Page 24

Chapter 24

Collateral damage

Jayna

Kira stopped by my office in the morning. My mood wasn’t bad, because I kept thoughts about my career carefully locked up. Last night’s game might not have been a great performance by the team as a whole, but they got the W, and Braydon’s game was a nice story to promote on socials. Unsurprisingly, some fans were pushing to make Braydon the starter.

There was no topic more polarizing than the starting goalie. Petey had his supporters, but also people who expected him to shut out every game. And when he didn’t, or when he wasn’t one of the top ten goalies based on stats, they wanted him traded. The Blaze management had invested more money in skaters than goalies so we couldn’t afford one of the top-ranked netminders. I dealt with people online all the time who thought they’d do a better job as the team GM. Sometimes they had interesting ideas, but they didn’t know all the shit going on behind the scenes.

Braydon had played well since he came up, and he might be a good starting goalie. Maybe even great. It was too soon to tell. He was still an unknown quantity to opposing shooters. But they’d learn him, watch video on him, figure out his weak spots. That was when he’d show that he either could adapt and be one of the greats, or just one of the many who played the role. I wanted him to do well but had to be as objective as I could while I checked socials, made posts, and deleted others.

Kira knocked on my door while I was putting together a short reel with some of Braydon’s saves from last night.

“Hey, Kira. What’s up?” I hadn’t seen her yet this morning. I checked the time on my monitor. “Could we go for coffee?

“Radner wants to see us. Now.”

My hands froze on the keyboard. “What about?”

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t know.”

My stomach dropped. Was this it? Were they going to let me go? What the hell would I do? I couldn’t afford to be unemployed.

Wait, it didn’t have to be that. Last time it was the fake dating scheme. Maybe they wanted to evaluate that. Maybe .

I stood up, glad to be done with the cane, and stuffed my laptop in my bag. My hands trembled as the worst-case scenarios played in my mind. “Okay, then. Guess we’ll find out.”

We used the elevators, since management offices were on the top floor. I did my best to look unaffected, but I mustn’t have pulled it off very well.

Kira gave me a reassuring smile. “They haven’t said anything to me about HR. No getting forms ready or looking for someone new. This must be something else.”

“Yeah, probably.” Dragging me into a top floor office to tell me I was fired would be cruel.

There was a woman sitting at a desk outside Radner’s office. She gave us a polite smile. “You can go on in.”

Kira led the way. The office was big, with windows, a view, and a desk designed to intimidate. It worked. There were two empty chairs in front of Radner’s desk.

He was behind it, laptop open, but he looked up when we entered and pushed it aside. “Kira, Jayna, please have a seat.”

Kira took the farthest chair. I dropped my bag beside the near one and sat down. He didn’t look pissed, but maybe he enjoyed firing people.

He leaned on his desk, hands clasped together, and smiled at us. “I have to commend you both on an excellent job with Mitchell. Jaydon has proved very popular.”

My muscles eased. This was about the dating rehab, not my job.

Though fuck if I wanted to hear people talking about Jaydon.

“Between your work with him”—he nodded at me—“and his play on the ice, he has a great reputation with the fans. Some think he should be our starter.”

Radner wasn’t going to push Braydon into starting, was he? He had talent, but there was a lot of pressure starting in the NHL. And with the playoffs coming? I didn’t know how Braydon would react to that.

Radner shrugged. “Decisions on the ice fall to the coach, so that’s not my problem to deal with.”

That was good, but I still had no idea why we were here.

“With the Bonfire season over, and fans now supporting Braydon, I don’t think we need to maintain this dating story.”

My hands twisted together in my lap. I hadn’t even considered that management might want to stop our ‘fake’ relationship. What harm was it doing? With my connection to the Bonfire, and the extra attention the Blaze were getting for the playoffs, it was giving the Bonfire more exposure—wasn’t that good?

Since I wasn’t able to make words, Kira spoke up. “Is this really the right time? We’ve only been showing them together for about a month, and we don’t want anyone to think this isn’t real.”

Radner leaned back in his chair, hands moving to the armrests. “We as an organization take the nonfraternization clause in our employment contracts very seriously. We were willing to flex a bit on this when Ms. Templin was a player, not just an employee. Now that she’s officially retired, we don’t have that loophole.”

Shit . I hadn’t considered that my change in status would affect our dating. I knew why they were so cagey about employees and players—JJ had married a former employee at his previous team and she’d cheated on him. There had been at least two stalking incidents with the Blaze—employees using their access to get close to the players. The organization should tighten up their HR practices, but yeah, they needed the players to know they were protected.

Kira gave me a sympathetic look. “But that doesn’t change Jayna’s status working for me, does it?”

He shook his head slowly. “No, we’re quite happy to continue the contract through the end of Mrs. Jones’s maternity leave.”

I had a job, at least. I just…didn’t have a boyfriend?

“Do you have a script for how we’re going to wrap this up?” Kira asked.

“We need it done before the playoffs. Ms. Templin will be traveling with the team, and we want to be sure that there is no confusion or distraction.”

Traveling with the Blaze, with Braydon, and not being with him? I wasn’t sure I knew how to do that.

“Would it really be problematic if we waited till the season was over?” I forced myself to ask, though Radner didn’t look like he would have much sympathy. I had to make it all about the job. If we had till the summer, maybe we could work something out, something where we could stay together. Braydon might go back to the Inferno, and that would be okay, wouldn’t it? I didn’t work for them. “Just to make sure speculation about the breakup doesn’t distract anyone from the playoffs.”

Radner met my gaze, his cold and unyielding. One hand took his laptop, twisting it toward me. The movement woke up the machine, and a couple of grainy photos were on the screen. Both were of me and Braydon. One from the night outside the arena, when Braydon kissed me before sending me to be with the Bonfire. The other outside his townhouse. The timestamp showed it was before this last road trip, early in the morning. Not a time when a fake girlfriend would be at her fake boyfriend’s house, kissing him.

My cheeks burned.

“You and Mr. Mitchell are welcome to pursue a relationship, as long as you don’t break the fraternization rule. That means either he isn’t playing for our team, or you aren’t working for it.”

Kira’s eyes were wide and she looked at me in surprise.

Radner didn’t show any expression. “Any questions?”

I shook my head.

He rose to his feet. “Thank you for coming. Let me know how you decide to break things up. Just make sure he doesn’t need a reputation rehab after.”

* * *

Kira and I were silent on the way down to her office.

She let me go in first, then shut the door before she moved behind her desk. “You okay?”

I nodded because I had to be. Radner had been very clear how I could keep my job. And what other options did I have? Newly retired women hockey players weren’t in great demand, and we didn’t make enough to have a retirement cushion to live on.

She leaned back in her chair. “I didn’t know you and Braydon had taken the fake out of fake dating.”

I shrugged. “It’s new. And I didn’t think making it real would be a problem. It would just be easier to sell it.”

Kira sighed. “Sorry, Jayna. But you said it’s new, so maybe it’s not as difficult to end it.”

It was new, but I’d shared things with Braydon. He’d been the one who helped me when I found out I was losing hockey. Why couldn’t we just keep dating a little longer?

But that look on Radner’s face? He wasn’t budging. Did he think I’d decided to latch on to Braydon when I lost my own career? That I was a jersey chaser who wanted a hockey player to support me? Probably.

I’d never change his mind. There were too many people out there, starting with my parents, who saw an NHL player as a bank account. A trophy to brag about.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and asked, “How are we going to spin this?” Because it was going to be a spin. Something that wouldn’t expose how the dating had started.

Kira tapped a pen on the desk. “The goal is for Mitchell to look good, right?”

I flinched. It didn’t matter if I looked bad.

Kira was staring over my head while she thought, so she missed my reaction. “We’ll publicly say you mutually agreed to part ways, but we need a narrative behind that, something we can hint at, because that answer is never enough.”

People wanted to know, and felt entitled to that personal information if you were in the public eye. We’d never discussed the details of how the fake dating would end, because it hadn’t had a timeline. And by next season, if we weren’t together when training camps opened, it wouldn’t get as much attention as it would now.

“Do you think they”—I jerked my head upward—“are ending this because I retired, or because they found out it wasn’t fake anymore?”

Kira blinked her attention back to me. “Does it matter?”

If it was my retirement, then I couldn’t have changed anything. If it was the other, then being discreet might have prevented this.

“That’s a good point though. We have to make sure no one thinks you and Mitchell split because you aren’t able to play anymore.”

Another flinch.

“Sorry, Jayna. That must still be difficult for you.”

Kira worked for a hockey team, but she’d never played. She had no idea of how difficult it was. “I’m dealing with it.”

She tapped the pen again. “Neither of you are relocating, so we can’t use that.”

“What about the truth? That I can’t date a player, since I’m not one.”

“Then the team looks bad.”

I knew, but I wanted it out there. Spoken. That this was a shitty thing management was doing and they were covering their backs even more than they were Braydon’s.

Kira pulled her laptop toward her. “Let’s see what the wisdom of the internet gives us.” A couple of taps and she started to read a list. “Moving is out. Money problems—I can’t see that applying, and we can’t use it.” The team wouldn’t want to discuss salaries, especially how small mine was. “Different interests.”

We were both hockey focused, so no one would believe that.

“Not sharing housework doesn’t factor in when you’re not living together. And how can you grow apart in a month?”

It must be possible, because Braydon and I had grown close in that amount of time.

“Unfaithfulness…” Her voice trailed off.

“That would make him look bad.” When Kira didn’t answer for a moment, I thought through that comment. “What, me cheating?”

She didn’t rush to assure me that she wouldn’t consider that.

“No fucking way. For the team, this is an academic exercise, but for me, this is my life. This gets spread around, and every relationship I have in future I go into with the label of cheater.” I wanted her to be on my side—to protect me as well.

Stupid me.

I was just a temp here, until Penny returned. I’d thought Kira and I were a team, but we weren’t. “Besides, it won’t look good for Braydon if his girlfriend cheats on him.” I reached for a reason that would fit in with the brief Radner had given us.

“Not always.”

Right. JJ. After his wife’s very public affair with a basketball player, she’d left JJ and support had rallied around him. It must have been horrible for him, but it had been good for the team.

Fuck . Would they really pull that out again? I could deny it, or would they consider that part of my NDA? How the hell could I keep this job, even temporarily, if they sent out rumors about my cheating? Fans would flip that I still worked with the organization.

But maybe the job was never mine to keep, not once Radner had seen those photos. “Are we discussing this, or is this already decided?”

“Of course we’re discussing this.” But she didn’t meet my eyes.

I was collateral damage. I didn’t have any value because I wasn’t a fucking male hockey player. I was a chess piece they could move as necessary, protecting the king—in this case, the Blaze team players.

Fuck that. Double fuck Kira, and Radner, and whoever else was on board with this.

I stood up, trembling with the fury racing through me. “You know, I have an even easier way to deal with this.”

Kira looked at me then, eyes wide. Pretty sure that was relief on her face. She didn’t want to make me the sacrificial lamb, but she would.

“I quit. No conflict. Braydon still looks good.”

“Jayna!” she called after me as I pulled the door open and limped out.

I kept walking. I needed to find some way to vent this fury before I took it out on a person.