Chapter 156 The Other Contract

Chapter 156 The Other Contract
POV: Kai

I told her what Reeves said before I told her what it meant. That felt important. Riley had a way of processing information that worked better when she had the raw material first and the interpretation second, when she could build her own understanding rather than receiving mine pre-assembled. 

I had learned that about her over the years, the way she preferred to do her own thinking even when, especially when, the thing being thought about involved both of us.

“He said the development pathway is slower,” I said. “Boston puts a player into the main organisation’s visibility almost immediately. There’s a media presence, a public profile, the kind of attention that comes with being identified early as a prospect the organisation is building toward. Reeves’s programme works differently. Players develop for longer in a lower-profile environment before they’re elevated into anything public-facing.”

“Which one produces better players?” Riley asked.

“Depends who you ask,” I said. “Boston’s model produces faster results and a higher rate of early attrition. Reeves’s model produces a smaller number of finished players but a higher percentage of them reach the main roster eventually rather than burning out in the public pressure of an accelerated timeline.” I paused. “Hockey people who only look at trajectory speed would tell you Boston is the obvious choice. More visibility, faster pathway, bigger organisation.”

“But you’re not just a hockey person right now,” she said.

“No,” I said. “I’m also a person whose life currently includes an active investigation, a competition you’re representing the school at, a group of people who matter to me and who are in the middle of something that isn’t finished, and a relationship I am not willing to put on a four-week countdown clock.” I looked at her. “Someone who only sees the hockey trajectory would call Boston the obvious choice. Someone who understands the actual shape of my life right now might see it differently.”

Riley was quiet for a moment, turning the coffee cup slowly between her hands.

“Lay it out for me properly,” she said. “Side by side. I want to understand both fully, not just the parts that favour staying close.”

I appreciated that she asked it that way. She was not trying to talk me into anything and she was not going to let me talk myself into something without examining it honestly either.

“Boston,” I said. “Higher profile immediately. Faster development pathway. Access to the organisation’s main training facilities and coaching staff from day one. Relocation in four weeks, full transition, new city, new everything.” I paused. “The risk is the timeline. Going in now, carrying everything I’m carrying, means showing up as a version of myself that is not fully resolved. Coach said something to me after the first tournament game that I haven’t stopped thinking about. He said fractured players don’t reach the ceilings their talent points toward.”

“And Reeves’s organisation?”

“Lower initial profile. Slower timeline, which in hockey terms usually means less prestige attached to it in the short run. The development facility is sixty minutes from here, which means no relocation required for the first season. I could continue everything that’s currently active in my life while the development process runs alongside it rather than replacing it.” I paused. “The risk is that it’s the less prestigious option on paper, and there will be people in the hockey world, agents, commentators, maybe even some of my own teammates, who will look at the decision and think I chose the lesser path.”

“Do you care what they think?” Riley asked.

I considered that honestly.

“A little,” I said. “I won’t pretend I don’t. I’ve spent my whole life building toward being taken seriously in this sport and there’s a part of me that flinches at the idea of people reading this decision as settling.” I looked at her. “But that part of me is smaller than it used to be. A year ago it might have made the decision for me. It isn’t making it now.”

She nodded slowly, taking that in without judgment, just absorbing it the way she absorbed everything that mattered to her properly understanding a situation.

“I want to be clear about something,” I said. “I’m not asking you to make this decision for me. I need you to know that. This is mine to decide and I will own whatever I choose.”

“Then why are you telling me all of this?” she asked. Not defensively. Genuinely curious.

“Because I want you present in it,” I said. “Not deciding it. Present in it. There’s a difference.” I held her gaze. “If I make this decision without including you in the thinking, and then in five years it turns out to be the wrong one, I don’t want to be standing in that regret alone, wondering whether I would have decided differently if I’d let you see the whole picture while I was building it. I want you to have seen it. Whatever I choose, I want it to be a choice you watched me make honestly, not one I handed you afterward as a finished thing.”

Riley looked at me for a long moment. Something in her face had softened in the particular way it softened when something I said landed exactly where I had hoped it would.

“That’s the most you’ve ever asked me to be part of something without asking me to decide it,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “I’ve been practising the difference.”

She almost smiled at that..My phone rang on the table between us.

Marcus.

I picked it up and put it on speaker without thinking, the way we had started doing with each other’s calls during the past months when almost nothing that came through the group’s phones was private anymore.

“Marcus,” I said.

“Dominic filed it,” Marcus said. No greeting, straight into it, which told me immediately how urgent this was. “The legal document. It names Ethan as a co-conspirator and it names the university as a co-respondent. Formal filing, this morning.”

I looked at Riley. Her face had gone still.

“The university has forty-eight hours to respond,” Marcus continued. “And there’s something else.” He paused, and I could hear in the pause that the something else was worse than the first part. “Serena Voss issued a statement an hour ago. On behalf of the welfare office. In support of the filing.”

The kitchen was very quiet.

“She’s supporting Dominic’s legal action against Ethan,” I said slowly, making sure I understood it correctly.

“Yes,” Marcus said. “Publicly. On the university letterhead.”