Page 86 of Cross Ice

“It’s everywhere. Social media, sports blogs…”

He answered André’s call on speakerphone. I heard the words—viral overnight, management, media—from somewhere that felt very far away.

“No,” Nico said when André asked if he was okay.

After he hung up, we sat for a moment in silence. I looked at the headlines again. Unidentified man.

“They don’t know who I am yet,” I said.

“Yet,” Nico echoed.

We both understood what that meant.

“I need to go home.” I said it before I’d thought it through. Flat, certain. “I need my own space.”

“Stay. We’ll figure it out⁠—”

“I can’t think here.” I was already moving, reaching for my clothes. “I’ll call you.”

I didn’t look at him when I left. I couldn’t.

The drive home was a blur. My hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, the rising sun too bright and wrong.

When I finally got to my apartment, I locked the door and sank onto the couch.

Then I made the mistake of opening my phone. I searched Nico’s name and watched the results load. Photos of us in that parking lot, reposted across dozens of accounts. My face was in every one of them. No name yet, just “unidentified man,” but it was clearly me—my profile, my jacket, my hands on his chest.

I sat there for thirty seconds, maybe less. Then something clicked over, the part of my brain that had rebuilt a career from scratch after Ryan, the part that knew how fast these things moved.

I raced to my office. I opened my website’s backend and took down my professional headshot—pulled it entirely, leaving the space blank. I went to my LinkedIn profile and replaced my photo with the firm’s logo, then locked down every setting that showed my location, my connections, and my activity. They didn’t know who I was yet, but they were looking, and I wasn’t going to make it easy for them to find me.

Then I texted Danny. Not a spiral, not a call. Just four words.

Evan

I need you. Come.

That was all I could manage before the competence ran out.

I made the mistake of going back to the comments.

The photos were everywhere. Sports forums. Gossip blogs. All the platforms at once. Thousands of comments multiplying in real time.

Most people still didn’t know who I was. But they were trying to find out.

Someone find out who this guy is.

I saw them at that frozen yogurt place a couple of weeks ago when I got a pic with Briggs. Someone posted a photo of Nico from that night, taken before the fan had walked over to Nico. I was visible in the background, holding our yogurt cups.

That’s the same guy from the parking lot photos!

The pieces were coming together. People were hunting.

Three hours after I’d gotten home, someone found me.

Got him. Reverse image search. Evan Beckett. Marketing consultant in San Jose.

My LinkedIn profile started circulating. My company website. I’d pulled the headshot within minutes of getting home, but it hadn’t mattered, Google had cached it, and the cached version was already everywhere, attached to my name, my city, my profession.