Riven didn’t look at his phone when it buzzed anymore.

Group chats lighting up, missed calls stacking like a bad save reel, his agent’s name flashing over and over like a warning siren he couldn’t turn off. He hadn’t needed to open anything to feel it spreading, to know exactly what had been taken and twisted and handed to strangers like it meant nothing. Like he meant nothing.

He just let the cellphone sit there. Let it exist. Like maybe if he ignored it long enough, the scandal would rot on its own. Surely he could pretend that this wasn’t clawing under his skin every time he stepped onto the ice, every time a camera lingered a beat too long, every time someone in the stands laughed just a little too sharp. He kept his head down. Played through it. Riven didn’t get the luxury of falling apart.

Because falling apart didn’t wire money home.

Somewhere in Shreveport, New Orleans, his mama was still stretching every dollar like it might snap in her hands if she pulled too hard, and Riven had promised quietly and stubbornly that she’d never have to worry like that again. This wasn’t a career to him. It wasn’t fame or ego or any of the bullshit people liked to attach to it. No, hockey was survival with better visibility.

And he wasn’t about to lose it over something as stupid as loving the wrong person.

Monroe Carter.

God, Riven had loved her, but Monroe had never liked the word ‘no’. It had always been there if he was honest, threaded through every smile, every soft laugh that landed just a second too sharp, every time she leaned past a boundary like it was a suggestion instead of something deliberate. She didn’t explode when he held the line. She didn’t scream or throw things or make a scene. Monroe pressed. Patient. Persistent. Testing, testing, testing, like she believed everything in his life was something she could eventually unlock if she just found the right angle. Riven had refused to give her one.

He had built himself out of restraint. Out of knowing exactly where his limits sat and refusing to let anyone cross them, no matter how much he wanted to pretend he could relax for once, just once, just with her. He’d tried, in his own way. Let her get closer than anyone else had gotten in a long time, close enough that it had meant something, that when she looked at him, there had been a version of Riven that wasn’t all steel and calculation and quiet control.

It hadn’t been enough for her. Monroe hadn’t wanted pieces. She wanted access. Full, unrestricted, no locked doors, no quiet corners he could keep to himself. She wanted to be the exception to rules that had kept him alive long before she ever walked into his life, and when she realized he wasn’t going to bend those rules for her, something in her went cold.

He saw it too late. By the time he stepped back, by the time he made it clear in that frustratingly calm, firm, final way that there were lines she wasn’t going to cross, Monroe had already decided she wasn’t leaving empty-handed. She didn’t rage. Didn’t beg. Didn’t even argue the way most people would have.

She had smiled. And she’d hurt him. She’d specifically chosen something private, something he had given in a rare moment of warmth and implicit trust. Riven had forgotten that giving anything away came with a cost even if it had been meant for her and her alone. Nudes.

Riven’s body, sculpted and hard-earned, every line of it built through discipline and repetition, through early mornings and late nights and the kind of relentless control that bled into everything he did. He’d sent them from a hotel room three states away, the night before an away game, when the world had felt small enough to forget himself for a second. When he’d been tired and missing something he didn’t usually let himself name, and Monroe had slipped into that space like she belonged there. He’d trusted the moment and she’d turned it into a weapon.

She had taken that, taken him, and made it something public. Something consumed. Something that didn’t belong to him anymore. Just dropped it online like it was nothing and watched his world go up in flames from the sidelines.

Riven didn’t watch the footage but the aftermath wrapped around him anyway. It settled into the spaces he moved through, pressed in from every direction until it felt like the air itself knew something it shouldn’t. Sponsors issued warnings. Conversations dipped when he walked into rooms. Eyes lingered, not shocked, not even curious, just aware in a way that made his skin feel too tight and that was what stuck. Not the exposure. Not even Monroe’s betrayal. It was the idea that something of his had been taken out of his control and handed to people who would never understand the difference between what was given and what was stolen.

Monroe had wanted a reaction. He knew that now. Wanted him to break, to come back, to finally give her the kind of emotion she’d spent months trying to pry out of him. Rage, desperation, anything that proved she’d gotten under his skin deep enough to matter.

She got silence. No calls. No texts. No acknowledgment. He cut her off like she’d never existed, because engaging meant giving her exactly what she wanted, and Riven didn’t reward behavior like that. Not ever. Still, it cost him.

He felt it in the way his body stayed coiled even when there was no immediate threat, in the way sleep came light and fractured, like his instincts didn’t trust the dark anymore. He felt it in the way his temper edged sharper, quieter, more controlled but no less dangerous, like everything in him had shifted half a step closer to something that didn’t forgive easily.

He carried it onto the ice with him. Not as distraction or weakness. As fuel. Every save a little cleaner, every movement a little tighter, like he could outplay the noise if he just stayed locked in hard enough. Like control on the ice could make up for the control he’d lost everywhere else. It worked.

Mostly.

Because the truth sat there under all of it, stubborn and uncooperative. Riven had loved her and Monroe had taken it and twisted it into something ugly, something public, something he couldn’t get back no matter how tightly he locked himself down now but Riven should’ve known it wouldn’t end there.

Practice had wrung him out and left him hollowed, heavy in a way that sank past muscle and into bone. The hot locker room shower had done its job on the surface, rinsed the sweat, cooled the burn in his skin, left him clean and put-together in that controlled, deliberate way he preferred but it hadn’t touched the deeper exhaustion. Now that he was off the ice his body lagged a step too slow, like his mind was dragging through wet cement trying to keep up. His gear bag dug into his shoulder, damp chestnut hair cooling at the nape of his neck. The echo of drills was still lodged in his joints despite the reset and he just didn’t have anything left for complications tonight. The elevator chimed soft and polite, like his night wasn’t about to detonate.

Riven stepped out onto his floor already half in his head, keys in hand, the quiet of his floor settling in around him like something he could finally breathe in- And then Monroe’s voice cut through it.

“You don’t get to just hide from this, Riven!”

He froze, something in him locking instantly, every muscle pulling tight. His brain snapped from tired to razor-alert in a single, brutal shift. Monroe stood down the hall, right outside his door, one hand braced against it like she planned to break it open with sheer force of will. Hair perfect. Posture perfect. Voice carrying just enough to turn heads if anyone else stepped out.

An envelope was clutched to her chest. Not flimsy. Thick, official, the kind of paper that had weight, edges sharp, stamped and sealed with the kind of authority that didn’t ask permission before it ruined your week. Riven clocked it in a single glance.

Ah. The Outlaw’s legal team had finally moved. Fast. Efficient. Exactly how they handled problems; Contain, control, eliminate.

“Your corporate goons think they can just send this and I’m supposed to what? Panic?” she went on, voice pitched just high enough to carry, just controlled enough not to sound unhinged. “You don’t get to sic lawyers on me and then disappear, you emotionally constipated asshole.”

His jaw tightened. That envelope meant escalation. Paper trail. Statements. Depositions. Everything dragged out into the open and dissected. Something in Riven’s chest went cold and precise, the same way it did when a play turned dangerous, when the ice shifted under him and he had half a second to decide whether to hold or adjust. If he stepped forward, she’d see him. If she saw him, this became a conversation. If it became a conversation... Nope.

Not here. Not like this. Not with her holding legal paperwork in his hallway like it was a prop. His instincts snapped tight and fast, the same split-second recalibration that kept pucks out of his net firing off before thought could catch up. He didn’t give himself time to weigh it, to second-guess, to do anything except move. He lunged for the closest door, clean and decisive, like the choice had already been made somewhere deeper than conscious thought.

The handle gave.

Riven didn’t hesitate. He slipped inside in one clean movement, shoulder angling through the gap as his hand caught the door and pulled it shut behind him with a quiet, controlled click that felt louder than it should have. Monroe’s voice snapped against the hallway a second later, sharp and searching, but it hit the door and flattened there, muffled into something distant and useless.

Silence took its place. Not empty.

Occupied. Warm air. Lived-in. Close.

Riven stood just inside the entry, breath steady but not settled, the tension still riding high under his skin like he hadn’t actually escaped anything, just changed the shape of it. His body was still keyed for impact, muscles tight, senses sharp, tracking everything at once, space, exits, distance, before his brain caught up to the fact that he had just walked into someone else’s apartment uninvited.

x