BEHIND THE ICE

Then he walked away.

The café door chimed as he left, and I watched him disappear into the afternoon sun. My hands were unable to stay steady. My chest was tight. And somewhere in the back of my mind, underneath the anger and the pain, was a small, traitorous voice whispering that something about his reaction hadn't matched the story I'd told myself for two years.

Victoria's voice came through my earpiece again, satisfied and calculated.

"Excellent work. That's exactly the kind of raw emotion we needed."

But I wasn't listening to her anymore.

I was thinking about the way Beck's hands had clenched. The way his voice had cracked. The way he'd said he couldn't tell me the truth, not that he wouldn't.

And I was thinking about how little I actually knew about what happened that night.

How little I'd ever bothered to ask.

"Okay, we're rolling in three, two—"

The camera light blinked red, and suddenly I was supposed to be happy.

Beck sat across from me at a table in the student center, and we were filming the first official episode of "Behind the Ice." Marcus had choreographed this down to the second. We were supposed to laugh. Share a meal. Look like two people who didn't spend every conversation fighting.

"So," I said, reading from the script they'd given me that morning. "Tell our viewers something they don't know about you."

Beck's jaw tightened. He hated the script as much as I did.

"I like old hockey documentaries," he said flatly. "I watch them late at night when I can't sleep."

It wasn't what the script said. The script said something about his NHL dreams and his family's support. But he'd changed it. The camera kept rolling.

"That's... interesting," I managed, staying in character. "Anything else?"

"Yeah." He leaned forward, his ice-blue eyes meeting mine directly. Not for the camera. For me. "I'd like to know why you're so interested in my reputation when you could be investigating literally anything else."

Victoria's voice came through my earpiece, sharp and frustrated. "Stay on script, Beck."

He ignored her.

"I mean, there's bigger stories out there," Beck continued. "Stories about what really happened. Stories people are actually trying to hide. But instead you're here filming fake dates with me."

"This isn't a fake date," I said, my voice tight. "This is a job."

"Exactly." He sat back. "And jobs are usually about more than just surface-level drama, aren't they? Or is that not how journalism works?"

The cameras were still rolling. The producers were probably losing their minds. But I couldn't look away from him.

"We're done for today," Victoria announced through the earpiece. "Cut."

The red light on the camera blinked off.

Beck stood up immediately, pushing his chair back with enough force that people at nearby tables glanced over. He left without waiting for me. Without saying anything else. Just walked out of the student center like he had somewhere important to be.

Which apparently he did.

Over the next three days, I watched him more carefully.

During filming, Beck played his role, smiled on cue, held my hand when the script called for it, looked at me like I was the only person in the room. But between takes, when the cameras were off and the producers were resetting equipment, his eyes would dart around. Looking for something. Looking for someone.

On day four, I finally figured out what he was doing.

We were filming at the Vipers Hockey Arena, and Beck was supposed to teach me how to ice skate for the episode. The producers loved it. The contrast, they said. The two of us, vulnerable on ice, learning together. It was perfect television.

What it actually was: two hours of Beck holding my waist while I stumbled around in rental skates, both of us pretending the other didn't make our skin burn.

But between takes, while they were adjusting the lighting, Beck wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the other hockey players on the ice. Specifically, he was watching one in particular.

Theo Mercer.

Beck's best friend and teammate. The one person who was always around him, always laughing, always there. Except when Beck was on camera with me. Then Theo disappeared.

And Beck looked for him.

"You okay?" I asked, more out of genuine concern than anything else. We were off-camera for a moment, just the two of us in the penalty box.

"Fine," Beck said. But his shoulders were tense. His hands were clenched.

"You keep looking—"

"Don't," he cut me off. "Don't ask questions you don't actually want answered."

Before I could respond, Marcus called us back to film the final skating sequence. The one where Beck was supposed to teach me a skating move and we'd end up close enough to kiss. For ratings, he'd said. For the narrative.

We filmed it three times. Three times, Beck's hands on my waist, my back against his chest, the two of us moving across the ice in a way that probably looked romantic to everyone watching. But I could feel the tension in his arms. The way he was holding back.

Like his mind was somewhere else entirely.

That night, I was alone in my dorm room when my phone buzzed.

Unknown number. Unknown sender.

Just a text message with no context, no explanation, just words that made my entire body go cold:

Look into Theo Mercer instead.