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Chapter 125: Bottom of The Steps
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2026-09-24 05:51:39
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The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter 125: Bottom of The Steps
POV: RileyThe board adjourned at four-forty-seven.I knew the exact time because the facilitator announced it with the precision of institutional proceedings, the specific language of conclusion that was also a beginning: the board would deliberate and issue formal findings within three to four weeks. All parties would be notified. The record was closed to new submissions effective immediately.The record was closed.I sat in my student representative chair at the side of the room and let that land while the board members gathered their materials and the recording secretary secured her equipment and Dr. Venn made her final notes at the head of the table with the composed efficiency she brought to everything.Record closed.Not finished. Not resolved. The findings would come. The criminal referral timeline would proceed. The twelve-year review would continue its patient work. All of that was still in motion and would be in motion for months.But the testimony was given. The documentat
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter 124: The Hallway
POV: RileyNaomi texted at eleven-oh-seven.Clara is in now. Second witness of the day.I was on the front steps where Ray had found me after my testimony. He had gone to get actual coffee at ten-thirty, the kind from the place on Garfield, and had come back and sat beside me and we had been here since. Not talking much. Just present in the cold December morning while the hearing continued above us.I read Naomi's text and looked at the second-floor windows."She is in," I said.Ray looked up from his phone."How long was yours," he said."Forty minutes," I said. "Hers will be longer. She has more to cover and the board has been building their questions all morning." I paused. "Maybe an hour. Maybe more.""Then we wait," he said."Yes," I said. "Then we wait."The waiting was different from the waiting before my own testimony.Before mine I had been inside it. Every minute had been part of the preparation. Now the preparation was done and the testimony was in the record and I was outs
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter 123: Testimony
POV: RileyThe hearing room was on the second floor.I had been in this building many times now. The committee room on Thursday mornings. The corridors I had learned to navigate without thinking. But the hearing room was different from Room 204. Larger. More formal. The specific architecture of a space designed to hold proceedings that mattered.I waited in the corridor outside at eight fifty-five with Naomi beside me. She had her notebook. I had mine. We did not talk. The waiting was its own kind of preparation and we had both learned that filling it with conversation was not the same as being ready.At nine-oh-two the door opened.The facilitator. A woman I recognized from Dr. Venn's staff, precise and efficient. She looked at me."Ms. Ashford," she said. "We are ready."The room was exactly what it was.Long table. Seven board members seated. Dr. Venn at the head, the same composure she brought to every room. The external reviewers at the far end. The recording secretary at her sep
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter 122: Yes
POV: RileyI woke at five.Not the alarm. Just the body knowing. The specific early wakefulness of a significant day, the kind that had been true before competitions and before the first article published and before the morning I submitted the documentation at four-eighteen in the afternoon.I lay still for three minutes. Ran the inventory.What I would say: the true sequence. The specific account of what I found and what I did with it. No editorializing. No performance of distress. No looking at him while I said it. My testimony was for the record, not for my father.What I would not say: anything about the letter. Anything about the voicemail. Anything about the specific grief of understanding what something always was. That was mine. That did not belong to the formal evidentiary session of the oversight board's full hearing.How I would hold myself when I saw his face: the way I held myself in every room that tried to manage me. Chin level. Shoulders back. Full weight on the correc
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter 121: His Decision
POV: RileyNaomi was already in my room when I arrived.Not because I had asked her. Because she had understood without being told that the night before a significant thing required a specific kind of company. She had her laptop open on my desk and a printed copy of the testimony structure on the bed beside her and two cups of tea already made and cooling to the right temperature.I looked at the room. At the organized evidence of a friend who had been inside this with me since the battery drain on my phone in October."Thank you," I said."Sit," she said. "We go through it once. Then you sleep."I sat.We went through everything in order.Not because the documentation was in question. Because going through it in order was its own kind of preparation. The act of moving through the sequence deliberately, one piece after the next, settled something in the nervous system that abstract readiness could not reach.The spyware documentation. Clean. Authenticated. Access log, installation fil
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter 120: Tomorrow
POV: RileyHe laughed.Not the almost-laugh I had been collecting all semester. The real one. Soft and brief and completely unguarded, the specific laugh of someone who has been holding something tightly for a very long time and something has just released the grip.It was the most human sound I had heard from him."I have been not doing that for longer," he said.I smiled.Not the managed version. Not the composed version I deployed in rooms that required composure. The one that arrived before I could do anything about it, the one that took over my whole face without permission, the one I had been controlling since I was four years old because unguarded things in my father's world were things that could be used.Ray looked at that smile the way he looked at things that mattered. Completely. Without performing a reaction to it."There it is," he said quietly."There what is," I said."That," he said. "The one you do not plan."I looked at him. The cold pressing around us on the path o
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter Five: The Assignment Begins
POV: RayMonday came like a punishment. I stood outside the athletics media room with my hands in my jacket pockets, telling myself I was calm. I was not calm. I'd barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the photograph on Hartwell's desk, the girl with the laughing eyes and the swinging hai
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter Four: He Said Walk Away
Riley The Rink Bar was everything I hated about hockey culture crammed into one sticky, overheated room.Blue and gold jerseys clashed everywhere I looked, Falcons and Eagles pretending to be civil while shooting daggers at each other over red plastic cups. The music was too loud, the bass vibrati
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter Three: I Need To Find Her
Riley's Pov Marvel,” I said, the word coming out as a relieved sigh.He didn’t smile. His eyes, usually so warm when they landed on me, were hard. “What’s going on?”“I was looking for you. I came down to… I saw the end of the game.” I took a step toward him, wanting to bridge the gap, to get us a
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter Two: You Were Saying?
RileyI had done exactly one thing in my entire life without my father’s approval, and I was determined not to mess it up.Figure skating.It was my secret rebellion, planned and saved for in silence. While my father graded papers and muttered about “frivolous pursuits,” I watched old Olympic routi
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