Page 16 of Cross Check
Around them, cameras focused, microphones tilted closer. Every journalist in the lot waited for the crack.
It came. Not anger, not defiance, just pain. Raw and immediate, the kind that lives in the spaces between breaths. It moved across Nico's face before he could catch it, a flash of pure hurt that Brue saw and cataloged with the satisfaction of a man who'd landed exactly the hit he'd intended.
"No comment," Nico managed. The words were hollow.
He started to push past Brue, to cover the last ten yards, to reach the building—
"He's our teammate. Back off."
My voice, louder and steadier than I'd expected, cutting through the noise like a whistle.
Nico's head turned.
I was beside him. I'd crossed the parking lot without deciding to, my bag over my shoulder. My body had made the decision before my brain caught up.
The reporters pivoted. Cameras swung toward me. Brue's eyebrows rose a fraction.
"Kieran Walsh," he said. "Are you confirming that the Storm organization supports Nico Varis despite the ongoing investigation?"
"I'm confirming that he's our teammate," I said. "And you're harassing him in a parking lot instead of doing actual journalism. So back off."
Silence. Half a second of it, the held breath of a crowd that hadn't expected the goalie to leave his crease.
Then the questions redirected. "Are you aware of the allegations?" "Does the team have concerns about his conduct?" "What's your personal relationship with Varis?"
I ignored all of it. I stepped closer to Nico, close enough that our shoulders nearly touched.
"Come on," I said quietly.
We walked together toward the building. The crowd parted reluctantly, cameras still rolling. I counted the yards. Eight. Five. Three. The glass doors opened and the noise cut off like a switch, replaced by the familiar echoes of the facility, the hum of industrial lighting, the distant scrape of skates on concrete.
Nico stopped walking.
I stopped too. I turned and found him staring at me with an expression I hadn't seen before, something cracked open and exposed, too raw to categorize.
"You didn't have to do that," he said.
"Yeah. I did."
"They're going to come after you now. Associate you with—"
"I know."
"Kieran—"
"I know what I'm doing, Nico."
But the way he was looking at me suggested I might not. That I didn't understand the thing I'd just stepped into, the way this kind of scrutiny metastasized and spread, how it infected everything it touched.
"Why?" he asked. The word came out scraped.
I looked at him, the bruised eyes, the locked jaw, the man who'd been carrying this alone for a year because no one had been willing to stand next to him while the cameras rolled.
"Because I believe you," I said.
I stood up for him in a parking lot, on camera, with Jerry Brue thirty feet away and a dozen lenses recording every second.
Nico's throat worked. He swallowed hard, his eyes too bright.
