The Defenceman (Dman4)
Copyright© 2025 by Cold Creek Tribute Writer
5. Ripples of Gold
Coming of Age Story: 5. Ripples of Gold - Building on Cold Creek's Dman3, Michael Steward rises from Olympic triumph into a world of honor, ambition, and peril. Between hockey, modeling, and his AI venture, he is drawn into battles across London, Japan, and Spain. Surrounded by allies, haunted by rivals, and entangled in the drama of women who shape his path, Michael’s journey is one of resilience, loyalty, and unexpected love.
Caution: This Coming of Age Story contains strong sexual content, including Romantic Celebrity Sports Interracial White Female Oriental Female White Couple Royalty
The Invitation
When the phone buzzed, I almost ignored it. I craved silence more than anything. But the screen lit up with a name that cut through the fog: Molly. I reached for it before I can think better. “Molly,” I said, my voice thin. “It’s late there.”
“It is.” Her voice is soft, but the kind of soft that carried worry. “I thought you should hear this from me directly. Elizabeth called.”
The name is a blade, sharp against my chest. “Elizabeth,” I repeated, flat. “She asks about you. Of course. But ... she also requested a favor. She, Willow, and Asuka want to stay at your London townhouse while you’re playing.”
The words landed heavier than any hit on the ice. My townhouse. My space. The home I was gifted and hardly even have a chance to use myself. They didn’t ask for me. They didn’t ask for my presence. Just my walls. I stared at my hands, jaw tight. “If they need a roof, let them stay. But I wish they’d asks me themselves.” There is a pause. I can hear Molly drawing in a breath, steadying herself. “They still care, Michael. They just don’t know how to face you right now.” My chest constricted. Don’t know how? Or don’t want to? Out loud, I forced calm into my tone. “That makes two of us.” I tried to soften it, adding, “We’ll find time for us soon. I promise.”
We says our goodbyes. When the line went dead, the silence rushed back in, louder than ever. I collapsed backward onto the bed, eyes tracing the ceiling.
Images came unbidden, cruel in their vividness: Elizabeth smiling in my kitchen as though nothing have ever happened. Willow curled into my sofa, small and safe. Asuka walking barefoot across my floorboards, her steps as precise and silent as ever.
They’ll laugh in my rooms. Wear my clothes. Leave their shadows on my walls. And me? I’ll sit here, cameras at the door, reduced to a ghost haunting the very place I once called home.
Why am I waiting? Molly wants me. Kristen and Emma want me. Donna never really left me. Why do I sit here with empty hands when the world offers me more?
I clenched my eyes shut. Not victory. Not peace. Just weight.
Mayfair, London Townhouse – Willow and Asuka
The townhouse should have felt like sanctuary. Instead, it felt haunted. The walls still carried Michael’s scent, cedar and cologne woven into the grain of the wood. Every blanket smelled faintly of him; every chair carried the ghost of his presence. For me and Asuka, stepping inside is less a comfort than a reminder of the man who wasn’t there. On the flatscreen, the Olympic Final replayed again. The glow painted the room in flickering light, as though the house itself are trying to keep Micheal alive within its walls.
I sit curled on the sofa, knees pulled against my chest and have donned on one of Michael’s hoodies; the sleeves swallow my hands. I haven’t spoken for almost half an hour. My thoughts spun circles I can’t escape. He looks so alive out there. Every stride carried the fire I fell in love with. That is our Michael — mine once, maybe still somewhere deep down. But he shines brightest now when I am farthest from him. Did I trade love for silence? Did I let him walk out of my arms and into history without me?
Asuka is pacing across the carpet, bare feet whispering against the rug. Her arms are crossed, her jaw set, eyes locked on the screen as if willing herself not to blink. Every step is a battle against the storm inside. He is victorious. But victory is not happiness. I told myself leaving is discipline, honor. That silence is strength. Yet what strength is there in abandoning the one other person I swore to protect? What honor is there in leaving him to bear the storm alone?
On the screen, Michael raised his stick in triumph, the medal ceremony playing in perfect clarity. The crowd roared, the anthem thundered. My voice cracked as I whisper, “He looks happy.” Asuka’s eyes narrow, her tone flat. “He looks victorious. That’s different from happy.”
I spin on her, eyes blazing. “Why do you always twist it like that? Why can’t you admit it hurts to see him without us?”
Asuka opens her mouth, then close it. Her chest tightened, shame coiling in her stomach. Because it does hurt. Because every second of that replay makes me feel the weight of my mistake. Because I told myself my path is righteous, and now I can’t admit I is wrong without shattering what little honor I have left. Out loud, she managed only: “I thought it is the right thing.”
My eyes glisten. “And where has that choice left us? Sitting in his house, pretending it’s ours, watching him from a couch like strangers.”
The silence between them deepens. Each carries the same ache, the same guilt, but neither can say it without reopening wounds too raw to touch.
I love him, I think, biting my lip until it almost bleeds. I never stopped. But to say it aloud is to admit I left him, and that truth burns more than silence.
I told myself honor mattered more than love, Asuka thought, her spine stiff as steel. But what is honor when it leaves me exiled, watching him triumph without me? Love is the wound that never heals, and I carved it myself.
The television rolled into highlights again. The crowd’s roar filled the room. Neither of us moves.
But when the lights dimmed and the replay ended, their hands found each other. Fingers interlaced by instinct, lips brushing with the tenderness of memory. They are lovers still, clinging to the only warmth left in Michael’s absence.
Yet beneath the closeness lies another fracture: Elizabeth. Even as they held each other, both sensed the widening distance from her. Elizabeth have once been part of their circle, but without Michael as its anchor, her presence is already fading into shadow.
I press my forehead against Asuka’s shoulder, whispering so softly it is almost a prayer. “He’s still ours, isn’t he?”
Asuka’s eyes close, the answer caught between her heart and her pride. She doesn’t speak.
Outside, the rain strikes the windows of Michael’s townhouse, relentless and cold. Inside, we hold each other beneath blankets that still carries his scent, trying to bridge a silence we have created with our own choices.
Elizabeth’s Dinner
The chandeliers in the Belgravia townhouse (Ford family home in London), throw gold across crystal and polished mahogany, a warm light designed to flatter guests and soften edges. I sit at the head of the long table, posture perfect, a study in gracious restraint. Laughter moves up and down the linen like a tide. Waiters refill glasses with the invisibility of ghosts.
“Such a triumph,” cooed Lady Hartwell from my right. “Young Mr. Stewart—what a story. All of London is speaking of him.”
My smile is exact, a half-degree short of adoration, a half-degree past modesty. “He’s always worked harder than anyone in the room,” she said. “People finally see what I always knew.”
Let them say his name. The more they say it, the sooner the sound will sour. Fame grows teeth. I will know when to feed it and when to starve it.
On the far side, a hedge fund magnate tipped his glass. “Remarkable poise for a boy his age. And the company he keeps—actresses, models, royals—quite the orbit.”
“Orbit is a dangerous word,” I reply lightly, turning the stem of my flute between elegant fingers. “Gravity can be cruel.”
Compliments float back to me as if I have spoken poetry. I accept each with a demure incline of my head, the picture of a young woman who wished only the best for a former love. Servers bring a course of turbot over fennel. The table murmurs approval. The house pianist shifted to something bright and unthreatening.
When the last plates of the course are lifted, the guests peel off into small constellations around the salon. I remain seated, the calm planet both receiving and reflecting light. Across the room, my father stands by the fireplace, a tumbler of whisky in one hand, speaking in a low voice to two men who trafficked in information: not just the public kind, but the sort that wore silk gloves over brass knuckles.
He dismissed them with a nod and approached me. “You play the saint beautifully,” he murmurs, eyes soft with paternal pride and something colder.
“I am not playing,” I say, lifting my glass to touch his. “I am remembering him well. It’s what people expect.”
My father’s gaze flicks to the guests and back. “Every ally he gains makes him more resilient. The Queen respects the boy. The Duke of Castile would have him marry Bianca if he was of noble blood. Your mistake is to imagine that benevolence can be outshouted.”
My smile doesn’t waver. “Adoration fades. When the last camera turns away, he’ll need someone steady.”
And when he looks up from the wreckage of thunderclaps, he’ll see me—smiling, unafraid, offering shelter that costs only everything.
A trio approach: a gallery owner, a mid-tier royal cousin, an actress whose star rises or falls depending on the wind. They speak of the Olympic footage, the ferocity of the Russian attack, the serenity of Michael’s posture on the blue line. I listen, attentive and generous with credit. I touch an elbow here, a wrist there, each gesture a promise that I’ve heard and remember.
When I drift away, my father leaned closer, his voice barely air. “Our messengers reached Ann Arbor and Tokyo,” he said, as if noting the weather. “Our man in Michigan spoke to the Matsuda clan—delicately. Our friends in Tokyo delivered the right warnings. Not threats. Just considerations.”
My lashes lower. “And London?”
He smiles. “London is yours.”
Good. Plant the seed in soil that already longs to grow doubt. Mitsy’s pride. Kim’s caution. Both think they protect him by hesitating. I will make their hesitation a virtue they cannot afford to abandon.
The pianist shifts to a nocturne. Guests began to pair off—some to dance, some to whisper conspiracy or scandal. I rise and let the room discover me anew: not simply at the head of the table but in motion, warmth in the bloodstream of the evening. I offer congratulations to a set designer on a new commission, tease a Viscount about his terrible backhand, charm a dour columnist into laughter. Every smile I give spins a strand of silk. Every strand links to another.
I stopp before the tall windows that looks across the park, where rain draws silver lines under streetlamps. My reflection meets hers: the perfect angle of chin, the unwavering mouth, the eyes that have learned to glitter without ever truly shining.
“Will you go to him?” asks a voice at my shoulder. It is Lady Hartwell again, sly and sympathetic. “Men in triumph need ballast.”
“Ballast is heavy,” I say, tone bright with self-mockery. “He has enough weight on his shoulders for now.”
“Still,” Lady Hartwell pressed, “you speak as though you know his deeper self.”
I let a laugh bloom and fade. “I know his tells,” I say. “How he tucks his thumb under the stick when he’s about to overreach. The way he glances left before he ghosts right. He hates praise in public—it makes him feel like he’s betraying the work. He doesn’t drink. He likes Diet Coke. He will not ask for help until bone shows.”
Lady Hartwell blinked, the intimacy of the detail startling her. “And you?”
“I believe in what he can be,” I say, and take the other woman’s hand with sisterly warmth. “And in what London can be for him.”
I believe in the weak seam where pressure will split the fabric.
The evening deepens. My father withdrew to the library, a signal that the portion of the night dedicated to optics have ended. I follow, stepping through the hush of a corridor where ancestral portraits pose in their gilded frames—men who have learned to win without raising their voices; women who have learned how to be necessary.
The library’s door clicked shut behind me. The scent of leather and old paper rise like a benediction. My father stands at the desk, sorting sealed envelopes into two stacks: those that will be answered tonight, and those that will be left to season.
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