Asher's POV
The world collapses into white noise and terror.
I can't breathe. My lungs refuse to cooperate, each attempt at air feeling like drowning in reverse. The hotel room spins around me, walls closing in as my vision tunnels to a pinpoint of pure panic.
Twenty-six years. Twenty-six years of hiding, of careful masks and calculated lies, of constructing an entire public persona designed to keep this exact moment from happening.
All of it obliterated in a single video that's probably been shared a million times already.
My phone won't stop buzzing. Text after text, call after call, the screen lighting up with names I can't bear to see. My parents. My agent. Teammates. People from my past who haven't spoken to me in years but suddenly have opinions about my private life.
I see my mother's name flash across the screen and nearly vomit.
Whatever she has to say will make this real in a way I'm not ready to face. Will confirm that the worst possible scenario is actually happening, that the life I've spent decades building is crumbling in real time.
The notifications keep coming. Twitter mentions. Instagram tags. News outlets already crafting their hot takes about the hockey world's newest scandal. Each ping feels like another nail in the coffin of my carefully constructed privacy.
"Ash." Blaze's voice cuts through the static in my head. "Asher, look at me."
His hands find my shoulders, steady and warm and impossibly calm considering that his life is imploding right alongside mine. When I manage to focus on his face, there's no panic there. No regret or blame or the accusation I'm expecting.
Just concern. Just love.
"Breathe," he says, his voice low and soothing. "In through your nose, out through your mouth. Come on, with me."
He demonstrates, exaggerating the motions until I can follow along. His presence anchors me, gives me something real to focus on instead of the endless spiral of catastrophic thoughts racing through my mind.
"I can't do this," I gasp between breaths. "I'm not ready. I've never been ready for this."
"You don't have to be ready. You just have to breathe."
Slowly, painfully, the iron band around my chest begins to loosen. The white noise recedes enough for me to hear actual sounds—traffic outside, the hum of the air conditioning, the continued buzzing of our phones creating a symphony of digital chaos.
"There you go," Blaze murmurs, his thumbs rubbing soothing circles on my shoulders. "Stay with me."
"Everyone's going to see," I whisper. "Everyone's going to know."
"Yeah, they are." His honesty should be devastating, but somehow it's comforting. No false reassurance, no empty promises that everything will be fine. Just truth. "But you know what? Maybe that's not the end of the world."
"It feels like the end of the world."
"I know it does. But we're still here. Still breathing. Still together."
His phone rings, cutting through our fragile moment of calm. Sophie's name lights up the screen. He answers without letting go of me, putting it on speaker.
"Fuck, he got ahead of us," her voice crackles through the tiny speaker, breathless like she's been running. "I saw the notifications. The video's everywhere."
"We know," Blaze says grimly. "How bad is the reaction?"
"Mixed. Some support, a lot of speculation, and Jackson's already pushing additional material to make you both look like liars and opportunists."
My stomach drops further. "What kind of additional material?"
"Screenshots of text conversations that look suspicious out of context. Photos that seem intimate but could be explained away. And he's spinning a narrative about secret relationships being used to manipulate fan bases and endorsement deals."
"Can people tell they're fake?"
"Some of them probably are, but Jackson's smart. He's mixing real moments with fabricated evidence, making it harder to discredit everything at once."
Sophie's voice gets more urgent. "I'm coming back. Don't do anything before I get there. Don't post anything, don't answer calls from reporters, and for the love of God, don't look at social media."
"Sophie…"
"I'm in a taxi now. Twenty minutes, tops." The call ends with a sharp beep.
Blaze sets the phone aside and cups my face in his hands, thumbs brushing away tears I didn't realize were falling. The tenderness in the gesture nearly breaks me all over again.
"This is it," I whisper. "This is what I've been terrified of my entire adult life."
"I know."
"My parents are going to see that video. My teammates. Every person I've ever worked with. They're all going to know exactly who I am."
"They're going to see two people who care about each other," Blaze says quietly. "That's what this really is, underneath all the fear and complication. Just love."
The simplicity of it hits me like a revelation. All the panic, all the careful construction of my public image, all the years of hiding... and what Jackson exposed is fundamentally just love.
Messy and complicated and real, but ultimately just two people caring about each other.
This time, when Blaze leans toward me, I don't pull away. Can't pull away. Whatever happens next, whatever avalanche of consequences is about to bury us both, I need this moment of connection.
Our lips meet—desperate, anchoring, tasting like salt and promise and the end of running away.
The door bursts open without warning.
Sophie stands in the doorway, key card still in her hand, taking in the scene. She freezes for a split second, then sighs heavily and closes the door behind her.
"Okay, crisis management time."
She moves to the small table where her legal pad still sits covered in our earlier plans.
"We need to completely restructure our approach. Everything we discussed before assumed we'd have the element of surprise."
She's right. Our careful strategy is useless now that we're playing defense, trying to control damage that's already spreading like wildfire across every social media platform and news outlet.
"Show me the worst of it," Sophie says, holding out her hand.
Blaze passes her his phone. She scrolls through notifications, her expression growing grimmer with each swipe.
"Okay, here's what we're dealing with. The video itself is getting mixed reactions. But Jackson's follow-up posts are the real problem. He's painting this as a calculated deception, claiming you've been lying to fans and sponsors for years."
"How do we counter that?"
"We get ahead of the narrative. Make this about courage instead of deception. Frame it as two people finally being brave enough to live authentically instead of two people who got caught lying."
Sophie pulls out a pen, already strategizing. "But we have to move fast. Every minute we wait, Jackson controls more of the story."
She looks directly at me, her expression mixing urgency with something that might be compassion.
"You need to go online," she says quietly. "Make a public statement yourself before Jackson will twist it into something ugly."