It’s been fucking with my head ever since, along with the fact that he didn’t tell anyone about me. I figured he would have said something after seeing my name on the roster. Not the details, but an,Oh, Caldwell? I’ve met her before, at the Paris Olympics, would have made complete sense. Saying nothing seems more meaningful, somehow, but it’s probably the wrong assumption. It’s been six years. His eyes might have skimmed right over my name on the roster.
“I know how long it’s been.”He said that like he meant it too.
I run faster, harder, trying to drown out my thoughts with exertion even though today was supposed to be an easy jog. We have a preseason scrimmage tomorrow. The final score won’t count in any official capacity, but it’s an opportunity to set the tone for the coming season. To showcase what sort of opponents the Siege will be. We were so close last year, and I’m determined to end this year as champions.
My phone buzzes with an incoming call, interrupting my music, but I don’t answer it. I’m certain it’s Cassidy. She’ll find the note I left on the kitchen counter soon enough.
“Everywhere” resumes, and I relax into the reassuring rhythm ofleft, right, left, right, left, right. Air rushes in and out of my lungs in steady streams. I’m moving too fast to see my breaths linger in the chilly air, but I know that they are. The car read twenty-eight degrees when I parked. Sunshine might have raised the temperature to thirty by now, but it’s definitely belowfreezing. The gray clouds hovering overhead suggest more snow is coming soon.
I pass a woman walking a poodle, and then my eyes snag on a figure ahead. I squint, blink rapidly, do everything I can think of to morph the shape into someone else. Praying this is one of those instances where my subconscious is playing a trick on me, finding familiarity in strangers.
But it’s him. I’m disturbed by how certain I am. I’ve avoided every opportunity to look at him, doing so only when absolutely necessary.
I blow past him, slow, pivot, and walk back the dozen feet to where Otto is leaning against the rail that separates the path from the bank of the frozen Charles.
There’s no indication he noticed or recognized me. Even if he did, I could have claimed to have not noticed or recognized him.
But I have this fascination with Otto Berger. It runs deeper than his athletic talent. Than his perfect physique and rogue grin. Than anything superficial.
I convinced myself that interest had faded with time. That I occasionally checked Kluvberg scores out of habit, nothing else. But it’d been smothered, not extinguished, and Otto walking into the media room was a gust of oxygen, fanning flames back to life.
I exhale, vapor hovering before dissipating, as I stop beside him, gripping the railing with my gloves. “Hey.”
“Hi.” His voice sounds muted, somber, so unlike the adventurous, animated guy I remember. Blue eyes especially piercing against the pale, icy backdrop of a Boston winter.
This would be so much simpler if I’d only known Otto Berger for the two weeks he’s been a Siege assistant coach. It could be a casual conversation, commiserating about how cold it is. Involving a little internal fangirling on my part—because he’s even more famous than he was when we met. Otto’s spent thepast six years becoming better known and more successful. My career, by contrast, has, at best, plateaued and, more accurately, declined. I haven’t earned a single cap since leaving Paris. He’s won another World Cup.
He doesn’t seem surprised to see me, which I assume means he did spot me running. But I can’t tell for sure, and that bothers me.
“What do you think of Boston?” I ask.
“It is nice.” He leaves it at that.
“I’m surprised you left Kluvberg,” I admit.
He turns his entire body toward me, not just his head, resting a hip against the railing. It’s oddly intimate and extremely distracting. Too reminiscent of how he’d focus on me, even when others—lots of others—were trying to capture his attention.
“Why?”
“I just…figured you’d want to recover at home?”
Otto doesn’t reply right away, and it gives me too much time to look. I’ve run this route since I got my driver’s license. The path is so familiar; I could navigate it blindfolded. And standing here, staring at him, is surreal. I returned from Paris and jogged along this path, praying no one would recognize me from the feature theGlobehad run and holding back tears.
It’s déjà vu and a dream—or nightmare—rolled into reality.
We’re still just…looking at each other.
Otto never planned to be standing here either, if six years of silence were any indication, but only one of us chose this, and it sure wasn’t me.
“This move made sense,” he answers finally.
You’d think he was getting charged by the word to have this conversation with me. And forgot he was a multimillionaire.
“You’re different,” I blurt before I can think better of it.
“I cannot play,” Otto replies, bitterness soaking each syllable.
When we met, I admired his focus on soccer. When we ended, I accepted it. When I saw he was engaged, I thought his priorities had finally shifted. If they did, his response revealed they’d moved back. I wasn’t talking about his injured status; I was referring to the way he seemed to be a black-and-white version of his colorful self.
