EBOOK
About
Cade Marchessault is an enforcer with a split knuckle he has not bothered to tape and an agent tapping his foot in the doorway. Keira is the one person in the building who has been told to get a quote out of him tonight.
*I'm not doing it.*
He presses the ice pack harder against his left eye socket, the cold biting into swelling that has already started to purple. The locker room still smells of sweat and Zamboni exhaust, the arena's ventilation the only sound left now the crowd has gone.
He is still in his compression shirt. Still bleeding. The stall beside him holds a half-empty bottle and a towel crusted with dried blood, his own, from the second-period fight that turned the game.
Derek stands in the doorway with a phone in one hand, making a show of checking the time. Overhead light on a bald head. He has been waiting fifteen minutes, long enough to grow impatient, long enough to start tapping a rhythm on the concrete that sets Cade's teeth on edge.
Keira has one quote to get and a deadline that closed forty minutes ago, and her editor has made it clear that the piece runs with or without him in it. She has been standing in that corridor long enough to hear everything the agent said and everything Cade did not answer.
What follows: an interview he never wanted, an article that burns, a brother who watches everything, a second chance to see somebody clearly, a charity event that changes the arithmetic, a father's warning, a hit that brings two people together, and a piece of writing that splits them apart.
*I want to figure it out with you.*
*Cade-*
*I'm done running.*
Her mouth cold from the arena air, then warm, then hot.
Comments scrolling. Most supportive. A few calling her a traitor to her father's legacy. One calling her a coward for hiding.
One interview. Two stalls. A towel with blood on it. Nobody in this building sleeping much.
*I'm not doing it.*
He presses the ice pack harder against his left eye socket, the cold biting into swelling that has already started to purple. The locker room still smells of sweat and Zamboni exhaust, the arena's ventilation the only sound left now the crowd has gone.
He is still in his compression shirt. Still bleeding. The stall beside him holds a half-empty bottle and a towel crusted with dried blood, his own, from the second-period fight that turned the game.
Derek stands in the doorway with a phone in one hand, making a show of checking the time. Overhead light on a bald head. He has been waiting fifteen minutes, long enough to grow impatient, long enough to start tapping a rhythm on the concrete that sets Cade's teeth on edge.
Keira has one quote to get and a deadline that closed forty minutes ago, and her editor has made it clear that the piece runs with or without him in it. She has been standing in that corridor long enough to hear everything the agent said and everything Cade did not answer.
What follows: an interview he never wanted, an article that burns, a brother who watches everything, a second chance to see somebody clearly, a charity event that changes the arithmetic, a father's warning, a hit that brings two people together, and a piece of writing that splits them apart.
*I want to figure it out with you.*
*Cade-*
*I'm done running.*
Her mouth cold from the arena air, then warm, then hot.
Comments scrolling. Most supportive. A few calling her a traitor to her father's legacy. One calling her a coward for hiding.
One interview. Two stalls. A towel with blood on it. Nobody in this building sleeping much.