Designed contact

Ava’s pov

The Courier had warned me that the hockey beat was a privilege.

They hadn't mentioned it would also be a punishment.

I sat in the leather chair across from Coach Brandt's desk, spine straight, notebook open, doing my best impression of a girl who had not blackmailed the team captain with a library fine twelve hours earlier. Brandt was a broad man with a gray crew cut and the permanent squint of someone who had spent thirty years staring at bright ice. He was flipping through my application like it owed him money.

"Transfer from Ohio State," he said. "Two years at a regional paper. Strong clips." He glanced up. "Why hockey?"

The answer I had rehearsed on the bus was because it's the best story on campus.

The truth was because my brother's name was erased from this building, and I want to know who held the eraser.

"Because Westbridge hockey has the biggest story on campus," I said evenly. "And no one's told it right."

Brandt's squint sharpened. Behind me, the door flew open so hard it rattled the trophy case.

"Coach, I need a word about……” Then Damien stopped.

He was still in practice gear, hair wet from a rushed shower, a towel slung around his neck. He looked at me. I looked at him. For three full seconds the air in the office seemed to hum.

"Cole," Brandt said. "Meet our new beat reporter."

"We've met." He said.

"Good. Saves time." Brandt leaned back. "The athletic department wants better press after last spring. Miss Bennett gets full access to practices, travel, and the locker room, within reason. You're her contact. Anything she needs, you provide."

"Coach." Damien's jaw tightened. "With respect, that's a bad idea."

"It wasn't a suggestion." Brandt said.

"She spilled coffee on me." Damian said.

"I apologized," I said. "Twice."

"You called me a vending machine." He said.

"I stand by it." I burst out to him.

Brandt pinched the bridge of his nose. "I will pay both of you to stop talking."

It was Damien who went quiet first, and that was what frightened me. His eyes moved over my face, slowly, calculating, and I watched him arrive at a decision. The tension went out of his shoulders. The corner of his mouth crooked up.

"You know what? Coach is right." He dropped into the chair beside mine and stretched his legs out like he owned the room. "Full access. I'd be happy to cooperate."

My stomach dropped. Don't trust that smile.

"Rules," he said, once Brandt had stepped out to take a call. He ticked them off on his fingers. "One. Practice starts at 5:45pm. You're there at 5:30pm.”

"That's insane." I told him.

"That's hockey. Two. You don't leave my sight when we're in the arena. Team policy." He said.

"That is not team policy." I answered.

"Page eleven of the handbook." He grinned, pleased with himself. "Three. No questions about last spring."

There it was not a flicker, not a pause. But the words came out too smooth, like they'd been sanded down.

I wrote no questions about last spring in my notebook and underlined it twice.

"Four," I said. "You stop calling me sweetheart."

"Sure, sweetheart." He said again.

I threw my pen at him. He caught it one-handed without looking, and winked.

I was, I realized, in serious trouble.

At 5:29 the next morning I stood in the arena tunnel with my notebook, my recorder, and a cup of coffee I was holding as far from my body as possible.

The rink at dawn was a different animal. Silent and enormous, lit in blue, the ice so smooth it looked like glass. The Wolves skated slow warm-up laps, their breath hanging in clouds, and Damien led them. He moved like he had been born on blades, long and unhurried, each stride eating up ice. For a moment I forgot to be angry. For a moment I forgot everything but the clean white scrape of steel and the quiet, and the ache that rose in my chest, because Ethan had skated exactly like that.

Then Damien glided past the boards, caught me staring, and grinned.

I looked away so fast I nearly dropped the coffee.

"Mr. Cole," I said when he skated over. "I'd like to start with the interview."

"I'd love to." He hopped the boards with annoying ease and picked up a towel. "Right after cold plunge."

"I'm sorry, after what?" I asked.

"Team recovery. Fifty degrees, ten minutes, and you're documenting the whole thing." He tilted his head. "Unless you're scared."

"Of a bathtub?" I asked

"Of seeing a man in his natural habitat." He answered.

I followed him down the hall purely out of spite. And when twenty shirtless hockey players dropped into a steel tub while I stood by the door with my recorder and my dignity, I understood exactly what this was. His plan wasn't to stop me. It was to exhaust me. Embarrass me. Bury me in schedules and teasing until I gave up and went home.

I took notes the entire time. I asked a thoughtful question about injury recovery. I did not blush once.

When I finally glanced up, Damien was watching me instead of the water, and for one strange second he did not look like the cocky captain. He looked like a guy who had been expecting a fight and had found something he didn't know how to handle.

Then a lanky, dark-blond player with an easy smile splashed him full in the face. "Whitaker!" Damien roared, and the moment was gone. I wrote down the name. Jace Whitaker, best friend, probably the only person on this team who isn't afraid of him.

By noon the team had stopped treating me like a stranger. By six, one of the freshmen had asked to be my first interview. By the time practice ended that evening, I had a dozen pages of notes, a growing headache, and a plan.

The locker room.

Ethan's old locker had been number 14. Every player knew it. And every player, I had noticed, avoided looking at it.

I slipped away while the team showered, my recorder switched off and tucked into my pocket. The locker room was empty and humming with the sound of old pipes. Number 14 sat at the far end of the row, its nameplate peeled off, its door dented near the handle, as though someone had struck it once, hard.

My hand trembled as I reached for the latch.

Then I heard voices on the other side of the lockers.

I froze.

"…..I'm telling you, it's her." A man's voice, low, hurried, muffled by metal. "Same eyes, same last name. She's Ethan Bennett's sister."

I stopped breathing.

"Does Cole know?"

"He suspects. And if she keeps digging, he'll find out what really happened that night." A pause. The scrape of a locker door shutting. "We can't let that happen. Whatever it takes."

I pressed back against the cold steel, heart pounding so hard I was certain they could hear it. Through the narrow gap between the lockers I saw a single hand, a flash of a black ring, a sleeve of Westbridge silver.

Then the footsteps started toward me.