The first time I saw the photos on a stranger’s phone, I was standing behind the counter of a coffee shop in Lower Manhattan with steamed milk burning my fingers.

At first, I did not understand what I was looking at.

That was the terrible part.

For three whole seconds, my brain protected me.

The phone belonged to a girl in a red NYU hoodie waiting for her oat milk latte. She stood close to the pickup counter, laughing with her friend, the glowing screen tilted just enough for me to see the headline.

RISING HOCKEY STAR NOAH KADE SPOTTED LEAVING HOTEL WITH MYSTERY WOMAN

Below it was a photograph.

Noah. My Noah.

His dark blond hair was messy beneath the flash of cameras. His jaw was tense and his hand was wrapped around the wrist of a woman whose face was turned away. She wore a black coat, high heels and large hoop earrings.

My hand slipped and hot milk splashed across my fingers.

“God,” I gasped, jerking back.

The girl glanced up. “Are you okay?”

I didn't say anything. I just stared at her phone.

She followed my gaze, then smiled in that careless way people smiled when they wanted to give sweet gossip. “Crazy, right? I thought he had a girlfriend.”

The espresso machine screamed behind me. The lunch rush was building. Cups lined the counter. My manager was calling my name. Someone asked if their croissant was still warming.

But all I could hear was one sentence.

I thought he had a girlfriend.

He did actually.

Me.

I was the girlfriend.

I was the girl who stayed up until two in the morning editing his media responses because he hated sounding fake in interviews. The girl who knew he took his coffee black before games and sweet after losses. The girl who sat on the floor of her tiny apartment with him while he iced his shoulder and promised that when everything got bigger, we would not get smaller.

I was the girl who believed him.

“Aria!”

Marco’s voice snapped through the fog.

I blinked and looked down at my hand. The skin across my fingers was red but the pain felt distant like it belonged to someone else.

“I’m fine,” I said quickly.

“You’re not fine,” Marco said, coming toward me. “Go run it under water.”

“I said I’m fine.”

The girl took her drink and moved away, still talking about Noah like he was a public event instead of the person who knew where I kept my spare key.

My phone buzzed in my back pocket. Once. Twice. Then again.

For one foolish second, hope rose so hard in my chest it hurt.

Maybe it was him. Maybe he had seen the story. Maybe he was calling before I could ask. Maybe there was an explanation, because the Noah I knew would never hurt me this way.

I rushed to the storage room, almost knocking into a delivery guy carrying boxes of paper cups.

My cracked phone lit up with notifications. But it was not from Noah.

It was from Simone, my best friend.

SIMONE: Aria, call me.

SIMONE: Babe. Please call me now.

SIMONE: Don’t look online until you talk to me.

Too late.

My thumb shook as I opened the article about Noah popping up on my screen just then.

The coffee shop Wi-Fi loaded slowly, every second tightening around my throat.

Then the same image showed up along with an article that was as crazy as the picture above it.

My stomach folded in on itself. So it was really true.

“No. God, please, no.” I whispered even as I called him.

The line rang once, then went to voicemail.

I called again. Voicemail.

Again. Voicemail.

By the fourth attempt, my heart had started beating with a strange, cold rhythm.

It was not panic.

It was something worse. Humiliation.

Outside the storage room, the coffee shop moved on.

Milk steamed. Orders were called. People laughed. New York continued being New York, loud and hungry and careless while my life quietly split open beside a tower of napkins.

The voicemail beeped and I pressed the phone to my ear.

“Noah,” I said.

My voice cracked on his name and that made me furious and sad at the same time.

I swallowed hard. “Noah, I just saw the photo. Call me. Please. Just call me and tell me what this is.”

I stopped just then and ended the call before I begged.

When I stepped back into the shop, Marco took one look at me and lowered his voice.

“Go home.”

“I need the hours.”

“You also need your fingers.”

“I’m fine.”

“Aria.”

I hated kindness when I was close to falling apart. It made everything worse.

“I need the hours,” I repeated.

Marco held my gaze, then looked toward the counter, where the line had grown longer. “Then take ten minutes.”

Ten minutes. As if grief could be scheduled. As if betrayal could sit politely in the corner until my break ended.

Bulshit.

I went to the tiny bathroom, locked the door, and stared at myself in the mirror.

There were dark curls escaping my bun. Brown eyes too bright. Lips pressed together until they had lost color. Coffee stains on my apron. Ink marks on my wrist from the notes I had taken during my unpaid internship before rushing here for my shift.

I looked exactly like what I was.

A twenty-three-year-old journalism student trying to survive in a city that charged rent like it hated dreams.

And Noah?

Noah looked like the future.

That was what everyone said.

Noah Kade was not fully famous yet but he was close enough to touch it. Close enough for people to start changing around him. Close enough for reporters to use words like promising, explosive, franchise face and once-in-a-generation talent. Close enough for strangers to care who he walked out of hotels with.

I had loved him before the headlines.

Before the suits.

Before the agents started using his full name even in private conversations.

Before cameras waited outside arenas and girls screamed from behind barricades.

Before people began looking at me like I was temporary.

My phone buzzed again. This time, I answered without checking. “Noah?”

“No, babe. It’s me.”

Simone’s voice was soft, which meant she was scared.

I closed my eyes. “I saw them.”

“I’m coming to you.”

“No.”

“Aria—”

“I’m at work.”

“You should not be at work.”

“I can’t lose this shift.”

There was silence at first. Then Simone cursed quietly. “I hate this city.”

I almost laughed. “Did you know?” I asked.

“What?”

“Before this photo…did anyone know?”

“No. Aria, no. I swear.”

I relaxed against the sink, pressing my burned fingers under cold water. The sting sharpened. Good. At least it was honest.

“I called him,” I said.

“And?”

“Voicemail.”

Simone was quiet again.

That silence did more damage than words.

“Maybe his phone is off,” she said but even she did not sound convinced.

“His phone is never off.”

“Maybe his management took it.”

“Why would they take his phone?”

“Because they’re obsessed with controlling everything around him.”

I looked at myself in the mirror again. “He would find a way to call me.”

Simone did not answer and my chest tightened.

“He would,” I insisted because I needed someone to believe it.

“I know,” she said gently. “I know he loves you.”

I pressed my lips together.

Loves. Such a messed up word.

A knock came at the door.

“Aria,” Marco said from outside. “Your break is over in two.”

I turned off the tap. “I have to go,” I said to Simone.

“Come to my place after work,” Simone said.

“I have class.”

“Skip class.”

“I can’t.”

“You’re allowed to fall apart.”

“No,” I said, wiping my hand on a paper towel. “I’m not.”

Because that was the truth.

Some girls could fall apart and know someone would catch the pieces. I was not one of them. My rent was overdue. My journalism professor had warned me that missing one more seminar would affect my grade. My internship editor expected article pitches by midnight and did not care if my heart had been turned into public entertainment.

So I unlocked the bathroom door and went back to the counter. I made drinks. I smiled when customers thanked me. I said, “Have a good day,” with a voice that sounded almost normal.

And every few minutes, between orders, I checked my phone.

Nothing at all.

Noah did not call. Not during the lunch rush. Not when my shift ended. Not while I changed out of my apron in the back room. Not when I stood outside under a gray New York sky, rain misting against my face.

By then, the photo had spread everywhere.

Sports pages. Gossip accounts.nFan forums.Someone had even already made a thread about me.

Simone sent a screenshot and immediately followed it with: DON’T READ THE COMMENTS.

Of course I read them.

She was never going to last.

Noah can do better.

Imagine thinking a college girl could keep him.

Wasn’t she just using him for access?

That one made me laugh.

A dry, stunned laugh that felt like it belonged to a much older woman.

Access.

I had spent months avoiding writing anything about hockey because I did not want anyone to say I used him. I had turned down interviews. Ignored leads. Removed myself from stories where his name might appear. I had worked twice as hard to be taken seriously because loving Noah Kade made people assume my ambition had borrowed his fame.

And now strangers were calling me a fool anyway.

My phone rang just as I reached the subway entrance. It was an unknown number. My heart kicked hard as I answered. “Hello?”

“Miss Vale?”

The voice was that of a man. But it was not Noah. A cold feeling moved through me. “Yes?”

“My name is Daniel Price. I work with Noah Kade’s management team.”

The entrance to the subway yawned in front of me. People pushed past, umbrellas knocking into shoulders, shoes splashing through dirty water.

I stood still as I responded, “Where is Noah?”

“Mr. Kade is unavailable at the moment.”

Mr. Kade.

My stomach turned.

“I don’t want to speak to his management team. I want to speak to my boyfriend.”

There was the smallest pause.So small someone else might have missed it.

I did not.

“I understand this is a difficult situation,” Daniel said.

“Do you?”

“We are handling it internally.”

I gripped my phone tighter. “Handling what?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss details.”

“Then why are you calling me?”

Another pause. “To advise you not to make any public statement.”

For a second, I forgot the rain. The subway. The people. The photo.

I forgot everything except the insult. “You’re advising me?” My voice sounded incredulous as I asked.

“We believe silence is in everyone’s best interest.”

My laughter when it came was even more incredulous. “Everyone’s?”

“Miss Vale—”

“No. Don’t Miss Vale me like I’m some liability you found on a spreadsheet. Put Noah on the phone.”

“That won’t be possible.”

“Why?”

“He needs space.”

There it was. The knife. It twisted deeply inside of me and I felt sharp pain.

“He said that?” I managed to ask.

Daniel did not answer quickly enough. My chest then went hollow.

“Did Noah tell you to call me?”

“Aria—”

“No,” I said. “You don’t get to use my first name.”

“I’m trying to help.”

“Then put him on the phone.”

“That cannot happen tonight.”

“Then tell him I called.”

“I will pass along the message.”

I looked down at my shoes. Water had soaked through the canvas. My toes were numb. Something about that small discomfort almost broke me.

“Tell him,” I said slowly, “that if he has enough courage to walk out of a hotel with another woman, he should have enough courage to speak to me himself.”

Daniel exhaled softly. “Goodnight, Miss Vale.”

The line went dead.

I stood there with the phone still pressed to my ear, not knowing what to do with my heart breaking like glass.

It was clear that Noah had chosen fame over me.

For three weeks after Noah Kade told me not to call him again, I became an expert at surviving in public.

Heartbreak did not always look like screaming into pillows or collapsing in the rain. Sometimes, it looked like submitting assignments on time. Like smiling at customers who complained their coffee was not hot enough. Like sitting in lectures with your pen moving while your chest felt hollow. Like saying, “I’m fine,” so convincingly that people believed you and then hating them a little for it.

I did not call Noah again.

Not because I did not want to.

God, I wanted to.

I wanted to call him when I woke up and forgot, for half a second, that everything was ruined. I wanted to call him when I passed the corner deli where he used to buy me terrible sandwiches after late practices. I wanted to call him whenever I saw his face on sports channels and heard commentators praise his discipline, his focus and his maturity.

Maturity.

That word made me laugh the first time I heard it. It was a cold, ugly sound that startled the woman beside me on the subway.

Noah was being praised for handling pressure while I carried the weight of his silence like a second body.

But I did not call.

His number stopped going through anyway.

At first, it rang once and cut off. Then it went straight to voicemail. Then the voicemail changed to a generic message that did not even have his voice on it anymore.

The worst part was not that he disappeared.

The worst part was how efficiently he disappeared.

Like people had planned for it.

Like I had been a problem someone knew how to remove.

Simone tried to keep me from going crazy.

She came over with takeout I could not eat and sat cross-legged on my apartment floor, wearing gold hoops, red lipstick, and the expression of a woman ready to fight anyone who said Noah’s name in her hearing.

“He is trash,” she said one night, stabbing noodles with a plastic fork. “Forget him.”

I sat on my mattress with my laptop open, pretending to edit an article about college athletics funding.

“He wasn’t trash,” I said before I could stop myself.

Simone’s face softened which annoyed me more than her anger would have.

“Aria.”

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You did not need to.”

She put the noodles down and sighed. “Okay.”

Silence filled the room just then and against my will, my eyes strayed to the blue hoodie Noah had forgotten behind my bathroom door, which I had shoved into a trash bag but not thrown away because apparently I was pathetic.

Simone followed my gaze.

“You want me to get rid of it?”

“No.”

“Aria.”

“I said no.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“I just don’t want to touch it.”

Simone licked her lips nervously and did not say anything. I sighed. I hated how everyone became gentle around a girl after she was humiliated.

Gentleness made the humiliation more real.

And I hated it.

So I worked.

I went to my unpaid internship at the sports desk of a digital magazine where the senior editor still called me “the NYU girl” because learning names was apparently too much labor for him. I fact-checked articles written by men who thought quoting two anonymous sources made them Woodward and Bernstein. I transcribed interviews until my fingers stiffened. I pitched stories nobody bought. Then I left for the coffee shop, worked closing shifts, came home smelling like espresso, and studied until my eyes burned.

Every day, I made myself harder.

Every day, I told myself that if Noah could choose silence, I could choose success.

Then one Tuesday morning, it happened.

I threw up in the sink at the coffee shop.

It happened so quickly I barely made it to the back room.

One second I was steaming milk for a cappuccino. The next, the smell turned sharp and unbearable and my stomach rolled so violently that I dropped the metal pitcher.

Marco found me bent over the sink, one hand braced against the counter, my breathing ragged.

“Aria?”

“I’m fine.”

“You need to stop saying that when you are clearly not fine.”

I wiped my mouth. “It’s just stress.”

“Stress has been living in your body rent-free for weeks. Even stress needs limits.”

“I have class after this.”

“You have a doctor after this.”

“I don’t have doctor money.”

Marco’s expression changed and he reached into his pocket, pulled out a twenty, and held it out.

“No,” I said to him, shaking my head. I may be broke but I had pride.

“Take it.”

“Marco, no.”

“It is not charity. It is me paying you for the shift I am sending you home from.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I own the place. I can do whatever I like.”

I finally took the twenty because I was too tired to argue.

On the subway home, I counted dates in my head.

Then counted them again.

Then told myself I was wrong.

Then counted a third time.

By the time I reached the pharmacy three blocks from my apartment, my hands had gone numb.

The woman at the counter barely looked at me when I placed the pregnancy test in front of her. She scanned it, asked if I wanted a bag and told me the total like this was normal.

Maybe it was.

Maybe for other women, it came with husbands waiting at home, soft towels, steady hands and someone outside the bathroom door asking, “Are you okay?”

For me, it came with coins from the bottom of my tote bag and rain soaking through my coat.

I took the test home. Then I stared at the box for forty-seven minutes. I know this because I watched the clock.

My apartment was painfully quiet as I sat on the bathroom floor with the box in my lap.

“No,” I whispered even though a part of me knew before the test. A part of me had known since the smell of coffee turned against me. Since my body began carrying a secret my heart was too broken to receive.

I wanted the answer to be no because no would be easier.

No would mean Noah had only left me.

No would mean there was no one else inside the ruins.

No would mean I did not have to decide whether to tell a man who had told me never to call him again that he had left more behind than a hoodie and a wound.

I took the test. Then I waited. Those minutes were the longest of my life.bWhen the result appeared, I did not cry. I did not move. I just stared at the ‘Positive’.

One word.

One tiny, quiet word.

And yet, it broke everything inside me.

My hand went to my stomach before I could stop it.

There was nothing to feel. Nothing visible. Nothing anyone else would notice.

But I knew.

I knew, and the knowledge moved through me with terror and wonder and a grief so sharp it felt almost like love.

“Noah,” I whispered.

His name came out before I gave it permission.

Then I hated myself for saying it.

Then I said it again.

Because he should have been here. Not because he deserved to be but because I did not know how to carry that moment alone.

I reached for my phone and called him.

The call failed. I tried again.

Failed.

Again.

Nothing.

I sent a message.

Noah, I need to talk to you. It’s important. Please.

The message did not deliver.

I stared at the screen until it dimmed.

Then I found Daniel Price’s number, the man from Noah’s management team who had warned me into silence.

My thumb hovered over it before I called.

He answered on the third ring. “Miss Vale.”

The way he said my name made my skin crawl.

“I need to speak to Noah.”

“As I have explained before, that is not possible.”

“This is personal.”

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t.” My voice shook and I hated that. “You don’t understand anything.”

A pause came and then he said, “Mr. Kade has made his position clear.”

My throat closed in response even as I asked, “Did he tell you that?”

“He does not wish to be contacted.”

The room blurred at the edges and I pressed my palm harder against my stomach.

“Please,” I said, and that single word cost me more than I knew how to explain. “Please just tell him Aria called. Tell him I need five minutes.”

Daniel sighed softly, as if I was inconveniencing him. “I will pass along the message.”

“You said that last time.”

“Then you already have your answer.”

The line went dead immediately.

I lowered the phone slowly, because the smallest part of me still believed Noah would call back.

That was the most humiliating thing hope did.

It lived too long. Too long.

That night, I did not sleep. I lay on my mattress with one hand on my stomach and my phone beside my pillow, waiting.

At two in the morning, Simone called.

I wanted to tell her that I was pregnant.

But I swallowed the words.

Maybe because saying it would make it real. Maybe because I wanted Noah to know first.

Maybe because some joys, even frightening ones, are shaped around the people we imagined sharing them with.

“Babe?” Simone murmured, sleepy and worried. “You okay?”

I looked at the ceiling. “I’m just tired.”

“You sure?”

“No.”

That made her wake up. “What happened?”

I closed my eyes. Everything. Everything happened. “I can’t talk about it yet.”

“Okay,” she said immediately. “Do you want me to come over?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to stay on the phone?”

My eyes burned as I responded, “Yes.”

So she stayed. She talked about everything. Her annoying coworker. A woman on the train who had brought a full plate of rice in a shopping bag. A jacket she wanted but could not afford. Anything. Everything.

I listened and cried silently, one hand over my mouth so she would not know.

The next few days became unreal.

I moved through the city with a secret under my ribs.

Everywhere I went, Noah was there. On screens. In articles. On the lips of strangers.

His career exploded exactly when mine felt like it had collapsed inward. He scored twice in one game and the sports desk erupted around me. Someone yelled that Kade was “built for greatness.” My editor assigned a feature about his rise to another intern because they needed to cover him.

I sat at my desk and highlighted quotes from a college basketball coach while nausea came and went in waves.

At night, I searched for clinics that I could go to. I drafted messages to Noah. Deleted them. Drafted emails to Daniel. Deleted those too.

Once, I went to the Titans’ practice facility. I stood across the street in a gray coat, my hands trembling inside my pockets, watching people move through the glass doors like they belonged to a world I could no longer enter. Security stood at the entrance while fans waited near barricades.

A black SUV pulled up, and for one wild second, I thought it was him.

It wasn’t.

Still, I stood there for almost an hour. Then I went home.

A week later, I saw Noah on television after a game.

He looked tired and beautiful at the same time. A reporter asked how he was handling the sudden attention around his personal life.

Noah’s jaw tightened in response. Then he said, “I’m only focused on the game.”

Focused? Bulshit.

I turned off the TV. The silence that followed was so deep it felt alive.

That night, the pain started. At first, I thought it was stress. After all, I had been running on coffee, fear and cheap crackers for days. My body must be exhausted so I told myself to lie down.

I told myself to breathe.

I told myself everything was fine because that was the lie I knew best.

But the pain did not leave. It only grew enough to make fear sit up inside me.

I called Noah first.

That is the part I still hate.

Even after everything, even after the silence, even after Daniel, even after the message telling me not to call, my first instinct was still him.

The call failed.

Then I called Simone next. No answer.

I sat on the bathroom floor, my back against the tub, breathing through a pain I did not understand and a fear I understood too well.

“No,” I whispered again.

That word had become a prayer.

No, not this.

No, not alone.

No, not after losing him too.

I remember the cold tile. I remember gripping the edge of the sink. I remember calling a clinic number with shaking hands and barely understanding the woman who told me what to do, where to go, when to seek emergency help. I remember nodding even though she could not see me.

I remember saying, “I’m alone,” and hating how small my voice sounded.

Most of all, I remember the silence.

By morning, something in me knew before anyone confirmed it. I knew that the tiny, impossible future I had not yet known how to want was gone.

There are losses that arrive like storms. This one arrived like a door closing softly in a room no one else entered.

I sat on the edge of my bathtub as weak daylight pushed through the small window, waiting to feel one clear emotion.

Anger. Sadness. Shock. Anything.

Instead, I felt hollow.

Later, when I had enough strength to move, I cleaned the apartment because there was nothing else to do. The world did not pause to acknowledge what had ended inside me. The rent was still due. My internship still expected me by noon. The coffee shop still needed someone for the evening shift.

I showered, dressed and tied my curls back so tightly my scalp hurt. Then I stood in front of the mirror and looked at the girl staring back at me.

She looked young. Too young.

That made me very angry.

I wrapped Noah’s hoodie in a trash bag, carried it downstairs and threw it into the building dumpster.

“Fuck you!” I screamed.

Then I went to work.

Simone found out two days later. She came to my apartment, took one look at the untouched soup on my stove, the clinic papers half-hidden beneath a notebook and my face.

Her hand went to her mouth. “Aria.”

I turned away.

“No.”

She stepped closer.

“Baby—”

“Don’t call me that.”

Her eyes filled. “I’m sorry.”

I shook my head. “Don’t.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I said don’t.”

But she came anyway. She wrapped her arms around me, and I stood stiff inside her embrace for almost ten seconds.

Then I broke. I folded into her like something whose strings had finally been cut.

Simmone held me on the floor while I cried with a grief too large for my body and too private for the world that had already taken so much from me.

“He didn’t know,” I sobbed.

“I know.”

“I tried to tell him.”

“I know.”

“He didn’t answer.”

“I know, babe. I know.”

“No,” I said, pulling back, furious through tears. “You don’t know. Nobody knows. Everybody thinks I’m just the stupid girl he left. Everybody thinks this is about photos and another woman and hockey gossip. But it was not just him.”

My hand pressed against my stomach. The emptiness there was unbearable.

“It was not just him,” I whispered.

Simone cried then too.

For a while, we stayed on the floor as we cried. Eventually, Simone wiped her face and said, “You don’t have to go back to work yet.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, Aria.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

I looked at the laptop even as the answers swirled through me.

Because grief without movement would swallow me.

Because if I stopped, I would hear the silence again.

Because Noah had chosen his future and I had lost one I never got to name.

Because the world had watched me become a joke, and I needed to become something they would one day fear.

But I did not say all that.

I only said, “Because I need to write.”

So I wrote. Badly at first. Then better. Then obsessively.

I chased stories other interns ignored. I stayed late at the magazine until the night cleaners knew my name. I fact-checked until editors stopped questioning my work. I pitched harder. Asked sharper questions. Learned how money moved through sports programs, how reputation buried misconduct, how institutions protected golden boys and discarded inconvenient women.

Every headline with Noah’s name became fuel for me.

Every photo of him smiling beside men who had helped erase me became evidence of what fame could do.

I stopped waiting for closure.

Closure was a luxury people invented when they had answers.

I had none.

Only silence.

So I built a life loud enough to drown it.

Weeks after the loss, Professor Elian returned one of my investigative drafts with red notes covering half the page. At the bottom, he had written one sentence. You are brilliant. Keep being brillant.

I stared at the words for a long time. Then I opened a new document to work.

Outside my apartment, winter pressed against New York like a warning. Somewhere in the city, Noah Kade was becoming everything the world wanted him to be.

And I was becoming something else.

I was not healed. I was not whole.

But I was still here.

Despite everything, I was still here. That was what mattered.

Five years later…

I returned to the hockey world with a press badge around my neck, a recorder in my bag and a heart I had trained into silence so carefully that sometimes I mistook the numbness for healing.

The New York Titans’ arena glittered like nothing bad had ever happened inside it.

Outside, fans crowded the entrance in jerseys, scarves, and face paint, chanting Noah Kade’s name like a prayer. His face flashed across the giant screens above them: sharper now, older, more untouchable. Captain of the Titans. Hockey’s golden boy. The man the world had decided to love.

The man who had once destroyed me without looking back.

I walked past the crowd without slowing.

I was not here as the girl who had loved him. I was not here as the girl who had cried on a bathroom floor with one hand over her stomach and no one coming to save her. I was here as Aria Vale, investigative journalist, and in my bag were notes, names, dates, and enough smoke around the Titans to suggest fire.

Maybe Noah was standing too close to that fire.

Maybe he had started it.

Maybe I would be the one to burn him down.

I didn't care.

Security scanned my badge and waved me through.

“Media room is down the hall,” the guard said.

“I know.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Because I did know. I knew the cold corridors, the smell of ice under concrete, the distant roar of fans shaking the walls.

Years ago, I had waited in places like this wearing Noah’s hoodie, holding coffee he always forgot to drink, believing I belonged beside him.

Now I belonged to the story. Only to the story.

The media room was loud with reporters, camera crews, and men who mistook confidence for intelligence. A few people looked up when I entered. Some recognized my work. Some recognized my past.

I heard one whisper. “Isn’t that Kade’s ex?”

I signed my name on the press sheet without looking up.

A male columnist near the table smiled. “Aria Vale. Didn’t expect to see you back here.”

“Neither did I,” I said.

“Must be awkward, considering…”

I lifted my eyes. “Considering what?”

His smile thinned. “Your history with Kade.”

“My history is not the story.”

“And what is?”

I capped the pen and handed it back. “Whatever people in this building are trying to hide.”

That shut him up immediately.

Good.

I took a seat near the front, pulled out my notebook, and wrote one name at the top of the page.

NOAH KADE.

Then I underlined it once.

Not because it hurt. But because it mattered.

The Titans’ media director entered first, smiling the tight smile of a person paid to keep disasters presentable. Behind him came Daniel Price.

My fingers tightened around my pen.

Five years had passed but I remembered his voice perfectly. How calm, polite and cruel it had been.

Mr. Kade does not wish to be contacted.

Daniel saw me almost immediately and for one second, his expression shifted.

Then the professional smile returned.

“Ms. Vale,” he said, stopping beside my chair. “Welcome back.”

“Mr. Price.”

“It has been a long time.”

“Five years.”

“I trust your coverage will remain fair.”

I looked up at him. “Fair to whom?”

His smile slipped just then. “To the truth, of course.”

“Then we want the same thing.”

I held his gaze long enough for the warning to land. He swallowed visibly and walked away.

The press conference began.

Coach Reilly came first and said absolutely nothing with impressive confidence. Marcus Reed, a Titan player, followed, charming the room in under thirty seconds. He smiled, joked, deflected questions, and made everyone feel like they were lucky to be connected to him.

When I asked about rumors of internal misconduct, his smile did not move a bit.

“Internal misconduct?” he repeated. “That sounds dramatic.”

“It usually is when people bury it.”

The room quieted and Marcus looked at me properly then. “You are?”

“Aria Vale.”

Recognition flickered just then. Then amusement. “Right,” he said. “I’ve heard of you.”

“I would be worried if you hadn’t.”

A few reporters laughed. Marcus did too but his eyes stayed cold. Then he left a few minutes later.

I smiled as I watched him walk away and turned my head to look at my phone. Then the smile vanished as the room changed suddenly.

Cameras adjusted. Reporters straightened. The hair on my neck bristled. Even the air seemed to tighten.

I did not need anyone to say his name. My body knew it was him before I saw him. And I hated that.

The media director returned just then. “Captain Kade will take questions now.”

I made myself turn to look at him.

He was taller than I thought he would be. Broader. Harder. His dark blond hair was damp at the edges, his jaw bruised, his blue eyes lowered as he took his seat behind the microphone.

He did not look at me.

Not at first.

He simply answered the first question. Then the second. His voice was calm, low, controlled as he did so. It was the kind of voice that gave reporters quotes without giving them access to him.

I gripped my pen as I told myself that this was not Noah. That this was not my Noah. That this was Captain Kade.

The man who had tried to destroy me without looking back.

Suddenly, I raised my hand. The media director hesitated while Daniel Price went still by the wall.

Finally, my name was called.

“Aria Vale.”

Noah stopped just for half a breath. Then slowly, he lifted his head and looked at me.

Five years vanished.

Five years returned.

His eyes found mine across the room, and for the first time since I walked into that arena, my heart remembered how to hurt.

His face did not change much.

But his eyes did. Shock, pain and something dangerously close to longing filled them.

My fingers tightened around the recorder in my hand as Noah stared at me like he had seen a ghost.

While I stared back like I had come to bury one.

At the same time, a thought ran through my mind:

The game had just begun.