Chapter 32
In My Defence, He Looked Wrecked
I replay the gala in fragments for three straight days. Not intentionally, my brain just keeps circling back there automatically while I stretch before practice or wait for coffee or stand beneath freezing water after training trying unsuccessfully to calm my nervous system down.
Calder in the hallway. Calder stopping himself from touching me. The look on his face when I laughed across the ballroom. The memories arrive with dangerous emotional clarity every single time.
I hate how badly I still react to him. That part unsettles me most now. The attraction surviving never surprised me. Seeing him again reopen hope quickly enough to frighten me did.
I skate harder because of it. Longer sessions. Extra run-throughs. More conditioning after practice until my legs shake climbing the stairs back toward the locker rooms. Physical exhaustion usually organizes my brain eventually.
This week it barely dents it.
"You're overtraining again," my coach says mildly on Thursday morning while I retie one skate too aggressively.
"I'm literally standing still."
"You're emotionally overtraining."
I glance up flatly. "That's not a real phrase."
"It is when applied to you specifically."
Rude. Unfortunately accurate.
I lean back against the bench afterward staring at the fluorescent lights overhead while skaters move around the locker room nearby. The problem is that hope feels dangerous now in ways love alone never did. Loving Calder was easy, painful sometimes, complicated constantly, still easy.
Trusting him with my emotional safety again? Entirely different thing.
Because chemistry was never our issue. God, if anything we had too much of it.
The problem was what happened when fear entered the relationship.
How quickly Calder started managing emotion instead of living inside it honestly.
How easily love became something he compartmentalized publicly when pressure hit.
And standing in a hotel hallway looking wrecked because he wanted to touch me and didn't know if he still could does not automatically erase any of that.
I know this.
Logically, I know this.
Still, my brain keeps replaying small details anyway. The way he stopped himself from reaching for my waist. The visible uncertainty afterward. The fact that he looked more afraid of hurting me than losing control.
That part keeps catching on something inside me repeatedly.
I shove my practice bag into the locker harder than necessary.
No.
Absolutely not.
I am not rebuilding entire emotional narratives out of one emotionally charged reunion and lingering unresolved chemistry. That is exactly how people end up back inside relationships that hurt them the same way twice.
The thought steadies me slightly. Because no matter how much I still love Calder, I cannot afford to romanticize him automatically again. Not anymore. I learned too much from the breakup for that.
Cold air rushes sharply into my lungs while I push into warm-up laps beneath bright rink lights.
My body settles instinctively into movement — edges, breathing, rhythm.
Safer. Except even here, Calder still exists everywhere, in recovery habits, in pacing corrections, in the steadiness I rebuilt partly because he taught me how not to emotionally spiral after mistakes.
I glide to a stop near centre ice after a combination run and bend forward slightly bracing my hands against my knees.
Breathing hard. Thinking too much. The terrifying thing is that Calder did look different at the gala.
Not softer exactly. Just more honest. But grief can distort people.
Longing can too. And I refuse to mistake wanting him for proof that he's actually changed.
Even if some dangerous hopeful part of me already wants to believe it anyway.
I see the interview by accident. At least that's what I tell myself. In reality, the second Maddie sends the link with uhhhhh??? I open it immediately.
The clip loads while I sit cross-legged on my apartment floor surrounded by recovery bands and half-finished travel paperwork for next season.
Postgame media. Calder still in team gear.
Hair damp from the shower. Expression tired in that sharp restrained way he gets after difficult games. My stomach tightens instantly anyway.
The interviewer asks a hockey question first. Then another.
Then: "People have been talking a lot recently about Arabella Vale after Worlds. Does it feel strange having your careers linked publicly again?"
The old Calder would have shifted instantly. I know exactly how it would have sounded, careful, controlled, emotionally reduced until the relationship became something technically acknowledged but impossible to fully see. Private. Complicated. Focused on hockey.
Instead Calder pauses. Not panicked. Not evasive. Just thoughtful.
Then he says quietly: "No. She earned that attention herself."
My breath catches slightly.
The sentence lands harder than it should. Less because it's romantic and more because it's clean. No distancing language. No emotional minimization. No attempt to shrink the connection down into something safer to survive publicly.
The interviewer continues carefully. "You watched Worlds?"
A tiny shift passes across Calder's face.
"Yeah," he says.
The honesty in the answer feels almost unbearably direct after months of careful emotional avoidance.
"Were you proud of her?"
I brace instinctively for the dodge. It never comes.
"Obviously," Calder says immediately.
The word arrives rough enough to sound almost offended by the question itself.
Heat rises unexpectedly into my chest. There's no hesitation in him anymore when my name comes up. No visible fear. No reflexive retreat. No instinct to emotionally reduce me before someone else can.
He looks exhausted. Not performatively emotional.
Not dramatic. Just open in places he used to keep locked down publicly.
The difference is subtle if you don't know him intimately.
I do. I know exactly how much effort it used to take for Calder to maintain emotional neutrality anytime I entered conversations connected to hockey.
Now every answer feels frighteningly honest by comparison.
"You still sound very connected to her," the interviewer says carefully.
Silence stretches briefly afterward.
Then Calder exhales softly through his nose before answering: "I am."
My entire body stills. Because there it is. No minimizing. No qualification. No strategic emotional distancing. Just truth. Simple enough to hurt.
I stare at the paused frame afterward, Calder's head slightly lowered, media lights harsh against the sharp line of his jaw, fatigue visible around his eyes. Something cold and emotional moves through my chest all at once. This isn't longing anymore.
It's behaviour. Public behaviour.
Calder is no longer treating my existence like something he needs to carefully manage away from himself the second pressure enters the room.
I replay the clip once. Then again. Searching for signs I imagined it. Misinterpreted it. Projected meaning onto normal answers because I still love him too much.
But the change stays there every time. Visible. Consistent. Undeniable.
And sitting alone on my apartment floor with Calder's interview paused on my laptop screen, the thing affecting me most is not hearing him admit he still cares. It's realizing he finally stopped trying to make caring sound smaller than it was.
The first sign is Maddox.
Which honestly feels fitting.
I'm leaving a sponsor meeting near the arena three days later when someone says: "Vale."
I turn automatically.
Maddox stands near the lobby entrance in training gear with one hand hooked through the strap of a duffel bag. Instinctive panic flares low in my stomach briefly, not because of him specifically, but because hockey still carries bruised emotional territory inside me now.
Then Maddox grins slightly.
"Congrats on Worlds."
The warmth in his tone catches me off guard.
"Thanks."
"You looked terrifying out there."
"That was actually the goal, yeah."
"Nice."
I laugh softly.
The conversation settles strangely easily after that, no awkwardness, no weird uncertainty about whether he's allowed to acknowledge me, nothing hidden. Maddox leans briefly against the wall beside the elevators while we talk about competition travel and playoff exhaustion.
Then casually says: "He watched every second, by the way."
My pulse stumbles once hard against my ribs.
I don't need to ask who.
"He was insufferable during your free skate," Maddox continues dryly. "Nearly killed a man for talking during the step sequence."
Heat climbs rapidly into my chest. Not because of the possessiveness. Because of the openness.
Maddox says it like this information is normal now. Allowed. Known.
I stare at him for half a second too long. Something in my expression must shift because his own softens slightly afterward.
"He talks about you differently now," Maddox says quietly.
The sentence lands with frightening precision somewhere beneath my ribs.
Before I can answer, the elevator dings open behind us. A few other players step out laughing loudly about something practice-related. Then stop when they see me.
The old tension arrives automatically in my body first, that familiar instinctive bracing for awkwardness, for uncertainty, for feeling like a private complication standing inside Calder's world.
Instead one of them lights up.
"Holy shit, Vale."
Another points at me dramatically.
"You ruined my girlfriend emotionally during Worlds."
"That feels aggressive somehow."
"She cried for forty straight minutes."
"Reasonable behaviour honestly."
The group laughs. Easy. Natural. No strange silence afterward. No careful avoidance of Calder's name. No subtle sense that I'm standing in territory I'm not supposed to visibly exist inside.
One of the defensemen shakes his head while grinning.