Five Years Later, He Still Wants Me

Chapter 2: What I Refused to Feel

I made it home before I let myself fall apart.

Not literally.

I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream into a pillow like some heroine in one of the stories I used to write in college notebooks.

I just stood in my kitchen with my keys still in my hand, staring at nothing, replaying five words on a loop.

“You still look at me like you want to run.”

I hated that he was right.

I hated it more that my body had reacted before my brain got the memo. My pulse. My breath. The stupid, traitorous warmth that had spread through my chest the second his voice dropped low in that hallway.

Five years. I’d built an entire life in five years.

I was not supposed to feel anything.

I told myself lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep that refused to come.

It was a surprise. That’s all. Anyone would react like that.

I almost believed it.

Then my mind betrayed me the way it always did in the dark, pulling up things I hadn’t let myself think about in years. The sound of his laugh. The way he used to reach for my hand without looking, like it was instinct. The version of him that existed before the world decided he belonged to everyone but me.

I remembered how much I’d loved him.

I remembered why I’d stopped.

I shut that door fast, the way I always did, before it could pull me somewhere I wasn’t ready to go.

I fell asleep angry at myself. That felt safer than the alternative. Morning came with sunlight and a headache and a very firm decision.

It was a coincidence. A work assignment. Nothing more.

I showered. I made coffee. I put on the version of myself that showed up to the newsroom every day competent, unbothered, completely uninterested in hockey captains with cold eyes and colder press-conference answers.

I almost made it through breakfast believing in my own performance.

Then Marcus called.

“Change of plans,” he said, already halfway into the next sentence before I’d said hello. “Callahan’s team just signed a new endorsement deal. Ownership stake in the sports complex downtown, the one we’ve been covering for the redevelopment piece.”

I froze with the coffee mug halfway to my mouth.

“Which sports complex.”

“The one you’re already writing about, Hayes. Small world.”

It wasn’t a coincidence. It couldn’t be. Not the assignment, not the interview, not the fact that his name kept appearing in every corner of my professional life, as like he’d planted himself there on purpose.

Did he know I was on this story before he agreed to the deal?

The question sat in my stomach like a stone for the rest of the morning.

I told myself I wasn’t going to look him up.

I looked him up.

Forbes. Business journals. A profile calling him one of the most valuable athletes in the league, on and off the ice endorsements, a stake in three different companies, a foundation with his name on it. The boy who used to borrow gas money from me had somehow become this.

Powerful. Untouchable. Everywhere.

I hated how much it impressed me. I hated more that some small, humiliating part of me was proud of him.

I closed the laptop before I could go looking for anything else.

I saw him again that afternoon, and this time there was no crowd to hide behind.

I’d gone to the sports complex to shoot photos for the redevelopment piece, and he was just there, standing near the entrance in a plain jacket, talking to a contractor like he hadn’t just upended my entire week.

He saw me before I could turn around and pretend I hadn’t seen him at first.

He didn’t rush. He never used to rush toward anything he was certain about.

“Addie.”

“We have nothing to say to each other.” I kept my voice level. Professional. A wall built out of five years of practice.

“I disagree.”

“Why are you suddenly interested in talking to me? After five years?”

Something shifted behind his eyes.

“Suddenly.” A short, humorless laugh. “You think this is sudden.”

I turned to walk away. I got exactly four steps.

“I spent five years trying to forget you.”

I stopped.

“It didn’t work.”

I didn’t turn around. I couldn’t trust my face not to give me away.

“I don’t feel anything, Alex.”

“Look at me and say that.”

I turned around because I refused to let him think I was afraid of it.

That was my mistake.

He studied me, slow and unhurried, the way he used to study game fills, like he was looking for the thing I was trying to hide.

“You’re still a terrible liar.”

“The woman you knew five years ago doesn’t exist anymore.”

“I can see that.” His voice dropped, quieter now, rougher around the edges. “I still want her. Whoever she is now.”

I stood there, stunned, my professional composure cracking somewhere I couldn’t repair fast enough.

“I have to go,” I said, and I left before he could say anything else that might undo me completely. My hands were shaking by the time I reached my car.

You’re afraid of him.

That was the easy answer. The safe one.

It wasn’t the true one, and some part of me already knew it. I was home, out of my shoes, halfway through convincing myself the day was over, when my phone lit up on the counter.

An unknown number saved under a name I hadn’t deleted in five years, because some stubborn, self-destructive part of me had never let myself finish that.

Alex.

I stared at it for a long time before I opened it.

Five years changed you. It didn’t change what I wanted.

I sat down slowly on the edge of my bed, phone still in my hand, and understood, really understood, for the first time since that hallway, that whatever this was, it hadn’t ended tonight.

It was only just starting.