All Chapters of Lessons For The Hockey Captain : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Noah POV:I looked down instinctively, expecting another anonymous threat, but the caller ID this time made something in me go cold in an entirely different way.It was Sarah and as I stared at it, my mind went through different thoughts on why this was happening at this moment."Answer it," Ivy said quietly, already pulling herself together despite the panic still etched across her face.I picked it up. "Sarah?""Noah, thank God." Her voice was breathless, rushed. "I've been trying to reach Ivy, but her phone keeps going to voicemail. Listen, I heard about the academic misconduct complaint. It's not real. I mean, it's real in the sense that someone filed it, but it's completely fabricated.""How do you know that?""Because I saw the paperwork," she said. "Morgan's father had someone in the registrar's office pull old session logs from the tutoring center and cross-reference them with your grade improvements. He's spinning it like the jump in your scores is suspicious, like it couldn'

Ivy Pov:I didn't check the phone right away. Patricia was still watching me, waiting for an answer, and my grandmother lay just a few feet away, her eyes open now, tracking the conversation with the kind of sharp attention that told me she understood more than her frail body let on."If I go on record," I said slowly, "naming him, what happens next? Does that trigger some kind of formal investigation on the hospital's end?""It would," Patricia said. "And I'll be honest, Miss Sullivan, powerful families don't take accusations like that lightly. If you're wrong, or if you can't substantiate it, there could be legal consequences for defamation but if you're right, and the ethics board finds evidence of outside interference in a patient's care, it would not only get your grandmother's funding released immediately, it could trigger a much larger investigation into how deep this kind of influence runs."I thought about Sarah's screenshots, the message thread proving Morgan had access to i

Noah Pov:Twenty minutes. That was all I had left before walking into a room that could end everything I'd worked for since I was six years old, and I still didn't have Ivy beside me."I'm coming," she said through the phone, her voice tight with the same panic clawing through my own chest."I'll leave now, I'll be there before it starts.""Ivy, your grandmother…""Patricia's handling the statement. Nan understands. I need to be there for this." Her voice hardened with a determination that steadied something in me despite the chaos. "I'm not letting you walk in there alone.""Okay," I said. "Hurry."I hung up and turned to find Lockwood pacing outside the hearing room, Sarah beside him clutching a folder of printed evidence like it might slip away if she loosened her grip."Reyes brought lawyers," Lockwood said grimly. "Two of them. That's not standard for an eligibility hearing. That tells me he's planning something bigger than just influencing a vote.""Like what?""Like turning thi

Ivy Pov:I watched Noah's face change as the second Coach Lockwood's name flashed across his phone, and something in my chest sank before he'd even answered."Coach," he said, pressing the phone to his ear. His grip on my hand tightened as he listened, his jaw working, his eyes going distant in that way I'd learned meant he was bracing for something he couldn't stop.I sat there in the small consultation room, exhaustion and pain throbbing behind the cut above my eyebrow, waiting, my stomach twisting tighter with every second of silence stretching between his words."The whole season," Noah finally repeated, his voice hollow.My heart dropped straight through the floor. I didn't need to hear Lockwood's side of the conversation to understand what had happened."They cited your abrupt departure mid-hearing as evidence of instability," Noah said after a pause, frustration and disbelief bleeding into every word. "That leaving without explanation showed exactly the kind of unpredictabilit

Ivy Pov:"Miss Sullivan?" The voice on the line was calm, professional, but my heart still slammed against my ribs as I pressed the phone tighter to my ear. "This is the surgical coordinator. Dr. Whitmore asked me to update you directly.""Is she okay?" The words tumbled out before I could steady myself. "Please, just tell me she's okay.""Your grandmother's currently in surgery, and so far, everything is proceeding as expected," the coordinator said. "I wanted to let you know before you heard anything secondhand…there was a brief complication when they began the procedure, related to the medication concern Dr. Whitmore mentioned earlier. The team adjusted accordingly, and she's stable now. We expect the surgery to take another two to three hours."Relief crashed through me so hard my knees nearly buckled, and I gripped the back of a nearby chair to steady myself. "Thank you. Thank you so much for calling.""Of course. We'll update you the moment there's more to share."I lowered th