Chapter 5 —The Exception

• Avery's POV
• I had one rule after every game, no matter the result, no matter how the night had gone.
• No press.
• Not immediately. Not while my body was still cooling down and my mind was still running through every play, every decision, every moment where things could have gone differently.
• My team knew that. My manager knew that. And yet somehow every single time we ended up in the same place, a room full of reporters with microphones and the same ten questions I had answered a hundred times before.
• I walked into the post-game press area with my jaw already set. We had won, which should have made this easier, and it did not. Winning just meant the questions got louder and everyone wanted a piece of something I had not finished processing yet.
• I took my seat and scanned the room out of habit, and that was when I saw her.
• She was standing to the left with a recorder in one hand and a notepad tucked under her arm, talking to someone from our media team like she had all the time in the world. Dressed sharply. More put together than most reporters who showed up to these things looking like they had lost a fight with their own schedule.
• I looked away.
• Then it clicked.
• "Emily Blackwood. Julian Styles' girlfriend, one of the most recognised faces in Starlight Bay right now."
• I looked at her again.
• She did not look like a woman who spent her weekends at stadium concerts. She looked like she was here to work, which was either very convincing or very genuine, and I had not decided which yet.
• A reporter from the city desk came up first, asked the usual questions about the final score and the team's performance, got the usual answers, and moved on.
• Another one followed, same energy, same recycled questions, gone in under three minutes. I was already mentally calculating how much longer I had to sit here when she stepped forward and introduced herself and I looked at her properly for the first time up close.
• "Emily Blackwood, Star Beat Media, congratulations on the win."
• "Thank you," I said, in the tone I reserved for press, polite enough to be professional and flat enough to make clear we were not going to be here long.
• She smiled like she had expected exactly that and opened her notepad.
• Her first question was about the final quarter, standard enough, and I gave her the standard answer. She wrote something down, nodded, and then looked up and asked me something I had not been asked in three seasons of post-game interviews.
• Something specific. Something that told me she had actually sat down and watched the game before walking in here, not just pulled talking points from a general sports article on her way over.
• I looked at her for a second.
• "You actually watched the game," I said.
• "I did," she said, like it was not a remarkable thing.
• "Most entertainment press who get sent to cover sports do not bother," I said.
• "I am not most entertainment press," she said, no arrogance in it, just fact, and I felt something shift slightly.
• I answered properly this time, the real answer, not the version I gave when I was running out the clock. She listened without interrupting, and when I finished she asked a follow up that proved she had understood every word.
• We went back and forth like that for a few minutes and somewhere in the middle of it I forgot to be irritated about being there.
• She pushed back once when I gave her a vague answer, not aggressively, just firmly.
• "That is not really an answer," she said.
• "It is the answer I am giving," I said.
• "Okay," she said, completely unbothered, writing something down. "I will note that you declined to expand."
• I almost smiled. Almost.
• The whole time I kept thinking, this woman is literally Julian Styles' girlfriend, one of the most talked about faces in Starlight Bay right now, and she is sitting here doing a post-game sports interview like she has absolutely nothing going on in her personal life. No attitude. No distraction. No hint that she was anything other than a reporter doing her job.
• I had expected someone coasting on a famous name, walking in for an easy thirty minutes and leaving with a quote to attach to a headline about her boyfriend's world.
• That was what entertainment reporters did when they got assigned sports coverage they had no real interest in.
• Emily Blackwood had done none of that. She had done her homework, asked the right questions, and kept me genuinely engaged in a press interview for the first time in longer than I wanted to admit. That was not something I had seen coming.
• ***
• She wrapped up, clicked her recorder off and thanked me with the same professional warmth she had walked in with, like the last few minutes of back and forth had not happened at all, and she was already turning to leave when I heard myself speak before I had decided to.
• "You kept me on my toes," I said.
• She turned back, one eyebrow raised.
• "Most people do not. Reporters especially."
• "Is that a compliment?" she said.
• "It might be," I said. "I have not decided yet."
• She laughed, quick and genuine, and I looked at her standing there with her notepad and her recorder and her entirely composed expression and i said, "give me your number."
• She blinked. "I am sorry?"
• "Your number," I said. "I want to see where this goes."
• She looked at me for a moment, something between amused and genuinely considering it, then she took her pen, wrote on the corner of a blank page, tore it off cleanly and held it out.
• I took it.
• "Good game, Avery Wright," she said, and walked away.
• I watched her go and did not look away until she had crossed the room and disappeared through the far door. Then I sat there with the folded piece of paper in my hand and thought about what I had just done.
• Emily Blackwood. The woman currently attached to one of the most famous men in the music industry. The woman who had just walked into my press room and outworked every sports reporter in it without breaking a sweat.
• I unfolded the paper and looked at the number.
• I knew exactly who she was with. Julian Styles' girlfriend or not, I was not the type to walk away from a woman who had just held her own against me.
• She was sharp, prepared, and completely unbothered by a room full of cameras and a man who had made other reporters visibly uncomfortable just by sitting down. She had held her ground for the entire interview, pushed back when she needed to, and walked out of that room with her dignity fully intact and a quote she actually earned.
• That was not a small thing. That was exactly the kind of thing that was impossible to fake.
• I unfolded the paper and looked at the number.
• Julian Styles had stadiums and screaming crowds and more money than any one person needed. Good for him. But right now he was somewhere else and I was sitting here holding his girlfriend's number because she had handed it to me herself.
• I put it in my pocket and stood up, smiling to myself. Let the best man win.