Page 79 of Dirty As Puck
“Kai… you need to see this,” he says, pushing a folder across the desk.
I hesitate, but something in his tone makes my chest tighten. I reach for it, my fingers trembling as I flip it open.
The first thing I see are photos of me at the hospital, me leaving my apartment, me arriving at the rink, all meticulously documented.
And there she is in every shot. Rochelle. She’s watching me. Every movement. Every gesture. Then she’s smiling at her laptop in the background, her phone pressed to her ear, like she’s tracking everything, taking notes and recording.
I swallow, and it catches somewhere in my throat. “This… all of this is just for the article?” My voice sounds small, broken even to my own ears.
My coach shakes his head slowly. “Kai, she’s been covering you for weeks. Before the bar fight. Before any of this Derek nonsense. And she… she never told you what she knew. About him. About what was happening.”
The words crash over me like a tidal wave. I can’t breathe. Every fiber of trust I’d placed in her, every late-night conversation, every touch, every time I let myself believe she was different, was she ever? The pictures feel like daggers, sharp, precise, aimed straight for my chest.
“She… she knew?” I whisper. My mind loops, unwilling to accept what I see. She knew about Derek and kept it from me. She let him manipulate both of us, and I… I thought I could protect her. Hell, I did everything to protect her.
Coach Williams leans back, arms still crossed, as he watches me carefully. “Kai, I know you care about her. But this…” He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “This changes things. You need to process it before practice.”
I can’t. I shove the folder aside, shaking. My hands clutch the edge of the desk, and my knuckles go white, pulse racing. My chest feels like it’s collapsing inward. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears, loud, frantic, echoing in the silence of the office.
Hyperventilation sets in before I even realize it. My breaths come fast, shallow, and completely uneven. I feel trapped, like the world is reminding me that I’m all alone.
My eyes blur with heat, tears threatening to spill, anger and heartbreak colliding violently in my chest. How could she? How could I have been so blind?
Everything I trusted, everything I loved, is crumbling. Rochelle, she was my anchor, my lifeline, my first real love since…Fuck!Now she is a stranger in the photos staring back at me. AndDerek… the thought of him lurking, watching, manipulating, only deepens the hole opening inside me.
I sink back into the chair, trembling and trying to control the chaos I feel inside. But the panic, the betrayal, the heartbreak, they won’t stop stabbing my chest.
I collapse into the corner of the equipment room, my back pressing against the cold wall, the stink of old gear and sweat filling my nostrils.
My chest heaves uncontrollably, each breath shallow, and coming out too fast. My hands shake violently, my fingers gripping the bench beside me, trying to grab onto something solid, anything that will stop the panic from consuming me.
I hear voices that sound distant, but I know it’s from outside the door. The sound of my teammates calling my name. Coach shouting something I can’t make sense of.
“Kai! Are you okay?” It all sounds distorted, muffled, like I’m underwater and the world is trying to pull me under.
My phone rings and I manage to slide the screen to receive the call.
“Hey, hey, Kai!” Tommy’s voice cuts through the haze. I recognize it, and it should help, it should calm me, but it doesn’t. I try to speak, to tell him I’m fine, but my throat closes up, the words lodged like stones.
My chest tightens even more. I can’t explain. I can’t explain how everyone, Rochelle, the media, Derek, even the people I thought I trusted are all lying to me. They kept scheming and manipulating me. My whole life has been a setup. My hands pound the wall in frustration, shaking me further.
“Tommy… I––” I gasp, my voice cracking, broken, and barely there at all. He’s still on the line, pleading for me to breathe, to snap out of it and respond to him. I can’t.
It feels like I’m trapped inside my own head, every memory of trust twisting into betrayal. Rochelle’s eyes, her smile, the way she claimed she cared about me. Turns out it’s all a lie now. She watched, she knew, and she didn’t warn me. But it’s my own fault for getting involved with a fucking reporter.What the fuck was I thinking?
I press my palms to my face, wishing I could vanish. My legs tremble beneath me, knees pulled tight against my chest. I imagine leaving, just walking away from the rink, the team, the media circus, the sport I’ve built my life around.
If I disappear, maybe the pain stops. Maybe the weight of betrayal, of exposure, of Derek’s threats, of Rochelle’s secrecy, just falls away.
“Kai, talk to me,” Tommy says, voice urgent now, desperate. I can hear him shouting into the phone, doing everything to get me to talk. I know he’ll be here soon.
I want to push him away, scream at him, tell him to leave me alone, and end the call but all I can do is shake. My mind spins in circles, each thought worse than the last.
The world is a trap, everyone is complicit, and there’s no escape except to walk away from everything I’ve ever fought for.
I slump further against the wall, hyperventilating, trembling, hollow. The idea of quitting flits through my mind, sharp and tempting. Hockey isn’t worth this pain, not if the people I love, the people I trust are all part of the betrayal. Not if my heart is this broken, and there’s no safe place left in the world.
I close my eyes, gripping the edges of the bench, wishing and praying for a way to make it stop.
