Pucks and Promises

The police report hits Megan Hayes's inbox on a grey Minneapolis morning in November, and she reads it three times hoping the words will rearrange themselves. They do not. *Assault Third Degree, Hennepin County.* Two punches. A broken nose, a fractured orbital bone, a concussion. Megan is the North Stars' public relations director. Her job this morning is to make Derek Armstrong sound sorry. She writes three drafts, from standard apology up to something bordering on groveling, and then opens a fourth document and types the sentence she is not allowed to use. *Derek Armstrong acted in defense of his sister.* Jenna has been sober fourteen months. The man in the bar said something about that. Derek is not the type to explain himself, and the coach is not the type to ask. Then the general manager calls. Leon Fletcher wants the statement by noon, and he mentions, in the same flat voice, that if the apology does not land, Megan's little brother is the first off the roster. Ryan is twenty-two, in training camp, fast and smart and hungry, and his contract is the easiest to move. So Megan is holding two careers and one sentence she keeps typing and deleting. Tessa Kovac wants the corner office and says so. Tessa takes Derek's file. Tessa has the access logs, and then the photographs, and then a complaint with human resources that puts Megan on leave. None of which touches the real problem, which is that Megan asked Derek to meet her in a dark press box and he came. *Because I don't know how to stop running. And I was hoping you'd teach me.* What Derek does not say, to her or to a counselor named Carol with a clipboard on her lap, is what his father's drinking cost him, or how long he stood in his own kitchen with a bottle of whiskey in his hand. He writes Megan a letter instead. There is a coffee stain on it. The last line is *I love you. I'll wait.* It finishes on an empty outdoor rink in downtown Saint Paul on Valentine's Day at seven below zero, Winter Carnival lights strung overhead, Megan wobbling in her cracked high-school figure skates, Derek twenty-three days sober and holding out a hand. This is a hockey romance about the sibling you protect at your own expense: a publicist who writes other people's remorse for a living, a veteran winger with a temper he inherited, a front office with knives out, recovery treated as work rather than a montage, and two people who stop protecting each other by walking away. The romance is closed-door.