I point the remote at the TV in the boardroom of the palace, and I rewind the athlete interview again. We've been dissecting videos for at least an hour, and it doesn't feel like we're making progress. Shifting the focal points of my career has been more disorienting than I expected. Second guessing every instinct, never quite sure if I'm on the right track, is not my favorite sensation. The feeling isn't new, but the reason for it is.

"I can't believe I said yes to this," I mutter as Logan Bishop, star hockey player, appears on screen again. Questions are fired his way about being the weak link in his team after the California Crows lost their final playoff game in the World Hockey League last season.

"He's so stiff," Tamiko says. Her long black hair swings as she shifts in her seat beside me. "In every interview he has the charisma of dead air. We definitely need to loosen him up."

"He's twenty-one, shouldn't he be automatically loose?" The other players we've watched often have some natural charisma. Despite being the team captain, there's little evidence of someone personable, worth following.

"Feels like he's holding back, and not in the way you want from a PR perspective," Tamiko says. "The trick is to say the right thing without making it seem like you're trying to say the right thing. Logan isn't saying anything at all. If you want an excellent example of this, it's Travis Kelce. He put himself into a high pressure, high stakes relationship, and he understood the assignment. Give people a glimpse of the truth without filling in all the details."

"Honestly, Tamiko, I don't even know what I'm doing right now." I can't help the self-conscious laugh that escapes. "I'm a physiotherapist, not a PR specialist or a media trainer or whatever King Alexander and my dad are trying to make me seem."

"You're good with people," Tamiko says, "and Logan Bishop is pissed about the California Crows becoming the Bellerive Bullets. Your job is to make sure he's happy about being on this island, being on this team, until he forgets he was ever mad about it."

I've certainly had a lot of practice recently at pleasing men, and I'm not entirely sure the pivot I'm making here is the good kind, the kind that takes someone out of a rut. Instead, I worry I'm only entrenching myself further, pleasing men at my expense—again.

"You must have had lots of contact with the PR machine during Dalton's run for the Advisory Council."

Self-consciously, I touch the back of my head where a goose egg is fading, a dull ache. While Dalton and I were together, I never asked myself if the places he wanted to go were also the places I wanted to go, and I'm not making that mistake again. Getting swept off your feet sounds romantic, until you search for your footing and realize you're standing on quicksand. Never again.

"He had very specific ideas about what he wanted," I say, carefully. Everyone knows we split up a couple of weeks ago, but absolutely no one knows the circumstances. He tried to make me sign an NDA, but I told him that even if he sued me for all my billions, he couldn't stop me from talking if I decided to.

It's just that I haven't quite figured out what to say.

The thing I never comprehended about losing faith in yourself is that it doesn't happen all at once. It's a gradual erosion, so slow, so miniscule that you don't even realize it's occurring until you're sliding down the cliff, completely untethered from anything you recognize.

And until it happened to me, I would have told you it wasn't possible for it to happen at all. That's the part that still rattles my insides—I didn't even see what happened coming.

"I'm a little worried that I'm going to feel like a babysitter or a cockblocker or a fun stealer," I admit. "He's ten years younger than me. I bet we have nothing in common."

"Sawyer, you're fun."

Am I?

"Besides, by all accounts, he doesn't live a wild life. Some pro athletes are..." She whistles long and low. "You know? But he keeps to himself on and off the ice. The only close friend outside the team that I could trace was Chayton Thackeray who plays for the Michigan Moose of the WHL. Bishop's family is complicated and fragmented. He's a loner. I don't think you're going to be attending underage orgies or anything."

"People hide all kinds of things," I say, and bitterness tinges my voice. But at least in the social aspect, he sounds like the opposite of me, the opposite of Dalton. My circle was wide and full until I let Dalton make it small and sparse.

"True—people hide all sorts," Tamiko agrees. "But it's a lot harder to keep that completely hidden when you're super famous. I haven't heard a thing about Logan Bishop—other than that he's a bit grumpy—even on the whisper network."

I peer at his frozen face on the oversized screen. His playoff beard makes him look older than the other interviews we watched where he's clean shaven. Either way, he's ruggedly handsome. Manly in a way that I don't often find appealing, but I have to admit, at least internally, he doesn't seem uncomfortable in his skin—just in the spotlight. His dark hair is sweaty, overly long, and messy. But in every interview, it's his eyes that snatch and hold my attention. There's something in their hazel depths that seems worn out, a bit jaded, and a string inside me tugs with recognition. Isn't that how I've felt lately, too? Jaded. A bit done with it all.

"The team officially moves in a few weeks?" I pull up the calendar on the screen. After almost a year of King Alexander and my dad trying to convince me to become part of their impending ice hockey dynasty, I finally agreed the day after I ditched Dalton. One last giant "fuck you" to my former boyfriend, but I'm not sure if I've really just fucked myself instead.

"The team arrives on the island in two weeks. King Alexander is planning a big bash at the palace to welcome the players and their families. Anyone who hasn't found a house or apartment is housed on the palace's estate. They have a series of apartments, apparently? Queen Aurora lived in one of them before she became Aurora Summerset."

"They've all been renovated in the last few years. I hear they're nice. Wouldn't be so bad to be on the palace grounds. Lots of privacy."

"Logan Bishop made it very clear he wouldn't be going there," Tamiko says. "Your father offered two ocean front apartments for him to choose from. Rolling out the Tucker red carpet."

"Which one did he pick?"

"Nathaniel's old apartment in Tucker's Town. He liked the hot tub on the balcony."

"Has Logan been to the island?"

"Not yet. Refused to step foot. He's not quite at the lemonade out of lemons point. That's your job." She flashes me a quick smile. "He picked the apartment from photos. Honestly, I'm not sure if he picked it or Chayton did. The email Jonathan forwarded was a lot less abrupt than any of the other ones I read, and going by Chayton's socials, he was with Logan when those decisions were being made."

I pick up my phone and click through Chayton Thackeray's social profiles to see a whole life on display—his family, Logan, holidays, gatherings, fun. Chayton Thackeray looks like a happy-go-lucky Indigenous man surrounded by ample family beside Logan's tough White guy routine. Their friendship must be the epitome of the grumpy-sunshine dynamic.

Logan Bishop has profiles too, but someone has to be posting for him. There's not a single thing that isn't hockey related. Every post is stats and awards and games won or lost. I have to scroll several screens worth to even find a photo of the man off the ice and it's a collaboration with Chayton, which means he likely didn't post it, Chayton did.

"For someone so young, he's such an enigma," I murmur.

"You keep that thought in your head when you meet him," Tamiko says with a laugh. "Because the word I have been associating him with in my head starts with a different vowel."

"I've come to appreciate people who are exactly what they seem," I say, taking a deep breath.

"People hide all kinds of things, huh?" Tamiko says, trying to catch my gaze.

"They do." I turn back to the screen. Often in ways you never anticipate. "So, if he turns out to be an asshole, I'm okay with that. I want authenticity, even if it makes it harder to work with him."

"Remember you said that," Tamiko says with another little laugh. "You're basically his guide to Bellerive and his personal physiotherapist, as per his contract."

"At least I still have my own physio practice too," I say. "When they're traveling, I get a reprieve because my contract with the team is only for when he's on the island."

"I guess we'll see if he's the kind of client who likes to blur those lines."

I won't let him. Boundaries will be kept, and my life will be manageable and under my own control. Everything spun out once, and the thought of going back to that moment makes my stomach threaten to revolt.

A grumpy asshole who sets clear personal limits is exactly the kind of guy I'm capable of dealing with. I'm hoping his interviews and social media are accurate: that he's a private guy who just wants to play world class hockey. Otherwise, I might seriously regret taking this job. 

Let's gooooo! Who's ready to revisit Bellerive with me? If you've read Hollyn and Nathaniel's story on Radish or Gage and Ember's story on Amazon, you'll see some familiar faces pop up in this one. 

There will be another update this week, just to get us going. Then, I'm not sure. At least once a week is the aim. I'll try for two as time allows.

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