Dating One Hockey Player… Accidentally Dating Six

Keira

I hate the smell of hockey arenas. Sweat and rubber and cold metal, all trapped under fluorescent lights that make everyone look half dead. I've been in this building three times this season and I still haven't gotten used to it.

"Collins, you're up," my editor's voice crackled through my phone. "Locker room's clearing out. Get me two hundred words on Hayes before deadline."

"On it."

I shoved my recorder into my bag and pushed through the crowd of reporters gathering outside the Northridge Wolves' locker room. The team had just won their third straight championship, and the hallway buzzed with the kind of energy I usually associated with people who thought they'd earned the right to be insufferable.

Athletes. I'd covered enough of them by now to know the type. All muscle and ego, used to getting whatever they wanted because someone somewhere had decided they were special for being able to hit a puck or throw a ball. I'd rather be covering city council meetings, but the sports beat paid better and my scholarship didn't cover itself.

The doors opened and players started filing out, hair damp, jerseys slung over shoulders. I scanned the crowd for my target.

Ryder Hayes was easy to spot. Not because he was doing anything to draw attention to himself, but because everyone else in the hallway kept glancing his way like he was the sun and they were all just trying not to stare directly at him. He had that captain thing going on, the kind of quiet presence that made people straighten up when he walked past.

I'd never actually spoken to him. I'd written about him twice, both times pulling quotes from press releases and other people's interviews because he'd been unavailable. Today my editor wanted the real thing.

"Ryder Hayes?" I stepped into his path before he could disappear toward the team bus. "Keira Collins, Northridge Chronicle. Got a few minutes?"

He stopped. Up close he looked tired in a way that didn't show in photos, dark circles under his eyes that no amount of camera flash could hide. But he nodded and gave me a small, polite smile that didn't quite reach those eyes.

"Sure. Quick, though."

I clicked on my recorder. "Congratulations on the win tonight. Three championships in a row. How does it feel?"

"Feels good." He glanced toward the exit, then back at me. "The guys played hard. Wouldn't have happened without them."

Standard captain answer. I'd heard some version of it from every athlete I'd ever interviewed. I asked a few more questions, about the final period, about next season, and he answered all of them the same way. Polite. Distracted. Like his mind was somewhere else entirely and his mouth was running on autopilot.

I was about to wrap it up when a cluster of reporters closed in around us, drawn by the sight of him standing still long enough to be caught.

"Ryder, is it true you're seeing three different women right now?" a guy from the city paper called out, shoving a recorder toward him. "Sources say you've been spotted with at least two different girls this month alone."

The change in Ryder was immediate. His jaw tightened, and the easy, tired politeness dropped off his face like a curtain falling.

"No comment," he said.

"Come on, Ryder, your fans deserve to know," another reporter pushed. "Is the good guy image just an act?"

"I said no comment." His voice stayed even, but there was an edge under it now, something sharp and guarded.

Cameras kept flashing. Someone shouted another question about a girl's name I didn't recognize, and Ryder's hand came up, not aggressive, just done, a flat gesture that said *we're finished here*. He turned and walked toward the exit without looking back at any of us, not even me.

The hallway erupted into chatter the second he was gone, reporters already typing furious notes into their phones, speculating about what his silence meant. I stood there for a second, watching the doors swing shut behind him.

Typical, I thought. Ask him a real question and he clams up. That silence was going to be the only headline anyone remembered from tonight, championship or not.

***

I found out what happened next two days later, when the story had already exploded across every sports blog in the state.

I was in the newsroom finishing up an unrelated piece when I saw it trending on my feed: RYDER HAYES' GOOD GUY IMAGE CRUMBLING? A gossip site had run a photo of him leaving a restaurant with a woman none of us recognized, timestamped the same week as two other photos of him with two other women. His silence at the press conference had done exactly what silence always does. It let everyone fill in the blanks themselves.

I wasn't there for what happened in his agent's office that afternoon, but the story got around fast, the way things always do in a town this small. His agent, a sharp-suited man named Callum Reyes who represented half the athletes at Northridge, had apparently laid it out cold. The sponsors were nervous. The clean-cut image that had gotten Ryder a shoe deal and a spot on a regional dairy campaign was starting to look like a liability. One more photo, one more rumor, and companies were going to start pulling contracts before they got dragged into whatever mess this turned into.

I heard he didn't say much in response. Just sat there and took it.

Not that I felt sorry for him. If he didn't want people speculating about his personal life, he probably shouldn't be giving them so much to speculate about. That was the thing about guys like Ryder Hayes. They spent their whole lives being handed things, and then acted shocked when the attention that came with it turned inconvenient.

I filed my piece that night, a clean, professional recap of the championship game with a single paragraph at the end noting the captain's refusal to address the dating rumors currently circulating online. My editor liked it. Said it was balanced, which was code for *doesn't take a side, doesn't get us sued.*

I shut my laptop and leaned back in my chair, thinking about the look on his face right before he'd walked away. Not guilty exactly. More like exhausted. Like a man who'd been asked the same unfair question one too many times.

Still. He'd created this mess himself. Athletes always did. They wanted the fame without the fallout, the adoration without the accountability, and when the two collided, they acted like the world owed them an apology for asking questions.

I closed the tab, grabbed my bag, and told myself I wouldn't be thinking about Ryder Hayes again anytime soon.

I was wrong. But I didn't know that yet.

Ryder

The conference room smelled like coffee and bad news.

I knew it was bad before anyone said a word. Coach Bennett sat at the head of the table with his arms crossed, which he only did when he was trying not to yell. Two university officials I didn't recognize sat stiff-backed near the window. And Callum, my agent, wouldn't look at me directly, which was the worst sign of all.

"Sit down, Ryder," Coach said.

I sat.

Callum slid a folder across the table like he was presenting evidence at a trial. Inside were printouts of the gossip blog photos, the ones from the restaurant, plus a screenshot of some anonymous comment thread debating whether I was "secretly a player, on and off the ice."

"This is the third meeting we've had about your image this year," one of the university officials said. Her name tag said Patricia something. "The athletic department has invested heavily in your public profile. So have y