The Rookie's Penalty

A hockey player eats a burger in a bar in Buffalo and it costs him a season. The back door of the arena groaned like a wounded animal as Carter shoved it open, ducking into the service corridor before the first reporter could swing a camera his way. *I'm not here*, he told Gary, the security guard who has been working Hawks games since long before any of this. He had been at the rink since five, running drills alone in the dark, the only sound his blade cutting ice and his own ragged breathing. The Zamboni driver found him at seven-fifteen, soaked through and still going, because stopping meant thinking and thinking meant remembering the flash of a camera phone through a bar window and a photographer who smiled and disappeared into the crowd. Nora O'Malley has been in the press room since six. She is the one who has to build the story that keeps him employed, and she is very good at her job, which is the first thing about her that Carter finds unbearable. Liam is his younger brother and plays on the same team, which means everybody watches them both. Cooper Vance is spotting Liam on the bench press and there is a photograph of him on a silver chain, timestamped three weeks ago, on a day Liam lied about where he was. What follows: a penalty that was deserved, a narrative somebody else controls, a trade there is no escaping, a proposal instantly regretted, a visit nobody planned, a kiss under the bleachers, a defence that comes from an unexpected direction, and a secret buried deep enough that digging it up will take somebody's career with it. *Above the bleachers. The night you kissed her.* Contemporary hockey romance with a forced media partnership, a player whose image is the only asset he has left, a younger brother lying about his whereabouts, a photograph nobody was meant to see, explicit scenes, and a guaranteed happy ending.