Five Years Later, He Still Wants Me

The arena was so loud I could feel it in my chest. Twenty thousand people screaming for one man, and I was sitting in the press box trying to remember how to breathe like a professional. You’ve covered senators dodging corruption charges, Addie. You can handle one hockey player. I didn’t believe myself. Not even a little. I smoothed the front of my blazer and glanced at the credential hanging around my neck. ADDIE HAYES "SPORTS DESK". Marcus had handed it to me three days ago like it was nothing, like he hadn’t just changed the entire trajectory of my career in one sentence. “You’re covering the Titans’ championship run. Full access. Including Callahan.” I hadn’t told him why my hands went cold when he said that name. The chant started low, a rumble under the arena lights, and then it built into a roar that swallowed every other sound. “CAL-LA-HAN. CAL-LA-HAN.” I looked up. He skated onto the ice like he owned it, like the building had been built around him instead of the other way around, and for one humiliating second I forgot how to hold my pen. Five years does things for a person. It had done things to him. The boy I remembered had been all sharp angles and restless energy, always half a step ahead of himself. This version of Alex Callahan moved like he’d stopped rushing toward anything, because everything came to him now. Broader through the shoulders. Harder in the jaw. There was a stillness to him that hadn’t been there before, the kind you only get from learning exactly how much of yourself to give away and keeping the rest locked somewhere no one could reach. I used to be the only person who had the key. Not anymore. Not for a long time. I made myself look down at my notepad and write something, anything, so the reporter beside me wouldn’t notice I’d stopped functioning like a human being with a job to do. The game blurred the past in shapes and sound. I wrote what I was supposed to write: shot totals, power play conversions, the story of a team one win from history. I did not write about the way he’d slammed a rival into the boards in the second period with a violence that felt personal, or the way the crowd had come to their feet like they’d expected nothing less from him. By the time the final horn sounded, the Titans were up by two, my hand ached from gripping the pen too hard. Just get through the press conference. Ask your questions. Go home. I’d built an entire career on staying calm under pressure. I was not going to lose that now, in a media room that smelled like popcorn and floor wax, because of a man who hadn’t spoken to me in five years. The press conference room filled fast with reporters packed shoulder to shoulder, cameras angled toward the long table at the front. I found a spot near the back corner, close enough to ask a question, far enough that I told myself I could disappear if I needed to. He’s just another athlete. Another assignment. Another name in a byline. I almost believed it. Then the door opened, and he walked in, still in his gear, hair damp against his forehead, jaw set in the particular expression I now understood was his public face, the one the cameras loved because it gave away nothing at all. He sat. He answered the first question before I’d even lifted my pen. Confident. Measured. A little bored, like he’d said these same sentences a hundred times because he had. And then his eyes moved across the room, the way they’d swept it a dozen times already, cataloging faces out of habit. And stopped on mine. I watched it happen. Watched the exact half-second where recognition hit him, where something flickered behind those dark eyes before the door slammed shut again. His jaw tightened. Just barely. Nobody else in that room would have caught it. I caught it. Five years, and I still knew his face better than I knew my own. He looked away at first. Answered the next question like nothing had happened, like the last three minutes hadn’t just rearranged something in my chest. Reporter after reporter got easy, effortless answers out of him. Warm, even. Charming, in that controlled way he’d clearly practiced. He never looked at me again. Fine. That was fine. I hadn’t come here for him to look at me. I raised my hand when there was a pause, and the PR handler nodded in my direction before I’d even said my name. “Addie Hayes, Sentinel Sports.” My voice came out steadier than I expected. “You’re one win from the championship. How are you preparing mentally for a moment like that?” Silence, for just a beat too long. Then his eyes came back to mine, and this time he didn’t look away. Something passed through his expression gone before anyone else could name it and when he finally spoke, his voice had dropped into something colder than what he’d given everyone else. “You prepare the same way for every game.” A pause. His gaze didn’t move from mine. “You don’t think about what you lost last time. You just make sure it doesn’t happen again.” He wasn’t talking about hockey. I knew it the way I knew my own name. I kept my face perfectly still and wrote down his answer word for word, because that was my job, and because if I let myself feel what that sentence had actually done to me, I wasn’t sure I’d make it out of that room standing upright. His hand, resting on the table beside the microphone, had curled into a fist. Nobody else noticed. I noticed everything about him. I always had. The PR handler called the next question, and Alex Callahan looked away from me like I’d never spoken at all. I told myself I’d gotten through it. That was the win. I packed up my notepad, thanked the handler, and slipped out into the corridor before anyone could ask why my hands weren’t quite steady. The hallway outside the media room was quieter, fluorescent-lit, empty except for a few staffers hauling equipment toward the loading dock. I exhaled for what felt like the first time in an hour. Five years. You survived five years without him. You can survive one interview. I made it maybe twenty feet before I heard footsteps behind me, quick and certain, and some instinct older than five years of practiced indifference told me exactly who it was before I turned around. He’d changed out of his gear into a dark team jacket, hair still damp, and up close really close, closer than we’d been since the last night I’d seen him. The cold, controlled press-conference version of him was gone completely. “Alex.” His name came out smaller than I wanted it to. “Five years,” he said quietly. I froze. Alex stepped closer, his expression finally cracking. “And you still look at me like you want to run.”