Page 33

The text message threats about revealing the shed fuck between me and Dr. Clark have been released into the public. But they’re hot and inappropriate for the world to see. Chelsea isn’t answering any of my text messages. The damage is done, and there’s nothing more I can do now.

My phone sits on the coffee table like evidence of my isolation. No calls from Coach. No texts from teammates who aren’t sure if acknowledging me will hurt their own careers. Just Jerry checking in with increasingly grim updates about my prospects.

Jerry: KHL offer came through. Moscow. Two years, decent money.

Jerry: You need to decide soon. Interest won’t last forever.

Jerry: Reed, you there?

I’m here. Sort of. Existing in the space between who I was and who I’m about to become, watching my life dissolve in real-time while ESPN runs segments about “fallen athletes” and “cautionary tales.” They use my photo from three years ago—before the suspensions, before Chelsea, when I still looked like someone with a future.

The team’s playing tonight. First home game since the scandal broke. I could be there—technically nothing’s stopping me from buying a ticket and sitting in the stands like any other fan. But watching them play without me feels like attending my own funeral.

Instead, I order takeout I don’t eat and scroll through news feeds that dissect my relationship like sports commentary.

Chicago Tribune: “Hendrix’s Career in Freefall After Ethics Scandal”

The Athletic: “Outlaws Consider Trading Troubled Winger”

Deadspin: “When Hockey Players Think with the Wrong Head”

Each headline is a small death. Twenty-four years old and already a cautionary tale, proof that talent without discipline is just expensive entertainment.

My phone buzzes. Weston’s name on the screen, probably calling with updates I don’t want to hear.

“How’d it go?” I answer without greeting.

“Lost 4-1. Sweeney got ejected for fighting. Welsh’s playing injured. Thompson looked like he was skating in quicksand.” His voice carries the exhaustion of someone carrying extra weight. “We miss you, man.”

“Bullshit.”

“Not bullshit. Team’s falling apart. Chemistry’s gone. Everyone’s walking on eggshells, afraid to say the wrong thing.”

“About me?”

“About everything. You, Dr. Clark, the media circus. It’s like playing hockey in a minefield.”

The mention of Chelsea’s name hits harder than expected. A week since our last conversation, since she walked away from me in that empty locker room. Seven days of silence that feels like drowning.

“How is she?” I ask before I can stop myself.

“Gone.”

The word lands like a slap shot to the chest. “Gone where?”

“No one knows. Cleaned out her apartment over the weekend. Left no forwarding address. Maddy says she’s not returning calls.”

Gone. Just like Vegas, just like every time things get too real. But this time feels different. Final. Like she’s not just leaving me, she’s leaving everything.

“Did she...” I struggle with the question. “Did she say anything? About me?”

“Nic—”

“I know it’s pathetic. I know she’s moved on. I just need to know if she said anything.”

Silence stretches across the line. When Weston speaks again, his voice is gentle.

“Maddy mentioned she seemed... empty. Like someone had hollowed her out. But she didn’t talk about you specifically.”

Empty. Perfect word for how I feel too. Like Chelsea took something essential when she left, some piece of me I didn’t know I needed until it was gone.

“Jerry wants me to take the Moscow offer,” I tell him.

“You going to?”

“Probably. Nothing left for me here.”

“There’s the team. Your career. The guys who need you to stop wallowing and come back.”

“The team doesn’t want me. My career’s toast. And the guys...” I pause, processing what he said about chemistry and minefields. “The guys are better off without my drama.”

“That’s the depression talking.”

“That’s reality talking.”

“Reality is we’re fucking terrible without you. Lawrence can’t fill your role. Stevens is useless when he’s angry. And Thompson—” He stops himself.

“Thompson what?”

“Nothing. Just... we need you back.”

But I’m not really listening anymore. The words “empty” and “hollowed out” keep echoing, and suddenly I know what I need to do. Where I need to go to find whatever’s left of who I used to be.

“I gotta go,” I tell him.

“Where?”

“Vegas.”

“What? Why?”

“Because that’s where it started. Maybe that’s where it needs to end too.”

I hang up before he can talk me out of it, already moving toward my bedroom to pack. Three days in Sin City won’t fix anything, but maybe they’ll give me perspective. Maybe standing in the place where Chelsea and I first collided will help me understand how we ended up here.

The flight to Vegas is half-empty, filled with business travelers and tourists hoping to forget their problems in neon and noise. I choose a window seat, watching Chicago disappear beneath clouds, taking with it the only life I’ve ever known.

Jerry: Where the hell are you? Moscow wants an answer by Friday.

Jerry: Don’t do anything stupid. You’re already on thin ice.

Jerry: ANSWER YOUR PHONE

I turn off my phone somewhere over Colorado, cutting the last cord tying me to reality. Whatever happens in Vegas—whatever I find or lose there—can happen without Jerry’s running commentary.

The city looks the same. Same gaudy excess, same desperate energy, same promise that anything could happen if you’re willing to pay for it. But I’m not here for the casinos or shows or whatever entertainment Vegas sells to broken people.

I’m here for the hotel room where everything began.

The Bellagio costs more than I should spend, but Jerry’s been negotiating decent severance packages, and money feels abstract when your life is ending anyway.

The suite I book isn’t the same one from two years ago that would be too much cosmic coincidence even for Vegas, but it’s close enough.

Same floor, same view of the strip, same floor-to-ceiling windows that made Chelsea look like art.

I sit on the edge of the king-sized bed and try to remember what optimism felt like, believing I had decades of career ahead of me. Chelsea was just a woman in a black dress who danced like freedom and kissed like coming home.

Now she’s gone, and I’m exactly where I started. Alone in a Vegas hotel room, but this time without hope.

My phone buzzes despite being off. Some message that managed to slip through before I cut contact with the world. I check it out of habit, expecting Jerry or Weston or another unknown number with another threat.

Instead, it’s a news alert.

brEAKING: Dr. Chelsea Clark and Reed Hendrix Intimate Photos Released

Fucking hell.

I stay in Vegas, in a hotel room that smells like expensive disappointment, and wait for this storm to pass.

Outside my window, the strip pulses with neon and possibility. People down there are falling in love, making terrible decisions, believing in luck and chance and the possibility that tonight might change everything.

I used to be one of those people. Now I’m just someone watching from above, too broken to believe in anything except the certainty that good things end, and people leave and sometimes love isn’t enough to hold the pieces together.

The sun sets over the desert, painting the sky in shades of endings. I don’t know what life felt like before everything turned to ash.

My reflection in the window shows a stranger—hollow-eyed, unshaven, looking like exactly the kind of man who’d destroy his career for someone who doesn’t want to be saved. Looking like someone who’s given up on everything except the hope that she’ll remember Vegas the way I do.

Not as the beginning of our destruction, but as proof that something real can exist, even if only for one night.

Even if that’s all we ever get to keep.

The tears come without warning, silent and useless, the first I’ve shed since childhood. They taste like salt and regret and the slow recognition that some losses can’t be fought.

Some things end no matter how hard you want them to continue.

Outside, Vegas glitters on, indifferent to broken hearts and ruined careers, promising tomorrow’s dreamers the same lies it promised me two years ago.

But tonight, in this room near where everything began, I let myself mourn what we were.

And what we’ll never be again.