broken the one rule that mattered now.

I wanted to walk into his room and tell him he was mine, that he'd promised me a life, that he'd said my name like it belonged to him. I wanted to hear him say it back.

Noah Bennett.

The words stayed locked behind my teeth. If saying them could cost him what was left of his mind, then I didn't get to say them. Loving Adrian meant protecting him even when protecting him meant standing three feet away while he looked at me like a stranger he was trying to be polite to.

I'd spent three years bracing for every way we might lose each other: a scandal, a career-ending injury, a slip that outed us to the wrong reporter. I'd never once braced for this, watching the man I loved search my face and find nothing there at all.

I locked my knees and breathed until my voice would hold.

"I understand," I said, and made it sound calm.

In the lobby, the reporters were waiting with their microphones already up.

"Captain Bennett, why are you visiting Adrian Cross?"

I didn't slow down.I gave them the only thing I had left to give."I came to see how a rival captain is doing." The lie tasted like copper. I kept walking and left the truth on the floor behind me.

***

Our apartment on the top floor was the one place in the world where we didn't have to be captains of anything. For three years we'd hidden a whole life behind that door. No cameras. No rivalry. No league watching.

Just me and Adrian.

I let myself in and stopped just past the threshold.

Something was wrong before I could name it. The apartment was too clean and quiet.

Adrian's coffee cup wasn't in the sink. His game tape wasn't scattered across the console. Even his scent was gone, and Adrian left scent everywhere, in every room, the way other people left lights on.

The blanket we always left crumpled on the couch had been folded into a square.

Someone had been careful here.

Adrian left a trail of small proof that he lived in this space: a jacket slung over a chair, hockey tape abandoned on the coffee table, his mug by the sink.

All of it had been lifted out, piece by piece, like someone had gone through erasing him on purpose.

***

I moved through the rooms like a ghost checking for a body.

Our Christmas photo, gone. The wall behind it, bare and strange. The championship medals were still in their case, untouched. The jerseys we'd traded each other after our first game as captains were not.

The refrigerator, once covered in our notes and inside jokes, was bare metal.

In the bedroom, I opened the drawer where the ring box lived. It was there. It was empty.

I checked the closet, the drawers again, under the bed, the bathroom cabinet, and behind the books on the shelf.

Watches, cash, and electronics. None of them was touched.

Whoever came here didn't want anything that could be sold.

They wanted anything that proved we existed together.

My knees gave out before I reached the bed, and I went down against the frame, a sob tearing loose before I could stop it.

The apartment wasn't home anymore.

It was walls and furniture and the exact shape of a silence where his laugh used to live.

I let myself cry until my ribs hurt, mourning a version of us that someone had systematically taken apart.

***

I made myself stop. Wiped my face. There was one place left to check, and if it was empty too, there would be nothing left of us at all.

I moved a duffel bag in the closet and pried up the loose floorboard beneath it.

The box was still there. Hope moved through me fast enough to hurt.I opened it.

Empty.

The backup drive was gone.

Before the championship trip, Adrian had insisted on a second copy.

"One stays with me," he'd said, that crooked half-smile I could still see clearly even now. "The other stays here. If something happens, this one makes sure the truth gets out."

Whoever had taken it knew him well enough to walk straight to the hiding place without searching.

I stared into the empty box and felt the last piece slide into place. The bus.The photographer outside his room. This apartment, gone through with surgical care. None of it was random.

They weren't hunting a whistleblower. They were hunting us, and they'd known exactly where to look, which meant they'd known about us for longer than we'd realized.

The crash hadn't been the beginning.

It had been the moment they decided to erase us.

And this was only the first move.