Puck Me Harder

ELLE

The Riverside Chronicle newsroom smells like cold coffee and old ambition. I've been freelancing long enough to recognize it, that specific blend of fluorescent desperation that only exists in mid-tier local news outfits. The kind of place where everyone's one good story away from somewhere bigger, or resigned to being exactly where they'll die.

I'm not resigned. But I'm also not here today.

"Elle. In my office. Now."

Sienna Chen doesn't ask. She commands it the way she does everything with the kind of casual authority that makes you forget you have a choice. Her office is really just a glass box in the corner of the newsroom, which means everyone can watch this conversation happen. Everyone is watching. I can feel it, that prickle of eyes tracking my movements as I stand and walk toward her.

I know what this is about. I've been dodging her calls for three days.

"Sit," she says, and I do. The chair is uncomfortable. Probably intentional.

Sienna is forty-eight, ruthlessly competent, and has been the Chronicle's senior editor for six years. She's also the only person in this building who's ever taken my work seriously. That's what makes this worse.

"You haven't opened the assignment file," she says. Not a question.

"I've been busy."

"With what? You turned in your last piece four days ago." She leans back in her chair, studying me. "I sent you the sports editor brief. The Forge championship campaign. Embedded access. Six months. This is the assignment, Elle. This is the assignment."

The Forge. Of course it's The Forge.

"I'm not interested," I say flatly.

"You're not—" Sienna stops herself. Takes a breath. She's good at that, at modulating her reactions when she wants something from you. "Elle, do you understand what I'm offering you? Full embed with a professional hockey team, six months of unfettered access, their championship push starting this season. Your byline on a serialized story that could run nationally. This is the piece that gets you into a major outlet. This is the piece that gets you out."

Out. Like this newsroom is a prison. Like my life is something I'm trying to escape.

Maybe it is.

"Find someone else," I say.

"I don't want someone else. I want you." Sienna folds her hands on her desk. There's a moment where I think she might actually care, and that makes it harder. "What's going on?"

"Nothing's going on. I'm not interested in covering hockey."

It's a lie so thin it's transparent. We both know it. And we both know why.

Sienna exhales slowly. "This is about Blake Delvalle."

I don't say anything. Not saying anything is its own kind of confirmation.

"That was five years ago, Elle. You were kids."

"I said no." I stand up. "You can't assign me to this, and you know it."

"I'm not assigning you to anything. I'm offering you the most important assignment of your career, and you're running from it because you're scared."

The word hangs between us—scared. It's so blunt, so exposed, that I almost want to laugh. Except I can't. Because she's right.

"Find someone else," I repeat, and I walk out.

I don't wait for her to respond. I don't wait for anything. I just leave.

~FIVE YEARS AGO~

I am twenty-four years old and in love so completely that it terrifies me.

Blake's apartment is small—a one-bedroom in the Arts District that his rookie contract barely covers. But it's *his*, and I'm inside it, and my hands are shaking as I arrange the candlesticks on the small dining table we bought together at an estate sale.

Dinner took four hours. I made his favorite—beef tenderloin with truffle butter, roasted potatoes with rosemary, a salad I chopped vegetables for like I was defusing a bomb. I even made dessert: chocolate mousse with candied orange peel. From scratch. Because Blake's birthday only comes once a year, and I wanted this to be perfect.

The table looks like something from a magazine. I arranged it that way the candlesticks placed symmetrically, the cloth napkins folded carefully, the rose petals I bought scattered artfully around the plates. I took a photo before he got home, because I wanted to remember how it looked before it got real.

It's perfect.

He should be here by eight. His practice ends at seven. It takes twenty minutes to drive across the city.

He arrives at midnight.

I'm still awake, but barely. The food has gone cold. The candles have burned down to stubs. I'd blown them out an hour ago because I couldn't stand watching them waste.

When Blake opens the door, he's still in his gear—or most of it. His Forge jacket over the expensive street clothes he started wearing more of lately. His hair is still wet from the shower at the practice facility. He smells like the training room: liniment and sweat and that industrial soap they use.

He doesn't register the table at first.

"Hey, baby," he says, and his voice is wrong exhausted, far away. He's still holding his gym bag. "I'm so sorry I'm late. Coach called an emergency practice. The rivalry game is in two weeks and—"

"It's your birthday, Blake."

My voice is quiet. I don't mean for it to sound like an accusation, but it does. It lands like one.

He actually looks at me then, and I watch his eyes track to the table. The candlesticks. The rose petals. The plates with the cold food I spent four hours preparing.

"Oh, baby," he says, and there's genuine remorse there. I can see it in his face. But it's the remorse of someone who's already moved on. "I'm so sorry. I didn't—Coach said—"

"I know what Coach said." I stand up. My legs are stiff from sitting so long. "Happy birthday."

He crosses the space between us and kisses my forehead. It's a kiss from a person who loves you but is thinking about something else. I know the difference now.

"Can we do this tomorrow?" he asks. "I'm completely dead, Elle. I can't even—" He pulls away from me and collapses directly onto the couch, still wearing his jacket.

Tomorrow never comes. Not the way I imagined it.

I clean up alone. The beef is congealed, the sauce separated into gray and oil. I scrape it into the trash. The mousse has developed a skin. The candlesticks smell acrid. I blow them out even though they're already dead.

By the time I'm finished, Blake is asleep. Real sleep—the kind that makes his face slack and innocent. The kind that means he won't feel me leave the room.

I do leave. Not the apartment, but the moment. I sit on the edge of the bed and watch him sleep and understand, with a clarity that burns, that I have already lost him.

He just doesn't know it yet.

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The assignment file is sitting on my kitchen table when I get home.

I didn't download it. Sienna probably did that for me—sent it to my cloud account, made sure it was accessible, a digital gift-wrapped box I can't refuse.

My apartment is the opposite of Blake's. It's all sharp lines and minimal furniture. Nothing unnecessary. Nothing that could be disappointed. The walls are bare except for one framed photo that I never look at: me and my best friend Kai at our twenty-third birthday, both of us screaming with laughter at something I've already forgotten.

I sit at the table—a gray particle board thing I bought from IKEA—and I open the file.

The header reads: THE PUCK: THE FORGE'S ROAD TO GLORY

There's a blurb underneath. Something about the team's projected trajectory, their new roster, their championship window.

And then:

NEW CAPTAIN: BLAKE DELVALLE NAMED LEADER OF THE FORGE

The words exist on my screen, and I exist in my kitchen, and there's a space between those two things that should be larger than it is.

Blake is the captain. The Forge's *captain*. Five years, and he's gone from a promising rookie to the face of the franchise. The guy whose photo is going to be everywhere local news, sports networks, the kind of coverage that means you can't exist in this city without seeing his face.

I stare at the photograph they've included. He's older now. His face has hardened in that specific way that comes from five years of being hit repeatedly in a contact sport. His eyes are sharper. There's less softness in him than there was when he was twenty-three and collapsed on my couch at midnight.

He looks like someone who won and kept running.

I don't look at the rest of the file. I can't. Instead, I reach for my phone and find Sienna's name in my contacts. My finger hovers over the call button for a long moment.

She was right. About everything. About me being scared. About this being the assignment. About me needing to walk back in there and accept it anyway.

But I can't do that. Not yet. Not today.

My phone buzzes before I can make the call.

SIENNA CHEN (5:47 PM): "I'll wait for your answer. But not forever."

I turn the phone face-down on the table.

The assignment file is still open on my laptop. Blake's captain photo stares up at me from the screen, and I realize that I have been holding my breath for five years without quite knowing it.

I have to start breathing again eventually.

But not tonight.