Livestreaming My Cheating Hockey Star Fiance novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Five Years

Hanna and Dorota read the agreement, Brady offers money to stay engaged in front of the open skate, and Hanna refuses and posts the recording from a new account.

My grandmother's kitchen was the one room in Port Calder that had never changed.

Yellow table, steam on the window, a silver whistle hanging on the nail by the stove.

Dorota Ostrowski stood at the counter in her quilted vest with her arms folded.

She had watched the stream, she told me, on the rink's office computer, to the very end, and had muttered a single curse to the screen that she would not repeat.

Cassidy sat at the table with the packet in front of her.

"Han, you have to read page four," she said. "It's not as bad as Brady made it sound."

I read page four.

It was not bad. It was worse.

The channel, its name, its handles and my face and voice were the property of Calder Media Group, which was the Ironbacks' own company, for five years.

I could not post about the team without approval.

If I did, I owed them four hundred thousand dollars.

My signature sat at the bottom, curly and trusting.

"You told me it was a sponsor form," I said.

"It is a sponsor form."

"It says the team owns my name."

"It says the team owns the channel's name." Cassidy leaned in. "Which was always going to be a team property, babe. They pay for everything. The camera, the editing suite, the trips."

"Who signed for the team?"

"A lawyer."

"Who signed as the witness?"

Cassidy's mouth stayed open a moment before she answered.

"I did. I'm the producer."

Dorota took a step away from the counter.

"Cassidy," she said. "Take your coffee and go."

"Mrs. Ostrowski, please. I'm trying to help."

"You are trying to sit at my table and be helpful in my granddaughter's kitchen. You used to eat my pierogi."

Cassidy stood up slowly.

She put a business card down on the packet.

"Brady's agent will be at the open skate tomorrow at ten," she said to me. "Hear them out. It's a lot of money, Han. I'm the only one who's still on your side."

The door closed behind her.

Dorota went to the window and watched the little gray car drive away.

Then she opened the cabinet and took down the second mug.

"Somebody is asleep in a truck out front," she said. "Go get him before he freezes."

Soren had not driven away.

He was sitting in the dark cab with his skates still on and his head against the glass.

I knocked on the window and he woke up hard, with one hand up.

When he came upstairs he had to duck under the door.

Dorota looked him up and down and handed him a plate of cold pierogi without comment.

He ate four of them standing up, silent and polite.

"He's too big for my kitchen," she told me in Polish.

"I understood 'kitchen,'" Soren said, and my grandmother laughed for the first time that night.

I slept on the couch with the packet on my chest.

At ten the next morning, open skate was packed.

Saturday mornings were always packed at Ostrowski's. There were thirty kids on the ice, and parents lining the boards with paper cups of cocoa.

I was in the middle of the rink in my rink jacket, holding a six-year-old upright by both elbows.

Then the side door opened and Brady walked in with his agent.

The agent wore a camel coat and a smile that did not reach his eyes.

Brady had a day of beard on his face and a bunch of white roses in his fist.

The whole rink went quiet except for the kids.

"Hanna," Brady said from the boards. "Can we talk? Please."

I handed the six-year-old to a mother and skated over.

"Not here."

"Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars," the agent said pleasantly, close enough for the parents to hear. "That is what Calder Media is prepared to pay you to remain engaged to Brady through the end of the playoffs. A public reconciliation. You say it was a misunderstanding. The money is yours."

"A misunderstanding," I said.

"A very understandable one."

Brady held out the roses.

"I messed up, Han. I'll fix it. Just give me till April."

I looked at the roses. At the dozens of parents with their phones coming up one by one.

"I don't want your roses," I said, loud enough for the back row. "And I don't want your money."

"Hanna, please."

"Brady, my grandmother has taught half this town to skate. Say the word 'engaged' one more time in her rink."

Nobody on the ice moved.

Then somebody's little girl said clearly, "Is that the man who was kissing the lady?"

I pulled out my cracked phone.

Soren's copy of the stream had landed there at six that morning, one file, no message.

I made a new account right there on the ice, called it hannaonice, and uploaded all of it.

I did not write a caption.

By ten that night it had six million views.

By eleven a courier delivered a letter to Dorota's door, and the letterhead said Calder Media Group.

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