Page 103 of Off-Limits as Puck

For the first time in months, I feel like I did something right.

Even if it cost me everything else.

38

Watching someone defend your honor on national television while you’re eating instant ramen in discount pajamas is the kind of joke that would be funny if it didn’t make you cry into your sodium-heavy dinner.

TheSports Centerclip autoplay’s on my laptop screen for the fifth time. Reed sits across from Stuart Owens looking older, steadier, like someone who’s learned the difference between reacting and responding. His voice is calm when he says my name—Dr. Chelsea Clark, not the casual intimacy of just Chelsea—giving me back the professional respect I thought I’d lost forever.

“Dr. Clark never used her position inappropriately. If anything, she fought against her feelings longer and harder than I did.”

My tea goes cold as I replay those words, watching his face on the small screen. He looks directly into the camera when he says it, like he’s talking to me specifically, like he knows I’m sitting ina Phoenix apartment that smells like loneliness and microwaved carbohydrates.

“She made me a better player by making me a better person.”

I pause the video, studying his expression. This isn’t the Reed who punched Lawrence or destroyed hotel furniture or showed up drunk at charity galas. This is someone who’s done the work—the hard, unglamorous work of actually changing instead of just promising to change.

My phone buzzes. Then again. Then continuously, like someone’s machine-gunning my notification settings.

The first message is from Dr. Rutledge:Saw the interview. Hope you’re okay.

Then Dr. Reeves from Northwestern:That took courage. From both of you.

Patricia Holbrook:For what it’s worth, you were good at your job.

Messages from former colleagues, from classmates I haven’t spoken to in some time, from people I’d written off as casualties of my professional suicide. All of them saying variations of the same thing—that they saw the interview, that they’re sorry for believing the worst, that maybe they misjudged the situation.

Twenty-six messages in ten minutes. Each one chipping away at the armor I’ve built around my exile, making me remember that not everyone thinks I’m a cautionary tale about women who want too much.

Then the one that stops my breath entirely.

Dad:I saw it.

Three words from a man who hasn’t spoken to me in six months. No apology, no explanation, just acknowledgment that he saw his former player defend his daughter on national television.That he heard someone he coached for three years call me brilliant and professional and worthy of respect.

I stare at his contact photo, a formal headshot from his Outlaws bio, all authority and controlled disappointment. The man who raised me to be perfect, who taught me that second place was first loser, who cut me out of his life when I chose feeling over winning.

My fingers hover over the keyboard, composing and deleting seventeen different responses.

We should talk.

I’m sorry.

I miss you.

Why now?

Go fuck yourself.(Deleted immediately, but it felt good to type.)

Instead, I set the phone aside and return to the video. Watch Reed’s hands as he speaks—scarred knuckles that once traced my skin, now folded carefully in his lap. Professional. Controlled. Everything he wasn’t when we were destroying each other in equipment sheds and empty rinks.

“I don’t regret falling in love with someone who saw the best version of me and demanded I live up to it.”

The words hit different the fifth time. Not just because he’s claiming responsibility, but because of how he says love. Not past tense. Not “I fell in love and got over it.” Presentfuckingtense, like it’s still happening, like exile and time and an ocean of consequences haven’t changed that fundamental truth.

I close the laptop and walk to my kitchen window, looking out at the Phoenix sprawl. Somewhere out there, two thousand miles away, Reed just burned whatever carefully reconstructed reputation he’d built to tell the truth about us. About me. Aboutwhat we were and what it cost and why it mattered.

He didn’t have to do that. Could have kept his head down, played hockey, let me disappear into my Arizona obscurity while he rebuilt his career with someone else’s broken pieces. Instead, he went on national television and said my name like it meant something.

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