The hallway stretched ahead, empty except for a maintenance guy with a mop bucket. I took another sip of Gatorade, buying time.
"Love on Icewas supposed to be a comeback. Post-injury visibility. Get my name out there again." I stopped walking. "I didn't realize that reality TV editors are emotional terrorists with film degrees."
Juno raised an eyebrow. "Explain."
"They told me to cry. I'm not shitting you. 'Jake, we need you to cry like you mean it.' I did because..." I choked up. "Because I was falling for someone they'd already decided was too boring for television. When I eliminated myself, it was real. The tears were real."
"But the edit wasn't."
"The edit made me look like I was proposing to the entire rink. They took the most genuine moment I'd had in months and turned it into a meme template."
"And 'Puck Life?'"
"'Puck Life' was..." I raked my fingers through my hair. "When a million people are laughing at you, you can hide, or you can set the punchline yourself. I figured if everyone was alreadyconvinced I was a joke, maybe I could at least be a joke on my own terms."
"Was it? On your own terms?"
I heard skate blades hitting the ice—someone getting an early start. Maybe it was Evan with his color-coded practice schedule.
"I didn't make 'Puck Life' to go viral. I made it because I didn't know how to ask for help."
Juno's thumb hovered over the recorder. "Help with what?"
"With being seen as something other than a punchline. By proving I could still play hockey instead of only playing a character." I shrugged.
Silence reigned between us. Juno studied my face.
She finally spoke. "You know what I think?"
"That I'm a walking disaster with commitment issues?"
She smiled. "I think you're a better storyteller than you realize. And I think this story deserves someone telling it the right way."
She clicked off the recorder, slipped it into her jacket pocket, and nodded. "See you around, Riley."
Her combat boots clicked down the hallway toward the exit, leaving me standing there with an empty Gatorade bottle and the weird sensation that she actually saw me. It didn't feel like a trap.
Twenty minutes later, I was flying.
The interview had done something to me—loosened a knot I didn't know I was carrying. Maybe I could rewrite my story. Maybe Thunder Bay was where I figured out how to be Jake Riley instead of only playing the role.
I picked off a pass at the blue line and threaded it through three bodies to Pickle, who botched the one-timer but grinned like he'd scored anyway. The kid's enthusiasm was infectious, even when his execution was garbage.
Hog roared from the bench. "Nice dish, Vegas!"
Coach ran us through a standard forechecking drill, but I read the ice better than before. I saw spaces that existed for half a second, threading passes that shouldn't work but did. My shoulder was solid, and my legs were springy again.
Coach paired Evan with Murphy, who was working on defensive zone coverage. I watched him move—always in position, zero wasted motion.
The puck came around the boards hard, a wild ricochet off Pickle's botched one-timer. Murphy wound up for a slapper from the point, his stick a blur of reckless force, and Evan dropped to block it without hesitation. Standard defensive play, except the puck caught his stick blade at an odd angle, deflected by the rink's chaos.
The sound was wrong—not the clean crack of puck on stick, but a sharp ping. Evan's head snapped back slightly.
When he straightened up, blood trickled down his cheek.
I immediately skated toward him. Not thinking, just moving. When I reached him, he was already touching his glove to the cut, checking the damage.
"You okay?"
