I had spent three years convincing everyone I earned my NHL job before my little brother ever wore a Chicago Forge jersey.

When Owen became the league's favorite rookie, fans still called me the sister who got lucky.

Nate was the only person who swore he saw Tessa, not Owen Hale's access pass.

When his freelance hockey channel nearly died, I covered our rent for four months and edited his sponsor reels after midnight.

He promised we were building a life, and I believed him.

At the Forge's sponsor bar, I carried his spare battery down the service hall because he said he was filming late.

I heard Blair Knox laugh behind the storage-room door.

Then I heard the man I loved kiss her.

I should have walked away.

Instead I pushed the door open and asked how long.

Nate looked at me like I was the interruption.

Cade Mercer, my brother's most hated rival, appeared at the end of the hall just as Nate grabbed my wrist.

"Tell her the truth."

"She'll never leave during Owen's rookie season."

"What if she does?"

"Without her brother, nobody in hockey knows who Tessa Hale is."

***

"Stop needing everyone to revolve around you like your brother," Nate wrote.

I stared at the text on my phone, the harsh glow of the screen burning my eyes. The post-game sponsor party roared around me inside the VIP lounge of the Lakeshore Arena, but my attention was locked across the room. Blair Knox was currently wearing Nate’s spare media credential, laughing over a martini while she tapped his chest.

"Hey, the rookie's sister!" A local dealership owner slapped the mahogany bar next to me. "Tell Owen great game tonight. That kid is the future of the Forge."

"I will," I said, forcing my customer-service smile.

"Make sure he keeps his head up on the ice," the man added, swirling his whiskey. "Mercer destroyed him in the second period."

"Owen can handle himself," I replied, swiping down to refresh the Chicago Forge social media analytics on my tablet.

Nate materialized from the crowd, smelling of expensive cologne and stale beer. He leaned in, pressing a quick kiss to my cheek. He only ever did that when he wanted something.

"Hey. Did you talk to the rep from Bauer yet?" he asked, tapping my tablet screen. "I need that connection for my freelance channel."

"I emailed him," I said. "Are we getting out of here soon? Our anniversary reservation was at eight. It's ten."

"I'm working, Tessa." He stepped back. "Just bring a spare lithium battery to the back service hall in ten minutes. My rig is dying."

"I stayed up until four in the morning cutting your sponsor reels so you'd have tonight free," I reminded him. "You said we were celebrating three years."

"And I said I'm working right now." He rolled his eyes. "Don't start a fight here."

He disappeared into the crowd before I could argue.

Ten minutes later, I carried the heavy battery down the concrete corridor toward the visiting team entrance. The air back here smelled of ice shavings and athletic tape.

Cade Mercer blocked the hallway.

The Denver Vipers captain leaned against the cinderblock wall, fully dressed in his custom navy post-game suit. He looked entirely unbothered by the swarm of reporters who had just grilled him about his on-ice brawl with my brother.

He caught my eye. "Hale. Your brother finally learned to keep his head up tonight."

I stopped walking. "Mercer, if you talked one less word per shift, the league might actually like you."

He let out a short, rough laugh. "Are you always this defensive, or just when Owen loses?"

"Are you always this arrogant, or just when you avoid a major penalty?" I countered.

He stepped aside, a smirk playing on his lips. "Have a good night, Tessa."

I walked past him, pushing toward the media storage room. A soft laugh echoed from the cracked door. Blair's laugh.

Then, Nate's low murmur.

The battery in my hand suddenly felt ridiculously heavy.

I pushed the door open.

Nate jumped back. A smear of cherry-red lipstick stained the corner of his mouth. Blair stood beside a stack of Pelican equipment cases, aggressively smoothing her skirt.

Nate didn't wipe his mouth. He glared at me. "Why do you always have to make a scene at my work?"

"How long?" I asked.

"You walked in without knocking," Blair muttered, crossing her arms.

"I said, how long?" I stepped further into the small room.

Nate stepped in front of Blair, shielding her from me. "You've spent the last six months obsessing over Owen's schedule and the team's PR crises. Don't act like you've been present in this relationship."

"I paid your rent for four months last year," I said. "I edited your videos when your channel tanked."

"Paying my rent doesn't mean you bought my life!" Nate snapped.

"Just tell her the truth, Nate," Blair urged from behind him.

Nate scoffed, looking me up and down. "You won't leave this job during Owen's rookie season. And you won't leave me. Because without your brother, nobody in hockey knows who Tessa Hale is."

I lifted my hand to drop the battery at his feet.

Nate lunged forward, his fingers digging into my wrist with painful force. He stared at the Forge media camera strapped across my chest. The red recording light blinked in the dim room. I had left it running after filming the sponsor toast.

"Delete that footage," he demanded, squeezing my bones together.

"Let go of me."

"Not until you format that card."

"Let her go."

Cade stood in the doorway. He didn't yell, but the sheer size of him filled the space.

Nate whipped around. "Mind your own business, Mercer."

Nate shoved Cade's chest. Cade didn't budge an inch.

Cade's fist shot out, connecting with Nate's jaw with a sickening crack. Nate slammed into the drywall and slid to the floor.

Camera flashes lit up the hallway behind Cade. Three fans with phones had followed the Vipers captain from the bar.

Chaos erupted. Security guards swarmed the hall. Within minutes, someone shouted about a video on social media titled 'Vipers captain attacks rival-team staffer's boyfriend'.

Nate scrambled up, wiping a streak of blood from his chin. He grabbed my elbow, pulling me into a quiet corner while security held Cade back.

"Tessa, listen to me," Nate whispered, his tone suddenly desperate. "Delete your raw footage."

"You're out of your mind."

"Tell them Mercer attacked me unprovoked." He tightened his grip on my arm. "If you do this, I'll go home with you tonight. I'll explain everything with Blair. We can fix this."

I stared at him. The man I had supported for three years was bargaining his infidelity against a lie. That sentence sobered me completely.

I yanked my arm away.

I unclipped the camera strap from my neck and walked straight over to Marisol Vega, our PR director, who was barking damage control into her cell phone.

"Marisol," I interrupted. I shoved the camera into her hands. "Post the full timeline. Do not cut the second Nate grabbed me."

"Tessa, wait!" Nate yelled.

I pushed through the loading dock doors into the cold Chicago night.

I was halfway to my apartment, thinking I could finally pack Nate's things into garbage bags, when my phone rang. Marisol.

"Did you post it?" I asked, answering on the first ring.

"I did," Marisol said, her voice tight with corporate stress. "The raw video proves Cade didn't start it, but it also proves he escalated a physical altercation."

"Good for him."

"The league held off on an immediate suspension pending review."

"Why are you calling me about the Vipers' captain?" I asked, unlocking my front door.

"Because your raw video is the only reason Mercer isn't suspended tonight," Marisol said. "So starting tomorrow morning, you're the one fixing his image."

"Sign this, shoot the apology, and don't let either team touch the raw footage." Marisol dropped a ten-page strategy packet onto the metal folding table.

Neutral training facility. Seven in the morning. I hadn't slept.

Cade Mercer sat across from me in a gray practice shirt. He skimmed the first page of the drafted apology, picked up a pen, and pushed the paper back across the table.

"I'm not reading this," Cade said.

"The league needs a statement," I said, sliding the document back toward him. "Ten days of daily content. Short interviews, community outreach, zero edits. Start with the apology."

He tapped the second paragraph. "It says I lost control during an unprovoked argument with a fan. That's a lie."

"It protects the Forge's image," I countered. "And it gets you out of a suspension."

"It erases the fact that your boyfriend had his hands on you," Cade said, his voice flat.

I stiffened. I expected him to use my humiliation to save his own skin. "You can say he grabbed me. It justifies the punch."

"I'm not using your cheating ex and your bruised wrist as PR material," Cade said. He leaned back in his plastic chair. "I'll admit I shouldn't have thrown the punch. I won't say it was unprovoked."

I stared at him. The arrogant captain of the Denver Vipers had a boundary. He refused to weaponize my private disaster to clear his own name.

I picked up my tablet, highlighted the entire drafted paragraph, and hit delete. I typed a single sentence acknowledging the escalated physical conflict. No excuses. No sob story.

Marisol read it over my shoulder, then gave me the kind of look that usually meant legal was about to call. "If we do this your way, the full clip stays available for review. No reaction shots, no sympathetic music, no cropping."

"Good," I said. "If the point is credibility, we cannot manufacture it."

Cade's gaze moved from Marisol to me. "You always argue with your boss before breakfast?"

"Only when my boss hands me bad copy."

Marisol muttered something about both of us being impossible and left to brief the league. For the first time since the storage-room disaster, I felt like I was doing work instead of cleaning up somebody else's version of the truth.

We moved to the edge of the ice rink for the first video. Cade stood under the harsh overhead lights, struggling with the lavalier microphone wire. Thick white athletic tape wrapped tightly around his right wrist, making his fingers clumsy against the small clip.

"Let me," I said.

I stepped into his space, taking the black transmitter from his hand. I secured it to the hem of his shirt, my knuckles briefly brushing his side. He didn't flinch.

"Does the Forge make the Hale family handle rival captains personally?" Cade asked, looking down at my media badge.

"I handle social media," I said, meeting his gaze. "I don't handle making you likable."

"Good luck with that."

I retreated a step, checking the audio levels on my monitor. "Why do you target Owen?"

Cade adjusted the mic clip on his collar. "I don't target him. I gave him a legal open-ice hit his first game. He retaliated with a dirty cross-check."

"You told the press the league isn't a highlight reel," I reminded him. "I spent three days burying the backlash from that quote."

"I won't apologize for a clean hit," Cade said. "But the quote? Yeah. I said that to needle him."

He owned the provocation. For the first time, I saw that Owen's rivalry wasn't one-sided; they were pushing each other.

An hour later, I stood outside the visiting locker room. Cade had gone inside to change out of his skates.

"Hey, Owen's sister," a facility manager called out, pushing a heavy laundry cart down the corridor. "Can you move that equipment bag?"

I reached for the canvas strap.

The locker room door swung open. Cade stepped out, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He looked directly at the facility manager.

"She has a name," Cade said. "Tessa Hale."

The manager blinked, muttered a quick apology, and kept walking.

Cade turned to me, unfazed. "What's the next shot?"

My chest tightened. Nate had spent last night telling me I was nothing without my brother's name. Cade just handed my identity back to me without a second thought. The correction felt heavier than any hollow comfort someone else might have offered.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Owen's contact photo flashed on the screen.

"I'm calling the front office," Owen demanded the second I answered. "They can't force you to babysit Mercer."

"I'm doing my job, Owen."

"He's a menace, Tess! I'll tell Marisol to pull you off."

"No, you won't." I kept my voice steady, gripping the phone tighter. "You can hate him. But you don't decide if I can do my job."

"Tessa—"

"I'll call you later." I hung up.

Cade stood two steps away. He had clearly heard the entire exchange. I braced myself for a sarcastic comment about my brother's temper.

Instead, Cade shifted his duffel bag. "The Hale family doesn't step off the ice easily."

"At least I know when not to throw a punch," I fired back.

A faint smirk crossed his face. "Fair enough."

The unedited statement went live at noon. The comments immediately shifted from outrage to grudging respect for Cade's blunt honesty. The heat was dying down.

Then my phone exploded.

Notifications flooded the screen. Three missed calls from Owen. A dozen messages in the Forge PR group chat.

I opened the social app.

Nate had just uploaded a new video to his channel. Seven seconds long.

It was the hallway footage from last night, but heavily cropped. It showed Cade standing in the doorway, his eyes darting to me for a split second before his fist connected with Nate's jaw. The frame cut off right above Nate's waist, hiding his hand crushing my wrist.

I tapped the caption.

Nate had written: Mercer clearly isn't stepping in for the first time. Ask them how long this has been going on.

He was spinning himself as the betrayed boyfriend. He was implying Cade and I were sleeping together.

A shadow fell over my shoulder.

Cade stood right behind me, his eyes locked on the same glowing screen.

"Well," Cade said, his voice dropping low. "Are you going to tell them, or should I?"

"I'll tell the league I started it," Cade said, planting both hands on Marisol's glass desk. "Pull her off the project."

"Absolutely not," I said from the corner of the PR office.

Marisol rubbed her temples. "Tessa, your ex-boyfriend just framed you for a cross-roster affair. The front office wants your personal accounts suspended until the league finishes their review."

"If you suspend my accounts, it looks like an admission of guilt," I argued, stepping up to the desk. "Nate wants me to hide. He wants me terrified of the backlash so I won't expose what he actually did."

"I'm taking the blame," Cade repeated, his voice dropping a full octave. "You're done taking hits for my suspension."

"And what happens to your reputation?" I asked. "You just admit to assaulting a staff member unprovoked?"

"I survive it," Cade said. "You don't."

"I don't need a man to rewrite my narrative," I snapped. "Neither of you."

I pulled my phone from my pocket, opened the league's official social app, and hit record. I didn't check my hair. I didn't put on my customer-service smile.

"My name is Tessa Hale," I said to the lens. "Last night, I walked into the Lakeshore Arena media room and caught my boyfriend, Nate, kissing another woman. I had zero private conversations with Cade Mercer before that exact minute. Mercer was wrong to escalate the argument into a physical fight. But Nate does not get to reverse a timeline just to hide his own infidelity."

I tapped the screen and posted the video directly to the main feed.

"It's live," I told Marisol, dropping the phone onto her desk. "Nate's leverage is gone. Now let me do my job."

Two hours later, the chill of the empty practice rink bit through my thin jacket.

Cade sat on the away bench, tracing the edge of his stick blade with his thumb. I clamped the camera to the glass partition and pressed the record button.

"Five minutes," I instructed, stepping back. "Whatever I ask, you answer. No PR retakes. We leave it uncut."

Cade rested his chin on his hands. "Shoot."

"Why do you think Owen only chases the camera?" I asked, keeping my tone neutral.

"Because he cares more about his post-game fit than his backcheck," Cade answered immediately.

"Do you really think every guy in this league just lives for the likes?" I pressed.

"You think we lace up to trend online?" Cade countered.

"I think social media is a second arena," I fired back. "It's not vanity. It's how players secure their futures when their knees give out at thirty. It's how the team pays for the ice you're sitting next to. Owen knows that. You pretend you don't."

Cade stopped moving. He stared at me, the harsh rink lights catching the sharp angle of his jaw. The silence held.

"You actually understand the business," he finally said.

"I do my job."

"More than that." He dropped his stick. It clattered against the rubber floor mats. "I checked the Forge public staff directory last night."

I gripped the edge of the camera monitor. "Why?"

"I wanted to know who I was working with," Cade said. "You got hired here two years before Owen got drafted. And you voluntarily pulled your name off his personal brand management last season."

I crossed my arms, suddenly feeling too exposed under the fluorescent bulbs. "So?"

"So I know you didn't get in because of him," Cade said, his gaze pinning me in place. "You just let everyone call you the rookie's sister."

I opened my mouth to deliver a sharp comeback, to push him right back into the rival box where he belonged. Nothing came out.

Lakeshore Arena roared at eight o'clock that night, the second game of Chicago and Denver's two-night set.

I sat at the team work desk, my tablet resting on my knees. Down on the ice, the Chicago-Denver matchup looked like a war zone. Owen and Cade marked each other relentlessly, trading shoves after every whistle. The referees handed out roughing penalties like candy, but neither man backed down.

Halfway through the second period, Owen wound up for a massive slapshot from the point. The puck left his stick like a bullet.

Cade dropped to his knees in the shooting lane.

The hard rubber puck slammed directly into Cade's exposed ribs with a sickening thud. He collapsed forward, his helmet hitting the ice. The whistle blew.

It took the Vipers trainer three minutes to get Cade off the ice. He spent the rest of the period hunched on the bench, clutching his side.

Ten minutes later, Owen scored on a breakaway. As he skated past the Denver bench to celebrate, Owen loudly slapped his own chest, right where the puck had hit Cade.

Cade didn't stand up. He simply raised one gloved hand and pointed at the giant scoreboard above center ice. Denver was still winning.

The visiting corridor smelled of ammonia and sweat when I arrived after the final horn.

I leaned against the cinderblock wall, clutching my camera. The door creaked open. Cade walked out.

He looked terrible. His skin lacked any color, and he held his left arm tight against his torso. The team doctor had clearly just wrapped his ribs.

"What kind of villain did Nate edit you into today?" Cade asked, his voice strained.

I didn't laugh. I stepped forward and adjusted the camera lens. "Two minutes. Just give me one quote about the penalty kill, and you're done."

Cade stopped. He studied my face, searching for the catch. "The packet says you need five minutes post-game."

"I'm the director," I said, holding the camera steady. "I say we need two. You look like you're going to pass out in my hallway, and I don't want to fill out the incident report."

He didn't mock me. He didn't reject the lifeline. He just nodded, stepped into the frame, and gave me exactly what I needed in ninety seconds flat.

"Cut," I said, lowering the lens.

A screen lit up on the wooden bench just inside the open locker room door. Cade's phone.

He turned his back to me and picked it up. The hallway was completely empty. The silence amplified his low, raspy voice.

"Don't tell Mom," Cade said into the receiver.

I froze, my hand hovering over the power button on my camera.

"I know Dad's rink loan is tied to the house," Cade continued, leaning his forehead against the metal doorframe. "Just keep them quiet. I'll cover it by Friday."

He ended the call and turned around.

I stood exactly where he had left me. We locked eyes through the stark white light spilling from the locker room. He knew I heard him. The arrogant, unbothered captain of the Denver Vipers suddenly looked cornered.

I slid the lens cap onto my camera. "We have enough content for today."

I turned to walk away.

"You always wanted to know why I can't take a suspension, Tessa?" Cade asked.

I stopped and looked over my shoulder.

He stood straight, ignoring the obvious pain in his ribs. "Ask me tomorrow, and I'll tell you the real answer."