priority. “Mia, it wasn’t your fault. And who’s the she in all this?”
“His mom. She came to see me in my dorm, asked me to reconsider, say it was a mistake. It so easily could have been, I suppose. But I knew deep down it wasn’t. Only this woman—his mom—asked why make a fuss and blow up two fledgling careers, mine and her son’s? Because even if I had right on my side, I’d be tainted. People would remember me for that, not for hockey. It was just a few nude pics after all.”
“She said that?”
Her cheeks flushed. “No. I said that. After.” She swiped away a tear. “It’s how I get by.”
His heart sank at how she had justified this to herself over the years. All with the goal of smoothing away the edges of what must be righteous anger.
“What happened next?”
“I withdrew the complaint. Said I made a mistake, that I recognized his sharing was an accident.”
“But you didn’t believe that?”
“No. It didn’t matter. He—they had more power than me. It seemed best to move on and pretend it hadn’t happened.”
She sounded so forlorn. Far be it for him to play Monday night quarterback, but that can’t have been the best option. He was missing some important piece of the puzzle here. “Why did it seem best?”
“His mom said this would be better for him. For me. He’d get to go onto the NHL, though really he wasn’t good enough. Still in the AHL.”
Good. But if Cal had his way this guy would be booted quicker than he could say “major misconduct.”
“Mia, what they did was wrong. You know that, but let’s say that it was the best play at the time.” Hell, he understood making certain choices for self-preservation. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re not in the pros. You kept quiet and went along, so why aren’t you playing in the league?”
Her misery was killing him. He hated having to pull this from her like a tooth extraction without anesthetic. “I thought I could move on. I went for tryouts, knew I was good enough to get on my first-choice team, Buffalo. I didn’t make the cut. When I tried for Columbus, the coach asked me if I was a troublemaker. Said she’d heard some rumors going around that I wasn’t a team player. I said I had no idea what she meant. I still didn’t make the team.”
“Jesus, Mia.”
“In every tryout, I played better than 90% of the others but someone was spreading rumors about how I was the kind to make waves. Or I was trading on my brother’s reputation. I’d walk into a locker room and people would go quiet. Some guys sent me dick pics, but maybe they were girls. There was a whisper campaign against me. I didn’t hear anything specific, but I felt it. Then I started thinking I was paranoid.”
“You knew what was happening. Your gut knew.”
She nodded. “For my next tryout, I played like crap. I was in my head, unable to connect with anything. Got the yips, missed every pass, a self-fulfilling prophecy. I lost my confidence. Lost everything. The message was clear: I didn’t deserve to be there. I was persona non grata in women’s hockey. I stepped away to regroup. To recover. To forget.”
This made no sense. Why would anyone go to the trouble, especially if they wanted to keep this kid’s bad behavior under wraps? Something gnawed at him, some innate knowledge. The pieces of the puzzle swirled and from the fog, the missing fragment gradually came into focus. They had more power than me. “Who was the boyfriend, Mia?”
She averted her gaze, but he cupped her chin and made her face him. “Who?”
“He was—is—Drew Fabien.”
He shot up. “Selena Fabien’s son? She threatened you?”
“Not in so many words. She said if I withdrew the complaint, acknowledge it was likely an unfortunate technical snafu, that we could all move on. And by move on, I thought I was getting my life back. But once I got to tryouts, Selena had laid the PR groundwork. I was poison, already painted as a troublemaker.”
Anger rose swift and sharp. That saber-toothed witch.
“Why not tell Vadim?” He was rich, powerful, and married into an influential pro franchise.
She shook her head. “He would go crazy. Sue everyone who ever wronged me. You know what he’s like. He’s always seen me as fragile, in need of protection since my cancer diagnosis. And he would have been so disappointed in me.”
“Baby, he