Page 168 of Over the Line

“What video?” I demanded. “What are you talking about?”

Marcus was already frantically trying to pull up something on his phone.

Chris wasn’t interested, though. “My dad? Seriously? You’re fucking my⁠—”

“We’ve been dating,” I said quickly, patting the air between us. “We were going to tell you, but we wanted to⁠—”

“Jesus Christ. What the fuck, Saints?” Chris threw his helmet into his stall so hard, he might’ve cracked the visor. “First you fuck me out of my rookie season, then you’re fucking my dad?”

“Your rookie—what? What are⁠—”

“Don’t play stupid, asshole,” he snarled. “I know you’re the one who convinced the club to keep me in the goddamned minors instead of letting me play.” He huffed a sarcastic laugh. “Didn’t want to be upstaged by a kid, did you? And now that I’m here, you’re with my fucking—ugh. What is wrong with you?”

He didn’t give me a chance to answer before he stalked out of the locker room.

I couldn’t move. I wanted to grill Marcus about what the fuck he was talking about, and I wanted to follow Chris and try to talk him down about this and about his rookie season, and I… I just didn’t know what to do.

Right then, Marcus held up his phone in an unsteady hand. “Here. Here’s the article with the video.”

It took me a second to register what he meant. My mind was just going too fast in too many directions to make sense of anything.

When I caught up, I took the phone and peered at the screen. A headline screamed, “Pittsburgh Phantoms Captain Confirms GAY LOVE AFFAIR with Rookie Linemate’s FATHER!”

My blood turned even colder. “What the fuck…” I scrolled down, and… there it was, embedded about halfway down the article between a couple of obnoxious ads. With my heart in my throat, I pressed play.

It was a scary good fake. If I’d been struck with amnesia and saw this video, I could absolutely believe that really was me.

But I didn’t have amnesia, and I knew for a fact that what I was seeing had never happened.

It showed me outside the arena, signing autographs from my car.

“Hey, Saints,” a young voice asked from off-camera. “Is it true you’re dating Chris Kane’s dad?”

I looked up from signing a puck and smiled at the speaker. “Yep, it’s true!”

My knees shook. What the fuck? I could barely speak as I looked at Marcus. “This is…” I shook my head. “This is fake.”

His eyes went wider than before. “It is?”

“Yeah, I’ve…” I waved the hand holding his phone, nearly hurling it across the dead silent locker room. “This never fucking happened. I never told anyone, never mind fans!”

The whole room went silent.

Every pair of eyes was focused on me.

In the hallway outside, something crashed, and someone shouted. Chris. It had to be Chris.

And my heart hit the floor.

It didn’t matter if any of it was fake. It didn’t matter if the article was complete bullshit with an AI-generated video.

“My dad? Seriously? You’re fucking my⁠—”

“We’ve been dating. We were going to tell you, but we wanted to⁠—”

Fucking hell. The fake didn’t matter. Where it came from didn’t matter. Marcus had accidentally tipped my hand, and before I’d realized it was fake, I’d thrown all my cards out on the table.

“I’m so sorry, Liam,” Marcus whispered, his uncharacteristically timid voice cracking through the silence like a puck slamming into the dashers. “I thought… I thought…”