Chapter 89: The Interview Circuit

The first host called us “the most talked-about couple in sports” before we had even sat down.

Cassian squeezed my hand once under the table, just enough to tell me he heard it too and was deciding not to let it get to him.

I looked at him, and he looked back like he was already calm enough for both of us.

The segment was live.

The set was bright, polished, and too warm for the time of night. A round table, two chairs, one host with a grin too wide to trust. Behind us, a wall of screens looped clips from the championship and the parade. I could hear the audience reacting before the first question even landed.

The host turned to us with practiced ease. “Welcome back. We have Torin Vance and Cassian Pike with us tonight, fresh off a championship and still somehow making the rest of us look underdressed.”

The audience laughed.

Cassian gave the kind of smile that looked easier than it was, I could feel how aware he was of everything.

The host leaned forward. “Let’s start with the obvious. You two have been everywhere these last few weeks, the whole country has watched this relationship go from rumor to reality. How has that been?”

Cassian did not look at her right away.

He looked at me.

I gave him the smallest nod.

He turned back to the host. “Exhausting,” he said.

The audience laughed again.

The host smiled. “That honest already?”

Cassian shrugged slightly. “I spent a long time hiding. Telling the truth does not mean it is suddenly easy.”

I felt the room change around those words.

The host nodded, then looked at me. “And you, Torin? You have been quieter about all of this.”

I kept my hands folded loosely on the table. “That is usually how I am.”

“That is fair,” she said. “But Cassian has been very open. He talks about the journey, the pressure, the joy. He even jokes about the backlash. What has it been like for you watching him step into all of this so openly?”

I glanced at Cassian before I answered.

“It has been impressive,” I said.

Cassian’s mouth twitched.

The audience laughed softly.

I kept my voice even. “Not because it was easy, he chose honesty in a room full of people who were ready to turn it into a headline. That matters.”

Cassian looked down for half a second, and I saw the effect of that land in him.

The host folded her hands. “The backlash was loud, some of it was ugly. A lot of people had opinions about your relationship, your careers, what this meant for the team. Were you surprised by how intense it got?”

Cassian shifted slightly in his chair. The memory of the messages, the articles, the protest signs, the sponsor drama, all of it still living somewhere under the season even now.

“No,” he said. “Not really.”

The host’s brows lifted. “Not at all?”

He shook his head. “People love an opinion when they think it does not cost them anything. We knew that was coming, we just did not know how long it would last.”

The audience hummed in recognition.

Cassian kept going, “I think the hardest part was not the hate. It was thinking we had to carry it separately.”

I looked at him then.

He did not look at me, but his hand moved under the table and found my knee. The touch was quick, hidden, and enough to make the room disappear for half a second.

He went on. “That changed when we stopped pretending we could do it alone.”

The host nodded slowly. “That seems to be a theme with you two.”

Cassian almost smiled. “That would be because it is true.”

I leaned back in my chair just enough to settle the urge to smile too hard. He was doing well. Better than well; open without sounding rehearsed, vulnerable without turning brittle. He had learned how to let the room see him and still keep hold of himself.

The host turned to me again. “Torin, did you ever worry that being public about the relationship would distract from the game?”

There it was.

The old question. The one we had been asked in a dozen ways before, from reporters, from analysts, from people who thought love was somehow a tax on performance.

“No,” I said. “Not once.”

The host tilted her head. “Not even a little?”

I shook my head. “The distractions were always there. Pressure, injuries, media, expectations. Love was never the problem.”

Cassian’s fingers curled under the table, brushing my wrist where the microphone pack cable disappeared against the chair.

The host smiled like she could smell a clip forming. “That is a strong answer.”

“It is the truth,” I said.

Cassian looked at me then, and the expression in his face was one I knew well by now. That slight, dangerous softness that always showed up when he saw me defend something real. It was the same look he gave me after games when nobody else was close enough to notice how much he felt.

The host turned back to him. “Cassian, you have been very open about what Torin means to you. You have talked about support, about trust, about the way this year changed you. What would you say to the people who still insist that this kind of love and this kind of career can’t coexist?”

The audience quieted.

I felt Cassian inhale.

For a second he did not answer.

Then he leaned toward the microphone.

“When people say love is a distraction,” he said, “they usually mean love has consequences.”

The audience went very quiet.

Cassian kept going, eyes still on the host, but I could feel the shape of the moment already changing. “The truth is, this year I played better because I was not pretending I was empty. I was not carrying it alone. I had somebody who saw every part of me and still stayed.”

The host stayed still.

Cassian’s voice did not shake, but I could hear how much it cost him to say it cleanly. “That makes you stronger, not weaker.”

He paused just a second.

Then he looked at me.

The whole studio seemed to hold still with him.

“He taught me that love isn’t a distraction. It’s the reason I play.”

The audience erupted.

I did not hear the next second clearly because every phone in the room seemed to wake up at once, the crowd noise swelled. The host’s eyes went wide and then she was smiling like a person who knew she had just witnessed something that would be clipped, shared, reposted, and replayed until the internet ran out of opinions.

Cassian was still looking at me.

I felt the heat of it immediately, all the more intense because we were on live television and both trying very hard not to break into something private in front of millions.

I reached under the table and squeezed his hand.

He squeezed mine back hard.

The host laughed lightly, trying to recover. “Well, that is a line.”

Cassian’s mouth curved just enough to show he knew exactly what he had done. “It was the truth.”

The audience cheered again.

The rest of the interview moved around us in a blur after that. Questions about the season, the championship, family, what we had planned next. Cassian answered more openly than I had seen him do on television before.

When they asked about our future, he looked at me first.

“Same as everybody else,” he said. “We keep living.”

The host smiled. “That is all?”

Cassian glanced at me. “For now.”

A little laughter went around the room.

The segment ended two minutes later with applause and the cue to commercial. As soon as the cameras cut, Cassian exhaled hard and leaned back in his chair like he had been holding his spine together with force.

I kept my hand on the table until the crew started moving in.

The host stood and held out both hands. “That was a hell of an interview.”

Cassian shook her hand. “Thanks.”

When she turned to me, she lowered her voice just enough to be heard over the crew. “That line about love? It was already being clipped before we hit commercial.”

I looked at Cassian.

He had gone very still beside me, then laughed once under his breath when he felt my eyes on him. “You are welcome,” he said quietly.

I was not sure if he meant the audience or me.

Probably both.

Backstage, the phones went crazy.

Our publicist was already waiting with a look that said the clip had gone everywhere in less than thirty seconds. She did not even have to speak before I knew the quote had gone viral.

I checked my phone once and saw the clip already at the top of every feed.

He taught me that love isn’t a distraction, it’s the reason I play.

More than one major account had reposted it before we had even left the building.

Cassian saw it over my shoulder and let out a breath that sounded like disbelief and amusement colliding at the same time. “That is definitely going to follow us.”

“Yes,” I said.

He looked at me. “You sound calm about that.”

I stepped closer and let my hand settle at the back of his neck, the same place I had touched him in the tunnel after the winning goal, the same place that always made him go a little quieter when I needed him to. “I am not calm.”

His eyes sharpened immediately.

I lowered my voice. “I am just used to you saying dangerous things on live television.”

That earned me a real smile.

He leaned in, not enough to kiss me with the publicist still nearby, but enough to make the air between us go hot again in the old familiar way. “It was a good line.”

I held his gaze. “It was a very good line.”

His mouth curved, and for one second I could have sworn the whole room around us was nothing but background noise.

Then our publicist cleared her throat and handed us both the next call sheet.

Cassian groaned. “Another one?”

She gave him a look. “Two more tonight.”

He looked at me, I looked at him.

We both knew the circuit was not over. More questions, more lights, more replayed clips, more opportunities for the world to ask the same questions in different clothes.

But the line was already out there now.

The one that mattered.

And watching Cassian stand there with his phone blowing up, his face still warm from the interview and his hand still brushing mine in passing, I knew something simple and true.

We were not just surviving the circuit.

We were changing it.