CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DARIUS
Colton finds me in the hotel hallway at midnight and says, “You look like a man who almost kissed a reporter and then remembered consequences exist.”
I stop walking.
The hallway carpet is ugly. Beige with blue loops that probably looked professional in a sample book and now looks like someone tried to make confusion washable. The lights are too bright for midnight. The vending machine beside Colton hums like it knows too much.
Colton stands in front of it holding a bag of pretzels, one protein bar, and a chocolate milk.
I look at the chocolate milk.
He lifts it. “Recovery beverage.”
“That is not recovery.”
“Morgan said calories.”
“She did not mean from a machine that also sells sour gummies.”
“She should have been more specific.”
I keep walking.
Colton falls into step beside me.
Fantastic.
“Your room is the other direction,” I say.
“So is sleep. We’re both avoiding our assigned locations.”
“I’m stretching my legs.”
“At midnight.”
“Mobility matters.”
“Look at you. Stealing Morgan’s whole personality.”
I stop at the end of the hallway near the window. Beyond the glass, Charlotte glows wet and gold under the streetlights. The rain has stopped, but the roads still shine. A few team vehicles sit under the hotel awning, half-loaded for tomorrow’s travel.
New York/New Jersey by noon.
Final bubble by dinner.
No more quiet stadiums with bad timing and almost-kisses.
Colton leans against the wall beside me and opens the pretzels with the loudest crinkle known to mankind.
“You want one?”
“No.”
“You sure? You’re brooding at a dangerous blood-sugar level.”
“I’m not brooding.”
“You’re staring out a window like it insulted your family.”
I turn toward him. “Do you need something?”
He points one pretzel at me. “Yes. Entertainment. Also, possibly the chance to prevent emotional disaster.”
“You?”
“I have experience with emotional disaster.”
“That’s unfortunately true.”
He smiles, but it softens quickly.
That is when I know I’m in trouble.
Joking Colton is survivable.
Earnest Colton is a trap.
He studies my face. “So. Did you almost kiss her?”
I look back out the window. “No.”
He nods. “Terrible lie. Strong delivery, though.”
“Go to bed.”
“Did you want to?”
I say nothing.
The vending machine hums. Somewhere down the hall, an elevator dings. A door shuts softly.
Colton lowers the pretzel bag. “That’s a yes.”
“She’s covering the team.”
“Correct.”
“I’m the subject of her feature.”
“Also correct.”
“The Final is in three days.”
“Very exciting. People are calling it a soccer match.”
“She has a producer pushing for the knee angle, half the tournament media watching for a slip, and a career that gets questioned before mine does if anyone decides there’s a line crossed.”
Colton’s face changes.
He should hear that part.
Everyone wants to talk about chemistry like it exists in a vacuum. Like cameras don’t have red lights. Like women in sports media don’t get their credibility shredded faster than a man gets asked one awkward question and moved along.
“I know,” Colton says.
The softness in his voice makes me look at him.
He does know.
He and Morgan earned their own scars there.
“I’m not saying it’s simple,” he says. “I’m saying complicated isn’t the same as impossible.”
I laugh once. It comes out sharper than I mean it to.
Colton holds my gaze.
“What?”
“You,” he says.
“That was not an answer.”
“You’re doing that thing.”
“If one more person tells me I’m doing a thing, I’m leaving the sport.”
“You call fear responsibility.”
The words land clean.
Too clean.
I turn back to the window.
Below, a security guard crosses the front drive with a clipboard. He stops at one of the media vans, checks something, then moves on.
Colton keeps going because apparently he has chosen violence with snacks.
“I recognize it because I did it with Morgan. I told myself I was protecting her by staying vague. Keeping it quiet. Acting like if I didn’t say the thing out loud, the world couldn’t punish her for it.”
He folds the top of the pretzel bag once.
Then again.
“All I did was leave her carrying the heavier risk.”
I swallow.
My reflection in the window looks like a man with answers.
That is generous of the glass.
“What happened with you and Morgan is different,” I say.
“Yeah. Morgan had to threaten me with a hamstring protocol before I developed character. You’ve always been ahead of me there.”
“Colton.”
He lifts both hands. “Fine. Serious.”
That’s never a promising sentence.
He turns so his shoulder rests against the wall. “You don’t have to solve your whole future tonight. But if you almost kissed Sienna and then walked away acting like distance is nobility, ask yourself who that protects.”
The hallway seems to narrow.
Not enough air.
I look at him.
He looks back.
No grin.
No dodge.
Just the man Morgan somehow dug out from under three layers of jokes and bad decisions.
“She deserves safety,” I say.
“She does.”
“She deserves not to become a rumour because I can’t manage my feelings for three days.”
“Also true.”
“And I deserve to know whether she wants this because of me or because of the story.”
Colton’s eyebrows lift. “There he is.”
“What?”
“The actual thing.”
I hate him a little.
He seems comfortable with that.
“What if she wants both?” he asks.
I stare at him.
“That’s not an insult,” he says. “Morgan loves me and still tells me when my stride is garbage. People can care about each other and still be excellent at their jobs.”
“She cut the camera tonight.”
Colton’s expression shifts.
I did not mean to say that.
Too late.
He waits.
Everyone in my life has become dangerously competent at silence.
“We were filming at the stadium,” I say. “She asked about pressure. I answered too honestly.”
“How honestly?”
“Badly.”
“Ah. Captain scale. Badly means devastating.”
I ignore that. “She stopped recording. Said that part was mine.”
Colton’s hand stills on the pretzel bag.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “That sounds like a person making a choice.”
I look down the hallway.
The carpet. The numbered doors. The framed print of a generic city skyline. All of it ordinary enough to mock me.
“She also said she used to confuse exposure with truth.”
Colton lets out a low whistle. “That’s a line.”
“It wasn’t for a segment.”
“That’s why it’s a line.”
I rub one hand over the back of my neck.
My knee gives a small pulse when I shift my weight. Not bad. Just present. Everything is present tonight. The knee. The kiss that didn’t happen. Sienna’s face under stadium lights.
Colton watches me catch the movement.
“Does Morgan know you’re pacing?”
“She has enough to do.”
“She will know by sunrise. Morgan knows things before they happen.”
“That’s not medical science.”
“Tell her that.”
I almost smile.
Almost.
Then Colton pushes off the wall.
“I’m going to let you get back to staring at architecture, but one more thing.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
He points the pretzel bag at me again. “If you’re scared because you don’t trust Sienna, that’s one problem. If you’re scared because you do trust her and that means you might have to let yourself be known, that’s another.”
The hallway goes quiet.
Even the vending machine seems to lower its hum.
Colton’s voice softens. “Don’t punish her for being the first person in a long time who made the second problem visible.”
He walks away before I can answer.
Coward.
Or genius.
Annoying either way.
I stay at the window until the reflection looking back at me becomes unbearable.
Then I turn toward the business centre.
Not because I’m looking for her.
That would be foolish.
I’m looking for a printer.
Which is worse, because I have no reason to print anything.
The hotel business centre sits beside the closed breakfast room, lit by two desk lamps and the blue glow of monitors. The door is propped open with a recycling bin. Inside, a printer clicks and sighs like it has been personally offended by a spreadsheet.
Sienna is at the far desk.
Barefoot.
Blazer over the back of the chair.
Hair half-pinned and losing the battle.
One hand in her hair, the other on the trackpad, eyes fixed on the monitor in front of her. Her shoes sit under the table. A paper coffee cup stands beside her laptop, untouched and probably cold.
She looks nothing like the woman from the tunnel in Atlanta.
She looks tired.
Brilliant.
Real.
Dangerous in a way that has nothing to do with microphones.
I should leave.
Instead, I step closer.
Her screen shows Briarwood.
The banner.
The kids.
Coach Miller laughing beside the snack table.
Then me on the field with the little girl in purple laces, the camera wide enough to hold the whole place instead of trapping me inside the frame.
Sienna scrubs back.
Coach Miller appears, saying something to camera. The audio is low, but I hear enough.
Some kids are loud when they need help. Some kids become helpful instead.
My throat tightens.
Sienna pauses the clip, then drags it into the timeline. She watches it once, twice, then lowers the audio beneath a shot of the kids passing under the crooked banner.
Not manipulating.
Not overplaying.
Letting it breathe.
She feels me before I speak.
Her shoulders go still.
Then she turns.
Her face is completely unguarded.
She reaches for the laptop lid.
“Don’t,” I say.
Her hand stops.
I step into the room but stay on the other side of the table. “I saw enough.”
Her eyes search mine. “You weren’t supposed to.”
“I assumed.”
“It’s not finished.”
“I assumed that too.”
The printer spits out a page behind her, loud enough that we both flinch.
She exhales and half-laughs, then presses a hand to her forehead. “I hate this printer.”
“It seems mutual.”
That almost gets a smile.
Almost is becoming a theme I need to address before it ruins me.
She turns the laptop slightly. “I wanted the Briarwood section to feel like home, not like a small-town sympathy montage.”
“It does.”
Her fingers tighten on the edge of the laptop.
The compliment lands like something heavier than praise.
“I mean it,” I say.
“I know.”
The words are quiet.
Too quiet.