Chapter 29 - Blue Lights
It was around 2 am when Emma woke with a start, certain she’d heard a loud knocking on her outside door. Ryan hadn’t stirred, but the weight of the evening’s events had taken their toll on him and he was sleeping heavily. As she pulled herself from his grasp and out of the bed, she again heard the knocking and briefly debated grabbing a bra or something to throw on beneath her nightshirt before finally just sighing and heading to the door.
Flipping on both the kitchen light and the outside light, Emma was surprised to find two Blue Springs police officers at her door. Opening the door and peering outside, she asked softly, “May I help you two officers?”
“We’re looking for a Ryan Perrault and have been told we could find him here. Is that correct?”
Reporter instincts kicking in, Emma immediately asked, “Is he in trouble?”
The taller of the two officers shook his head a bit and murmured, “Not necessarily. We’d just like to talk to him. A report was filed tonight, we’re trying to do our due diligence, see if any crimes were actually committed.”
Biting on her lower lip, Emma nodded and then ushered them in, pointing to the kitchen table. “If you’d give me a moment, I’ll wake him up.” When they nodded their agreement, Emma took a deep breath and headed back to the bedroom, finding Ryan sitting up with a confused look on his face. “You need to get up babe.”
“There you are.” He murmured sleepily, reaching out to her, but she stayed far enough away so he couldn’t grasp her. Blinking, he furrowed his brow at her, seeming to wake up more before he finally asked, “What’s wrong?”
“There are two Blue Springs police officers sitting in our kitchen who’d like to talk to you.” Emma answered softly, watching as his eyes went wide.
“Crisse de Tabarnak.” Ryan whispered the oath under his breath but rose to his feet, not even bothering to throw a shirt on as he headed out of the room and towards the kitchen.
Rather than following, Emma went to grab her cell phone, immediately hitting Gabi’s speed dial button, willing her friend to answer her phone before it went to voicemail. After just a few rings a breathless voice answered the phone, saying, “This better be good.”
Shaking her head to try and get any mental images out of her head at what she might be interrupting, Emma responded, “There are two police officers in the kitchen, wanting to talk with your brother. I think he’d appreciate you getting over here.”
She could almost hear the change in Gabi’s attitude, the shift in mood. “We’ll be there in 5 minutes. Call Luke in the meantime.”
Sighing once again as their call ended, Emma obliged the request, hitting Luke’s number and hearing him stomping around above trying to find the phone before he too was growling into the phone. “At 2 am, really?”
“There are police officers here. I’d imagine it’s to do with what went on in the locker room tonight. I’ve already called your cousin, she’s on her way. She suggested you come down too.”
“Ostie! I’ll be right down.”
By the time Emma had made it back into the kitchen, she could hear Luke letting himself in, Ourson trailing behind. As she reached Ryan, he put his hand out for hers and squeezed it gently, telling her, “Mr. Johnson has alleged that I assaulted him without merit. Would you be so kind as to show these nice gentlemen the pictures you took of me when we got home from the arena?”
Knowing exactly what pictures he spoke of, Emma pulled away and went into her office, coming out a moment later with her work camera. Flipping it into review mode, she handed it to the closer officer, telling him. “That’s how he looked before we cleaned him up. And note that bruise on his ribs – you’ll see that it’s entirely too large to be my hand, and besides, we aren’t into kinky shit.”
Luke coughed at that, and Emma shot him a look but she could also see that one of the officers was trying hard not to chuckle. As they were looking through the photos on the camera, the outside door flung open and Gabi strode in like she owned the place, sizing up the two officers and telling them immediately, “My client. I trust you’ve followed procedure?”
The officers bristled, but Ryan grabbed for Gabi’s hand and swung her onto his knee. “Down Gaba. These gentlemen are just here to ask questions, not to arrest me or anything else. And I think we’ve shown them the story that they were told isn’t the truth.” Pausing for a second, he added, “In fact, most of my teammates live in this complex. While I’m sure they’ll be less than amused by being woken up this late after playing a game, they were all in there when the fight occurred.”
The taller officer nodded, murmuring, “The sooner we can close this, the better.”
At that, Luke turned and grabbed his cell phone off his hip, trying to call Trent, but not reaching him despite repeated attempts. Soon he moved on to his other assistant captain and on connection, telling him to gather up the troops. Emma meanwhile went to start to brew up a large pot of coffee – she had a sense this was going to be a long night and they were all going to need it.
~*~
By the time morning proper rolled around, Ryan’s newly formed think tank had already been gathered for well over an hour, talking, planning, and trying to figure out just how to handle this situation. And it wasn’t just him, Emma, Gabi, Luke - the group also included the head coach and members of the team’s PR staff. Trent still hadn’t been seen or heard from since the locker room the previous night. Ryan had already been cleared of doing anything criminally as his teammates had verified that he’d only fought back in self-defense.
But, the man still posed a threat. What had them all concerned was that he would go to the papers and out Ryan, and no one knew exactly how the fan base, the community, would react to finding out they had someone ‘not normal’ in their midst.
By and large, Emma had been quiet as the morning progressed, but Ryan could see that she was deep in thought. Nudging her foot with his own, he murmured, “What’s going through that pretty head of yours?”
He was surprised when Emma wouldn’t meet his eyes but rose and began to pace the length of the conference room they were using in the Blizzard’s practice arena. “We’re thinking of this all wrong. His only hope for getting any satisfaction out of this was to get charges pinned on Ryan, and then using any sort of media coverage of that to out him.”
“And what makes you think that his failure there will stop him?”
Pausing briefly in her pacing, Ryan watched as Emma gave the PR woman a half-smile. “Me. He’s not going to want anything to do with the Times because he’ll assume I could run interference or otherwise influence an article.” At that the smile on her face faltered before what he recognized as a fake smile made its way back on her face, and he understood immediately. He and his family were the only ones who knew, who understood, just how much her job already was in jeopardy for their relationship – the idea of her interfering in an article wasn’t just laughable, it would be grounds to get her fired.
With eyes drooping in exhaustion, Luke peered up at Emma. “So, what are you suggesting?”
“That we stop preparing for the right now and instead start preparing for the time however many days, months, or even years down the road that he does force Ryan further out of the closet.” Emma paused at that point and this time did gaze at Ryan, and he could see a mixture of love and sadness in her eyes. “The problem is,” she began, as she kept her eyes locked on his, “You guys are looking at this only from the team perspective. How does this affect the team? The bigger question you should be asking is how many LGBT professional hockey players are there?”
“LGBT?”
This time it was Gabi who spoke up. “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender. You’ve been researching, I see, considering you didn’t know what the…”
“Ferme ta gueule.” Emma growled at her, interrupting, and Ryan had to bring his hand to his face to choke back a laugh at both Emma’s choice of words and the look on Gabi’s face. “There are exactly zero active LGBT professional hockey players.” She let the words sink in before she turned her gaze back to Ryan again with the same sad but loving eyes. “So babe, if you’re getting outed, it’s not just gonna be here. It’ll get picked up on social media and it’ll spread like wildfire. You will become national, if not international news. That is what we need to be preparing for.”
Almost immediately several small side conversations started to occur but Ryan noted that Emma still paced. Rising to his own feet he came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. She resisted briefly before leaning back against him with a sigh, and when she finally spoke again, her words were only loud enough for him to hear.
“You aren’t ready for that yet, love. You aren’t ready to bear the burdens of an entire community, and it’s not fair of anyone to expect you to be. But we may not have any choice in the matter.” She turned in his arms and leaned her forehead against his before continuing. “I can’t write any articles. I can help, but to do anything beyond that would be asking for the non-frat clause to be enforced.”
“I understand.” He told her immediately, though he was still trying to wrap his head around everything she had said. What he’d thought was just a simple locker room conversation was now potentially turning into much more than he ever could have anticipated.
She leaned in and kissed his nose before pulling back and turning to the group, voice still soft, and almost resigned. “Ideas, anyone? An article will need to be written, prepared at least for that inevitable time.”
“We could commit to making the arena a safe environment for all people, regardless of gender.” Luke paused a moment, searching for a word before his eyes lit up and he continued, “Orient-tation. Or anything. That the arena is a safe place for them to be themselves. Maybe make 2 giant posters of it. One for outside the locker room, one for the arena, which all the players have signed.”
Ryan nodded and glanced towards the team PR folks. “I’m sure the guys would be willing to make a video.” He paused briefly to glance at Luke, who nodded agreement before continuing, “So we should try to make that happen. Maybe, if people realize it’s no big deal to us, it won’t be a big deal to them.”
“And to think you guys said that I was naïve.” Emma snorted soft and Ryan turned to face her with a raised eyebrow. “Sorry love, but no matter what we say or do, it’s going to be a big deal. We’ve just got to prepare you for that as much as possible, to try and lessen the impact of the distraction when it does occur.”
Bristling a bit, Ryan folded his arms across his chest. “I do not want to be a distraction.”
Behind him, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Luke shrugging. “We all are at some time or another for various reasons: illness, our play, whatever. She’s not trying to insult you, Ryan, she’s just calling it like it is.”
“I need some air.” Ryan and Emma both said at the same time, and while the rest of the room laughed, they eyed each other with mild annoyance. Still, they both went all the way outside the building, settling on the steps to the practice arena and soon ending up side by side. As they sat, Emma slid her hand into his and finally told him softly, “I’m in this for the long-haul babe. I wouldn’t be wearing your ring if I wasn’t. Whatever comes of this, we’ll deal with. But we’ll deal with it together.”
Turning his head just a bit, Ryan kissed the top of her head and gave her hand a light squeeze. “I love you.”
“I know. I love you too.”