Page 4 of Uncoachable

A woman loving the sport.

The bathroom is empty. I grip the edge of the sink and let out a shaky breath, finally meeting my own eyes in the mirror. I hold the gaze of the woman in the mirror until she looks steadier than I feel.

“Don’t show them when it hurts,” my mother’s voice echoes in my head.

She was a sports psychologist. Brilliant, underrated, and relentless. I grew up on stories of men who dismissed her until they needed her—until she proved, again and again, that she belonged.

I straighten my shoulders and step back into the hallway.

Walking toward the boardroom, I slow down long enough to take in the photos lining the walls.

It’s then that a voice stops me from behind.

“Fans aren’t allowed back here.”

I close my eyes for half a second.

It’s a slow, deliberate blink—the universal sign of a woman whose patience is being stripped to the bone. My jaw sets, the muscle at the corner of my mouth twitching as I prepare to face yet another man standing between me and where I need to be.

I turn, ready to deploy polite professionalism—until recognition hits like a blow to the sternum.

Callahan Eli Moore.

Time folds in on itself.

The pristine hallway blurs, the scent of floor wax evaporating into the sharp, acrid stench of burnt rubber. Suddenly, the concrete floor isn’t solid beneath my heels—it’s the rain-slicked metal of a bridge four years ago.

The sound hits me first: the high-pitched, screaming protest of steel grinding against steel. My head snaps forward, a violent jolt that sends a white-hot flash through my vision. The seat belt locks, a brutal line of pressure digging into my collarbone, pinning me to the seat.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t move.

A sharp, rhythmic rapping on the glass shatters the silence.

“Get out! We need to deal with this!”

I stumble out of the wreck, the rain hitting my skin like needles. He’s pacing the wet pavement, hands shoved into his hair, shouting at the storm.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he barks. “The biggest game of my life and this is what happens?”

I try to speak, but my voice is buried under the sound of the rain. I flinch as he throws his arms up, his shadow looming large and indifferent.

When the black car pulls up to whisk him away, he doesn’t even glance back.

He just lets the rain swallow me whole.

The smell of ozone and wet asphalt burns away, retreating until I’m back in the hallway, the air suddenly thin and freezing.

Callahan looks different.

The boyishness has been hollowed out, replaced by a rugged, hard-edged exhaustion—the kind of look that only comes from years of being the sole person expected to carry the weight of an entire team.

There is a dark grain of stubble lining his jaw now, sharp enough to lend him a dangerous air.

But the eyes—those blue, piercing eyes—are exactly the same.

They still look at me like I’m a problem he can’t solve.