The Credential

SLOANE

The Dalton University Athletics Department approved my press credential on a Wednesday.

The email arrived at 2:14 p.m. during AP Calculus, which meant I read it under my desk while Mr. Kim droned on about the chain rule and pretended not to notice that half the class was on their phones.

**Dear Ms. Winters,**

We are pleased to approve your student press credential for the 2026-27 Dalton University Men’s Hockey season. Your credential provides access to the press box, post-game media availability, and pre-arranged interview sessions. Please review the attached media guidelines and code of conduct. We look forward to your coverage.

**Best regards,**

Dalton University Sports Information

I read it three times.

Then I closed my phone, looked back at the whiteboard, and felt absolutely nothing about derivatives.

---

The first game I’d cover was November 8th. A Friday night home matchup against Boston College. Three weeks away. Enough time to prepare. Enough time to build the framework for the first profile. Enough time to figure out how to be in the same building as Chase Hartley and still maintain the journalistic distance Castillo required.

Enough time to panic quietly and then recover.

I told the newsroom that afternoon.

“Press credential approved,” I said, standing at the whiteboard with the October issue proofs drying on the table behind me. “First Dalton game is November eighth. I’ll need a photographer. Budget for gas. And someone to cover my editing duties that Sunday evening.”

Ava, seated at the managing editor’s desk she’d claimed with the territorial efficiency of a small nation, looked up.

“I can cover Sunday edits,” she said. Smooth. Immediate. Like she’d been waiting for the opportunity.

“Thank you.”

“And for the photographer,” she continued, flipping a page in her planner, “Ethan has his own camera. He did the sports photo spread for the September issue. He’s good.”

The room went quiet in that specific way rooms go quiet when someone has said something that sounds perfectly reasonable on the surface and deeply strategic underneath.

Ethan looked up from the layout station. “I’m happy to shoot if you need me.”

Ava’s pen tapped once against her planner. Twice. A rhythm I was beginning to recognize as her tell. She wanted Ethan on the assignment. That much was clear. Whether the motive was professional or personal, I couldn’t tell yet.

Or maybe I could.

Because Ava had been watching Ethan for weeks with the focused attention of someone cataloguing every detail for future use. She knew his schedule. She knew his coffee order. She recommended him for every assignment that required proximity, and she did it with the same polished efficiency she brought to everything else—so seamlessly you’d miss the pattern if you weren’t looking for it.

I was looking for it now.

“Ethan,” I said. “Can you stay after? I want to go over the shot list for the series.”

“Sure.”

Ava’s pen stopped tapping.

---

After the others filed out, Ethan pulled a chair to my desk and sat with the relaxed, unhurried posture of someone who had nowhere else to be. He smelled like darkroom chemicals and laundry detergent.

“So,” he said. “Dalton hockey.”

“Dalton hockey.” I opened the series outline on my laptop and turned the screen toward him. “Four profiles. One per month. I need environmental shots, game action, portraits. The usual, but with more texture than a standard sports spread.”

He studied the outline. Nodded slowly. “You want intimacy. Not just the jersey and the ice. The stuff around it. The bus rides. The tape jobs. The quiet moments.”

“Exactly.”

“I can do that.” He leaned back. “My brother used to let me into the locker room after games when I visited. I know what that world looks like from the inside.”

There it was again. *My brother.*

I kept my face neutral. “You mentioned he transferred to Michigan.”

“Sophomore year. He was tearing it up at Dalton, but the program wasn’t competitive enough for what he wanted. Michigan offered, he took it.” A small shrug. “Classic Tommy. Always chasing the bigger stage.”

Classic Tommy. Said with the casual affection of a younger sibling who’d made peace with living in a longer shadow.

“Are you two close?” I asked. Journalistic reflex. Get people talking about themselves.

“Not like we used to be. He’s busy. I’m busy.” Ethan looked at his hands—long fingers, ink-stained at the tips. “He’s projected to go first overall in the draft. Did you know that?”

“I did.”

“Right. You’d know.” He looked up. “You cover the sport.”

Something in his expression shifted. Not suspicion. More like recognition. The dawning awareness that I knew more about his family than a casual acquaintance should.

“Sloane.”

“Yeah?”

“Did you know Tommy? Before. I mean, personally. Not from the stats.”

The question landed soft. Careful. Like he already suspected the answer and was giving me the choice of how much to reveal.

I looked at him. Really looked. His eyes were brown where Tommy’s had been blue. His jaw softer. His mouth set in a line that suggested he spent more time listening than performing. He was built leaner, taller—like someone who’d grown up next to an athlete and chosen a different kind of strength.

He was nothing like his brother.

And somehow that made the question harder to answer.

“Yeah,” I said. “We actually talked a lot about hockey.”

Ethan nodded. Slow. Processing.

“He’s not always easy to know,” Ethan said. Quiet. Not an apology. An acknowledgment.

I didn’t respond to that. Couldn’t. Not without opening a door I’d spent two years bricking shut.

Instead I said, “The first game is November eighth. I need you there by six for warm-up shots. Can you make that work?”

“I’ll make it work.”

“Good.”

He stood, crossed to the door, and paused.

“Sloane?”

“Yeah?”

“For what it’s worth, I think this series is going to be great. You’re the best writer on this paper. Probably the best writer in any high school paper in the state.” He said it without bravado. Without flirtation. Just fact.

Then he left.

I sat at my desk in the empty newsroom, the cursor blinking on my series outline, and tried to untangle the knot forming in my chest.

Ethan had come to Eastlake after Tommy graduated, and he’d slipped into our circle so gradually I never bothered looking too hard at the surname Reeves. Then he mentioned his brother, and the connection hit me all at once.

Ethan Reeves was kind. Talented. He was also Tommy Reeves’s brother, which meant every interaction carried the ghost of a boy who’d left me on a curb at sixteen. And he was looking at me with the quiet, steady attention of someone who wasn’t just offering to take pictures.

Ava had noticed. Of course Ava had noticed. She noticed everything. And whatever she felt about Ethan’s attention redirecting toward me, she was filing it away in that meticulous brain of hers, waiting for the right moment to deploy it.

I closed my laptop.

Three weeks until the first game.

Three weeks until I’d be in a press box at Dalton University, watching Chase play hockey, with Tommy Reeves’s brother beside me holding a camera.

My phone buzzed.

**Chase:** *Heard a rumor you’re covering our games. Stalker.*

I stared at the screen. My heart did something violent and involuntary.

**Me:** *It’s called journalism. G****e it.*

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

**Chase:** *Can’t wait to give you something worth writing about.*

I locked my phone. Set it face-down on the desk.

Pressed my palms against my eyes until the ache behind them dulled to something manageable.

Three weeks.

God help me.