Chapter 2 Fina Judgment

Cal POV 

Present Day

“I’m so sorry, Coach. I really didn’t mean to cause you trouble.”

“Cal.” Coach Remon’s voice cut through mine before I could finish. He wasn’t angry,  which somehow made it worse. If it was Anger I could work with it. This was something quieter. 

Disappointed in the specific way of someone who had believed in you and was now having to defend that belief to people who hadn’t.

“If it were just me this wouldn’t be an issue,”  he said. “But the officials are involved now. That’s why I called you in.”  He gestured toward the door on his left. “Go in. Hear what they have to say.”

I had spent years working toward something. Every early morning, every training session that ran past the point where my body wanted to stop, every choice I made that put the game first, all of it had been building toward the final season. Toward the tournament, the moment I had been promising myself and my father since I was old enough to hold a stick. 

A few weeks away. That was all that was left.

I didn’t regret what I did. I want to be clear about that. What I regretted was the timing, that I let it happen on the ice, in front of cameras, with everything I had worked for sitting directly in the line of fire.

I should have waited until the game was over.

I followed Coach Remon through the door.

Four officials sat behind a long table arranged in a triangle formation. Two men I had never seen before were positioned to the side suited, composed, watching me the way people watched things they had already decided about.

I stood in front of them and kept my face still.

“Callum Cal Reid,” the official on the right said, opening a file without looking up. “We’ll go straight to the point.”

“We won’t ask you why you did it,” the man beside him added. “You should have controlled yourself regardless of the provocation. Violence carries a bigger penalty than whatever started it.”

They were right, I knew all about the rules.

But they didn’t know what he said. Nobody in this room knew what that player had said about my father, the specific words, the specific tone, the specific cruelty of someone who had done their research and found the exact place to push. 

Nobody knew because I had never told anyone. And I wasn’t going to tell anyone now, standing in front of a table of officials who had already made up their minds.

Some things you don’t explain. You just carry the consequence.

“Regarding your standing with the university,” the head official continued, “effective immediately, your scholarship is under review, your captaincy is suspended, and you are banned from six games. Including the tournament.”

That last word landed in my chest like something physical.

I lifted my head slowly.

“The tournament,” I said.

“CAL.” Coach Remon’s voice, sharp, warning.

“You should have thought about this before,” the first official said.

I closed my mouth. Swallowed everything I wanted to say. I stood there and took it because that was the only option that kept any door open.

“However,” the head official said, sitting forward slightly, “given your record and your contribution to this team, we’re prepared to offer an alternative.” He turned toward the two men at the side of the room. “These gentlemen represent a production company. They’ve proposed a public relations campaign, a reality show format that would help manage the public response to this incident and demonstrate your character to a wider audience.”

A reality show.

I turned the words over. It wasn’t what I would have chosen. But it wasn’t the suspension either.

“It’ll be an eight week process,” one of the men said, stepping forward with his card extended. 

“Structured activities, public appearances, a fake relationship element for the narrative. Full details tomorrow. Take the night to decide.”

Dating.

I hadn’t thought seriously about dating in three years. Not since, not since the summer before everything went quiet. And now a fake version of it, staged for cameras.

“He’ll do it,” Coach Remon said before I could open my mouth.

His eyes met mine across the table. They said: this is the only road still open. Take it.

“He starts tomorrow,” Coach Remon continued, turning back to the officials. “Thank you all for this opportunity.”

And just like that the decision was made for me.

I didn’t go home after.

The bar I ended up in was loud in the wrong way, the kind of loud that pushed thoughts around instead of quieting them. After twenty minutes I left without finishing my drink and just walked, no direction, until my feet remembered where they always went when everything else stopped making sense.

The ice, I had skates in my bag the way some people carried headphones, out of habit, I laced them up in the empty rink and stepped onto the surface and immediately felt something in my chest loosen by a fraction.

This was where it had started for me. Not the sport specifically, the feeling. Sitting in the stands as a small boy watching my father’s old teammates play, not understanding the rules yet but understanding that something important happened here. That the ice didn’t lie. That whatever you brought to it, it gave back honestly.

I started moving.

The memories came the way they always did when I skated alone, in no particular order, without warning. I laughed at some of them. Let the tears come for others. Kept moving through all of it because stopping was never the answer. The answer was always to keep moving until the weight redistributed itself into something manageable.

By the time I stepped off the ice my legs were tired and my head was clear and something that had felt like the end of everything an hour ago had rearranged itself into something more like a beginning.

One more obstacle. That was all this was.

I was going to make it to that tournament.

7:45 AM

The morning felt different from the four days before it. Softer somehow. Less like the world was ending.

I found the address in the email, knocked twice on an unfamiliar door and walked into a room with several people I hadn’t met yet and one face I recognized from yesterday’s meeting.

“Cal, good to see you,” the man said, walking toward me with his hand already extended. “We didn’t get a proper introduction yesterday. I’m Marcus. Head supervisor for the show. Looking forward to working with you.”

“Same,” I said, shaking his hand.

“Good. Let me walk you through, we’re all set up and ready to start. I’ll be introducing you to your fake girlfriend shortly. She’s sharp, professional, completely capable of pulling this off without any complications.”

He kept talking as he led me down a corridor and into a mid-sized hall that smelled like equipment and fresh coffee.

“Mass Communications hall,” Marcus said, gesturing around him with the smile of someone who found everything slightly more exciting than other people did. “Where the magic happens.”

I smiled back because it seemed like the right thing to do and followed him further into the space toward the stage at the far end.

I was still looking around when my feet stopped moving. Not a decision or  by choice. They just stopped.

My heart did something irregular. My eyes had already found her before my brain had caught up with what I was seeing. She was standing at the far edge of the stage, side-on, completely unaware of me, and every single thing that had happened to me in the last three years rearranged itself around that image in about two seconds flat.

Of all the people, Of all the possible people.

I had been this close to turning around and walking back through the door when Marcus opened his mouth.

“Nora Ellis,  meet Callum Cal Reid.”

She turned.

And there it was, that expression, Composed, Prepared. The specific blankness she constructed when she had already decided something in advance and wasn’t going to let you see the machinery behind it. She had worn that face three years ago when she stopped answering. She was wearing it now.

She knew about me  before i walked into this room.

Meanwhile I was standing here exactly the way I had stood on that quad in October,  two steps forward it was already too late. Here I was again, Cheated by nature without a clue.

“Cal,” Marcus said, still smiling, completely unaware that the air in the room had changed entirely, “meet Nora. Your acting girlfriend.”

The words landed like something dropped from a height.

But then, something shifted in Nora’s expression. Something small and quick that she almost covered in time.

She hadn’t known that part.

For the first time since I walked through the door I had information she didn’t. 

For the first time in three years something between us was even.

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

Neither of us said a word.