I shook my head. “No, I just expect you to watch. But not in this room, on the ice.”
“What about your teammates?” the man in the brown suit asked. “How are they taking all of this?”
I grimaced. “They deserve better than a circus, and I plan to say that to their faces. Not to your cameras here today.”
He put his pen down. “Well, did you apologize to Mercer?”
“I sent a message through the team,” I answered, keeping my palms flat on the table. “I’ll do more when protocol allows me to.”
The woman in the blue blazer chimed in. “What’s your message to kids who watched the clip all week? It’s gone viral online.”
I finally recognized her from a morning show on a major network.
“I would tell them not to copy what they see in the clip,” I said. “Copy control. If you feel heat climbing, just open your hands, breathe, and skate to space. Hit clean, and if a guy is down, you let go of him. You don’t win anything when you lose yourself.”
A ripple of chatter ran along the back row, and I steeled myself.
“Timeline for a return?” blue blazer asked. “What’s ahead in the next month for Colt Mitchell?”
“I’m skating,” I said, terse. “I’m lifting weights, meeting with professionals.”
Brown suit leaned forward. “People have called you a butcher. Do you hear it?”
He almost made me flinch. I detested when the media set me up with those types of questions. Words such asbutcherhad the potential to spread through sports sites and articles like wildfire. Branding like that could stick to me for years.
But I braced myself.
“I’ve heard it,” I said and nodded.
“And what’s your answer? How do you respond to it?”
“I don’t,” I said, locking my eyes with his. “You asked if I’ve heard it, you didn’t ask if it’s true.”
A phony smile with no emotion behind it spread across his face. “Is it true?”
My fingers curled, but I forced them to straighten.
Hands open.
“I get paid to be on the ice, to skate. To hit clean. To score whenever I can and to keep my head. I failed at one of those, and I will fix it.”
Alex touched my sleeve to indicate time.
I leaned forward, closer to the mic. “I kept my hands open today. That’s a start. Thank you for your time.”
Chairs scraped, lenses dropped, and the red light blinked until it went completely out. I couldn’t help but notice the air had started to cool.
My phone immediately buzzed against my leg. Coach first. Second call, agent. I’d let them both go to voicemail and exited the suffocating room.
The corridor hummed with low lights that dangled above my head. More corporate logos marched along the wall, zeros on checks that never ended. League brass stood under an exit sign and watched me pass, eyeing me as if to scan for flaws.
I thought about the math, the money at stake.
Thoughts of stacked losses swirled in my head until I shoved it out and he rushed in.
Blair.
Pen held in his fist the way a man might hold a blade. The tiny tremor he strangled and choked into nonexistence. The way he said my name in the parking lot.
