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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.

The Sports Center clip 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 in a 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.” Present fucking tense, 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. About what 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.

Like I meant something.

My laptop pings with an email notification. The subject line makes my stomach drop: Regarding Recent Media Coverage.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Regarding Recent Media Coverage

Chelsea,

I watched Hendrix’s interview tonight. I’ve also been contacted by several media outlets requesting comment on his statements regarding your professional conduct.

I want you to know that I will be issuing a statement supporting his assessment of your qualifications and integrity as a mental performance specialist. It’s six months overdue.

Your mother called after watching the interview. She said you get your stubbornness from me, but your courage from her. She’s probably right.

I should have fought harder for you when this began. I chose the team’s reputation over my daughter’s career, and that was wrong. I’m sorry.

If you’re willing, I’d like to talk.

-Dad

I read the email three times, each pass making it more real.

An apology from Chris Clark, who apologizes to no one.

An admission of fault from a man who’s never been wrong about anything in his professional life.

An olive branch extended across six months of silence and two thousand miles of geographical punishment.

My hands shake as I close the laptop again. Too much honesty in one night—Reed’s truth, my father’s regret, the growing realization that maybe I don’t have to carry this shame forever.

I pour more tea and sit on my couch, processing the idea that redemption might be possible. Not erasure of what happened, but reframing of what it means. Not going back to who I was but building forward to who I could become.

My phone buzzes again. Unknown number, probably another well-wisher or journalist fishing for quotes.

But when I check, he unsent a message. I see my text.

Thank you. -C

I sent that hours ago, right after the interview aired.

A moment of pure instinct, gratitude too big to contain.

Now I’m second-guessing everything—the message, the initial, the way it might sound desperate or needy or like I’m reaching across the void between us.

What did he send and unsend? My stomach fills with butterflies.

Three dots appear. He’s typing.

Then disappear.

Then appear again.

Reed: You don’t have to thank me for telling the truth.

Me: I do, actually. You didn’t have to do that.

Reed: Yes, I did.

Reed: You took the hit for both of us. That wasn’t fair.

Me: Life’s not fair. We both knew that going in.

Reed: Doesn’t mean I had to let it stay unfair.

The conversation pauses. Two people texting across time zones and consequences, both of us probably staring at our phones wondering what comes next.

Reed: How are you?

Such a simple question. The kind strangers ask in elevators. But coming from him, loaded with months of silence and everything we’ve lost, it feels enormous.

Me: Surviving. You?

Reed: Same. Boston’s good. Quiet. Different.

Me: Good different?

Reed: Honest different.

I smile despite myself. Trust Reed to find the perfect words—honest different. Like authenticity is a location you can move to instead of just a state of mind.

Me: I saw you’re coaching kids now.

Reed: Volunteer work. They don’t care about my history, just whether I can teach them to stop without falling.

Me: Can you?

Reed: Getting better at it. Turns out patience is learnable.

Me: Who knew?

Reed: Certainly not me six months ago.

We text for twenty minutes about safe things—his volunteer work, my community center program, the weather in Boston versus Phoenix. Surface conversation between two people who’ve seen each other naked and broken, who’ve mapped each other’s scars and know exactly which words will cut deepest.

Reed: I should let you go. Just wanted you to know I meant what I said tonight.

Me: Which part?

Reed: All of it. But especially the part about you being the best at what you do.

Me: Past tense.

Reed: Present tense. You’re still helping people. Still seeing the best in them and demanding they live up to it.

Me: How do you know?

Reed: Because that’s who you are. Phoenix doesn’t change that.

The conversation ends there, but I keep staring at my phone long after the screen goes dark. Outside, the city sprawls under desert stars, two thousand miles from snow and hockey rinks and the life I used to live.

I open my laptop again, muscle memory guiding me to the Boston Blizzards website. Schedule, roster, season stats. A photo gallery from community events shows Reed in civilian clothes, teaching kids to skate, his smile genuine in a way it never was during press conferences.

He looks happy. Not performing happiness for cameras, but actually content in a way that radiates from the still images. Like someone who’s figured out how to want what he has instead of mourning what he lost.

I bookmark the page before I can stop myself. Then immediately feel pathetic for cyberstalking my ex-client who just defended me on national television.

My reflection in the dark window shows a woman I’m still learning to recognize—rumpled, uncertain, clutching her phone like a lifeline. But her eyes aren’t empty anymore. They’re cautious, evaluating, like someone considering whether to believe in possibility again.

Tomorrow, I’ll call my father. We’ll have the conversation we should have had six months ago, before pride and disappointment built walls between us. I’ll probably cry. He’ll probably apologize again. We’ll both admit we were wrong about different things.

Tonight, though, I sit with the radical idea that maybe redemption isn’t about going back.

Maybe it’s about going forward.

Maybe it’s about letting yourself want something new, even when you’re terrified of wanting anything at all.

My phone stays quiet, but the echo of Reed’s words fills the silence:

That’s who you are. Phoenix doesn’t change that.

I think he might be right.