23. Callahan Eli
Callahan Eli
“She asleep?” Dean’s voice crackles through the line, sounding just as weary as I feel.
There’s a long pause on the other end. I can hear the distant, muffled sound of a car door closing on his end of the call. “How bad is it, Moore? Give it to me straight.”
“Bad enough,” I answer honestly, leaning my head against the cool drywall. “Fever, dizziness, and she’s stubborn as hell. She was talking in her sleep around three. It wasn’t about hockey, Dean. It was… it was deep.”
I hear him exhale, a long, weary sound that tells me he’s heard those fever dreams before. “That tracks. She’s always been like that. When the walls go down, the ghosts come out.”
“I’m heading back to the rink,” I add, glancing toward the bed. “I don’t want her waking up alone, but I have morning skate in an hour. If I’m not there, the rumors will start a fire even Jenna can’t put out.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Dean says immediately. “Scottie’s already at the 24-hour place grabbing more supplies. We’ve got the next shift.”
Relief hits me harder than I expect.
“Thank you,” I say.
There’s a beat of silence. “You okay, Callahan?”
I look at her again.
From this distance, she looks so pale. Too still. The fierce, untouchable General Manager’s daughter is gone, replaced by a woman who looks like she’s been fighting a war by herself for way too long.
“No,” I admit. “But I will be.”
“Go,” Dean says, his tone softening. “We’ve got her.”
I hang up and move back into the room. I grab my jacket from the back of her single kitchen chair and pause by the bed.
For a second, I consider leaving a note. I want to say something safe, something professional. But there’s nothing I can write that won’t feel like a lie.
Instead, I reach down and tuck the wool blanket a little higher around her shoulders, shielding her from the draft coming off the floor.
I lean down, my mouth inches from her ear, and murmur, barely audible, “I wish you knew how much you matter.”
She doesn’t wake. She doesn’t even stir.
That shouldn’t feel like permission to feel the way I do, but as I let myself out of the apartment, it feels exactly like that.
***
I don’t go looking for him.
That’s the lie I tell myself as I walk down the executive corridor of the arena later that morning.
My skates are slung over my shoulder, clinking with every step. The rink behind me is humming with its usual post-practice noise but every step I take toward the glass-walled offices feels deliberate. Heavy.
I tell myself I just need to check in. I tell myself I need to update the front office on the “staffing situation.”
I tell myself I’m fine.
William St. James’s door is open when I reach it. Of course it is. The man is a monument to transparency and power, provided both are on his terms.
He’s standing by the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooks the city, his tailored suit jacket already on, phone in hand.
He looks up when he senses me standing in the doorway.
“Moore,” he says, his voice polite and neutral. “Can I help you with something? I assume you’re here about the power play adjustments for tonight.”
I step inside the office and close the heavy oak door behind me. The click of the latch is sharp. Final.
It’s a reckless move, but it feels entirely necessary.
This office has always felt like a courtroom to me. It’s too clean, too quiet, filled with the kind of expensive leather and polished wood that makes a man feel like he should apologize for having dirt on his shoes.
My heart is hammering against my ribs like it’s trying to break out.
I’m the captain of his team, but in this room, the hierarchy is clear.
I’m an employee. I know that by being here, by saying what I’m about to say, I’m putting a massive target on my back.
But then I remember the way Ivy looked when she swayed on the ice. I remember how the light seemed to just go out of her eyes.
The risk doesn’t matter.
Not compared to the silence in her apartment.
“I think you can help me,” I say, my voice steady despite the adrenaline.
William blinks once, slowly, recalibrating his expectations for this conversation. He sees the look on my face, the tension in my jaw.
“Is this about the practice schedule?”
“No,” I reply, taking another step into the room. “It’s about your daughter.”
He stills—not dramatically, but I see the tightening of his jaw and the subtle squaring of his shoulders. He sets his phone down on the mahogany desk with deliberate precision.
“Iveline is more than capable of handling her own affairs, Moore. If she has an issue with the team, she’ll bring it to—”
“She almost collapsed on the ice yesterday,” I cut in, my voice sharp enough to draw blood.
William’s expression tightens, a flash of something—worry or irritation, I can’t tell—flickering in his eyes. “She didn’t inform me of any medical distress. She said she was taking a personal day to catch up on scouting reports.”
“She wouldn’t tell you,” I say evenly. “She never does. She was running a fever so high she couldn’t see straight.”
William exhales through his nose, turning back to the window. “She’s stubborn. She always has been. It’s a trait that serves her well in this industry.”
“She’s conditioned,” I reply. “There’s a massive difference.”
His eyes snap back to mine, sharp and cold. “Be careful, Moore.”
“I’ve seen it my whole life,” I say, stepping further into the room until only the desk separates us.
“I know the difference between a person who is strong and a person who is afraid to be anything else. You’ve built a machine here.
You’ve taught her that her value is tied entirely to her output, to her win-loss record, to how many hours of tape she can watch before her eyes start to bleed. ”
I think of my own mother in that moment. I remember how she worked three jobs and never complained, not once, until the day her body literally gave out in the middle of a shift.
I remember the “strength” everyone praised at her funeral.
They called it a virtue; I called it a tragedy that didn’t have to happen.
“Strength is being able to say when you’re hurting,” I continue.
“What Iveline is doing isn’t strength. It’s a slow-motion suicide by work.
And she’s doing it because she thinks it’s the only way you’ll ever see her as an equal.
But she’s a part of this team, William—not just an employee.
We take care of our own. On the ice, we don’t let a teammate skate on a broken leg just to prove they’re tough, and I’m not going to let her do it in here. ”
That earns me real irritation. The mask of the executive slips, revealing the defensive father underneath. “You’re crossing a line, Moore.”
“No,” I say. “I’m stepping into a space that no one else in this building seems willing to occupy. Everyone is so afraid of her, or so afraid of you, that they just watch her burn out.”
“You’re her player,” he snaps, his voice rising. “Not her parent. And certainly not her partner.”
“I know exactly what I am,” I say quietly. “And that’s why I can see it clearly.”
“See what?”
“The pressure,” I say. “The way she thinks that taking a single hour for herself equals failure. She shows up early, she leaves last, she takes every hit from the press and never complains. Do you have any idea what that does to a person over time?”
“She chose this career,” William snaps back, pacing the length of his rug. His fingers twitch at his side, curling once before he forces them flat against his thigh. “She wanted to work here. She fought for this position.”
“And you let her,” I reply. “Knowing exactly what it would cost her. You let her believe that she has to earn the right to exist in every room she walks into.”
“You think I wanted this to be hard for her?” He stops and looks at me, and for the first time, I see the age in his face.
“No,” I say. “I think you wanted it to make sense. You wanted to justify the way you live your own life by making sure she lived hers the same way.”
That lands.
I can see the hit register in the way his shoulders sag just a fraction. He studies me for a long time, the silence in the office becoming heavy and suffocating.
“You lost someone,” he says quietly.
“Yes.”
“Your mother.”
“She was exactly like Iveline,” I say, and for a second, I’m not in a high-rise office in Boston. I’m back in a cramped kitchen in the middle of winter, watching my mom try to hide a racking cough behind a dish towel so I wouldn’t worry.
“She thought that if she stopped moving, the world would stop spinning. She thought she was the only thing holding the roof up. By the time she finally sat down, it was too late. There was nothing left of her but the work she’d done.”
I look William dead in the eye. I want him to feel the weight of my mother’s ghost in this room.
“I watched a woman burn herself alive for the sake of ‘keeping it together.’ I’m not going to watch your daughter do the same thing just because you’re too proud to tell her she’s allowed to be human.”
“And you think that gives you the right to barge in here and tell me—”
“To tell you you’re failing her? Yeah, I think it does,” I interrupt.
He slams a hand on the desk, the sound echoing like a gunshot. “I am not failing my daughter!”
“She’s terrified of disappointing you,” I say, my voice steady. “And the worst part is, you don’t even see it. You see the stats. You see the scouting reports. You don’t see the girl who apologized to me last night.”
That stops him. He freezes, his hand still resting on the wood. “She apologized?”
“She was delirious with a fever, and she was apologizing for ‘disrupting the flow’ of the team. She was worried about the game schedule while she couldn’t even stand up.”
His fingers tighten around the edge of the desk, knuckles whitening before he realizes it and lets go, the release slow, reluctant.
William’s shoulders finally sag.
He turns away from me, looking back out at the city. His reflection in the glass looks older. Smaller.
The titan of the NHL is gone, and there’s just a father left.
“I thought giving her space was a sign of respect,” he says, his voice so quiet I can barely hear him. “I thought if I stepped in, it would look like I didn’t trust her.”
“It is respect,” I reply. “Until it becomes abandonment. She doesn’t need a boss right now, William. She needs a father who tells her to rest.”
He shakes his head. “She won’t listen to me. If I tell her to stay home, she’ll think I’m benching her.”
“I know,” I say. “That’s why I’m here. I’m telling you so you can be ready when she tries to come back too soon.”
The silence stretches out, but it’s different now. The air has been cleared.
“You care about her,” William says, turning back to face me.
“Yes.” No hesitation. No doubt.
“And this isn’t just professional concern for a coach.”
“No. It’s not.”
He exhales a long, unsteady breath. “Then this is dangerous, Callahan. For both of you. The optics, the league rules—it’s a minefield.”
“Maybe,” I say, reaching for the door handle. “But I’d rather deal with a minefield than another funeral.”
He rubs his temple, looking exhausted. “I don’t want to lose her.”
“You won’t,” I say, opening the door. “Not if you let her be human.”
His voice cracks on the “thank you” he barely manages to get out. I don’t stay to hear the rest. I leave before either of us can say anything else that might break the fragile truce we’ve just built.
Out in the corridor, the noise of the rink rushes back in—the life, the chaos, the sounds of a team getting ready for a game. I lean against the cold cinder block wall for a moment, breathing through the burn in my chest.
Iveline Talvi St. James doesn’t need a savior.
She’s the strongest person I’ve ever met.
But she deserves someone willing to stand between her and the weight she never asked to carry. She deserves someone who sees her when she isn’t “The General Manager’s Daughter.”
And for better or worse, that’s me.
The elevator ride down to the locker room is the longest sixty seconds of my life. I watch my reflection in the mirrored doors. My hair is a mess, my eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep, and I’m still wearing my warm-up suit.
I should feel panicked. I just told the most powerful man in the organization that he’s a failing father.
I should probably be calling my agent to see if there are any openings in the European leagues.
But as I step out into the cold night air toward the parking lot, I feel lighter than I have in weeks.
The secret is out.
I care about her.
It’s not just a crush or a workplace distraction anymore.
It’s a fundamental shift in my gravity.
I look at my phone. There are no texts from Dean yet, which I take as a good sign. No news is good news when it comes to a fever.
I climb into my car and sit there for a minute, the engine idling, the heater blowing cold air before it finally warms up. I think about the way she looked asleep on that bed—the way her hand twitched in the blanket, looking for something to hold onto.
I told William I’d be the one to stand between her and the weight. Now I just have to figure out how the hell to tell her that without making her run in the opposite direction.