Page 3 of The Callahan Effect

Passengers hurried around me, anxious to reach family or collect luggage before the carousel became crowded, yet I found myself walking slower than usual. There wasn't any real reason to rush. Nobody waited impatiently for my arrival, and for the first time in years I wasn't traveling with teammates jostling one another for position or arguing over whose hockey bag would appear first.

It felt strangely different.

Not around me.

Inside me.

For fifteen years my life had followed an identical pattern. School. Training. Games. Homework squeezed into hotel rooms or airport lounges. Summer conditioning. Repeat. There had always been familiar faces surrounding me, coaches whose voices I could identify without turning around and teammates who understood exactly what I was thinking after nothing more than a glance across the locker room.

That familiarity had disappeared long before the aircraft began its descent into Spokane.

Ahead lay an entirely different team, new expectations and the challenge athletes secretly craved despite pretending otherwise. Competition had a way of stripping away reputations until only performance remained. Nobody cared how many goals I'd scored in Florida once training camp began. The players already wearing Evergreen Red Cedars jerseys had spent years earning Coach Callahan's trust. Now it was my turn to earn it. The thought eased my nerves more than any reassuring speech could have managed.

I'd earned every opportunity I'd ever received. There was no reason to believe this one would be any different.

My hockey bag appeared surprisingly quickly, its familiar navy canvas marked with airline stickers from tournaments scattered across North America. Years earlier my mother had embroidered my initials onto one end after another player accidentally carried it onto the wrong bus following a showcase in Minnesota. She'd joked that if I was determined to spend half my life traveling, she wanted to make sure my equipment managed to find its way home.

Mom had cried the previous evening while pretending she wasn't crying.

Dad had hidden his emotions better, although not well enough to fool either of us. He'd gripped my shoulder after loading the last suitcase into the car and reminded me, with deliberate casualness, that the guest room would always remain exactly as I'd left it.

Neither conversation had been dramatic. Neither needed to be. Families didn't always express love through speeches. Sometimes it existed in practical gestures. A carefully packed container of homemade lasagna tucked inside a cooler. Fresh skate laces my father insisted on buying despite the dozen pairs already buried in my equipment bag. My mother's handwritten recipe book slipped between textbooks because she refused to accept that university cafeterias could produce edible food. I hoped she never discovered how often I'd probably rely on takeaway instead.

The vibration against my thigh pulled me from my thoughts.

As expected…Corey.

A photograph filled the screen before I'd even opened the message.

He'd taken a selfie outside Gulf Coast University's engineering building, wearing an expression of exaggerated misery while holding a textbook thick enough to stop a bullet.

Corey: Already regretting this life choice. Hope you're suffering too.

A second message followed quickly.

Corey: Seriously though...you've got this.

I laughed to myself.

That was Corey in two texts.

One joke.

One truth.

I replied with a photograph of my hockey bag sitting beside the baggage carousel.

Me: Still alive. No mountain lions yet.

Three dots appeared instantly.

Corey: Give it a week.

I slipped the phone away before temptation convinced me to continue the conversation. We could talk properly once I'd unpacked. Right now I needed to start living the life we'd both spent months preparing for.

Outside the terminal, a university vehicle waited beneath a bright blue sky that seemed larger than the one I'd left behind. A man in his early forties stepped forward as soon as he noticed the Evergreen Red Cedars logo stitched across the sleeve of my jacket.

"Mason Brooks?"