Looks like Sid the Kid's hot streak is blazing on and off the ice. Recently the captain has been seen around town with an unidentified brunette. Now, the Chill Factor has discovered the identity of the woman who looks to have captured the center's heart. Caroline Reid, 26 of Washington Heights was spotted with Crosby at the Pittsburgh International Airport, Christmas Eve morning. The pair was seen exchanging a passionate kiss outside the Delta terminal. Previous sightings of the couple have included an afterhours party at the new upscale restaurant Tableau, as well as, a recent getaway to Eastern Pennsylvania that resulted in some racy photos of the couple. Crosby, who is known for his extreme privacy seems to be slipping a little as the city awaits the next public outing for the couple. Calls to Sidney's camp were not returned for comment, however sources can confirm that the couple has been seeing each other for a few weeks and that "things are serious." If this new found love could be attributed to the center's recent spectacular play, then the city of Pittsburgh owes a thank you to Crosby's Sweet Caroline. – Kaitlin Brooks, 12/26/12

Caroline felt like something was off. She and her family were waiting for their food at the nearby Eat and Park the day after Christmas. It felt like someone was watching her, but she couldn't seem to see from where. After the mid morning breakfast, Caroline would say goodbye to her family and get some much needed alone time. Sidney's flight was due to arrive around 4:30 and the couple had made plans to have dinner at his house. She was excited to see him as she always was, but longed for the few hours this afternoon of solitude. Caroline craved alone time and she had been completely without it these past few days. As her family ate and recapped the visit, Caroline continued to feel…under surveillance, but nevertheless an hour later the family exited the restaurant without incident.

The goodbyes with her family were not too bad. She would be back in Steubenville in a few weeks for her mother's birthday and plus, as much as she loved her family, she was ready for them to head back to Ohio. Caroline changed into her sweats, grabbed her laptop and settled onto the couch for a few hours of mindless television and Facebook. Logging onto her account for the first time since the holidays she was surprised at the red indicators, identifying the number of notifications and friend requests she had. 65 new friend requests and 78 notifications of activity on her account. What the…? Caroline was temporarily dumbfounded for a moment, her eyes glancing up to the corner of the screen to confirm it was her account she was logged into. Clicking on friend requests she didn't recognize any of these names. Had her account been hacked into? But when she clicked on the notifications and the list of activity appeared before her she stopped. Frantically she clicked over to her wall and sure enough as far as she could scroll down the page was postings written by nearly every Facebook friend she had and they all said roughly the same thing. Are you dating Sidney Crosby? Caroline's eyes widen and her stomach dropped.

It was out.

Sidney rubbed at his eyes tiredly as he waited to touch down in Pittsburgh. The flight from Halifax to Pittsburgh was only two hours, but the connecting flight in Boston had been delayed and resulted in a 4 hour layover. Sidney couldn't complain though, the trip home to Cole Harbour had been wonderful. It had been too long since he had seen his family and the time spent had been very special. The whole Forbes- Crosby clan had been together at his grandmother's house on Christmas Eve and then it had just been his parents and sister on Christmas day. The evening had been spent catching up with aunts and uncles, cousins and family friends. Most talked to him about hockey, specifically how well things were going. He was also able to catch up with the happenings of Cole Harbour and the budding families of his cousins, as little feet weaved throughout the sea of adults. It was his time to just be Sid. It was time he cherished. On Christmas morning he woke in the bedroom he had spent the first fifteen years of his life. The house was pretty much the same. Thanks to Sidney's generosity, the house had gotten a bit of a face lift, but otherwise not much had changed since he was a kid. He spent Christmas day opening presents, eating his mother's cooking and playing a few pickup games of hockey with his dad and sister. He was in deep discussion with his dad about his upcoming schedule at the dining room table when his sister called out from the living room.

"Hey Sid. Who's Caroline?" Taylor asked a teasing tone in her voice.

Sidney was out of his chair like a shot, heading directly for the living room and more specifically his cell phone that sat on the coffee table.

Taylor stood in the middle of the room holding his phone and reading the screen, a mischievous smile on her face.

"Me too," said Taylor in a sing-songy voice as she read the text message that appeared on his home screen, "I can't wait to see you tomorrow."

It was Caroline's response to Sidney's text from earlier. He had told her he missed and loved her, and now the idea of his family knowing that made the tip of his ears burn.

"Is she your girlfriend?" Taylor asked directly.

Troy and Trina Crosby heard the commotion and walked into the living room. For someone who had spent nearly his whole life on display, he was strangely uncomfortable with the attention he was receiving. He had never really had a girlfriend that his family had known. There were his short term girlfriends that he had mentioned here and there and his parents had met Lila a few years ago, but Sidney had been able to tell that his parents hadn't liked her. When he asked his mom what she thought of Lila, she had given him a tight lipped smile and said she was, "nice." That had been awkward enough, now here he was telling his family about someone that he truly loved and cared about and he was nervous, really nervous.

"Yeah. Um, yeah. Caroline," he said, looking at the expectant faces of his family, "she and I have been dating, it's pretty new, but she's…" the confidence and sureness he had spoke to Caroline's family with was now gone and he felt like a thirteen year old boy telling his mom he liked a girl. "She's important to me and I feel like it could be serious." he was finally able to rush out. His family was happy for him. They had lots of questions to ask and by the end of the conversation plans were made for his parents to meet her when they traveled to Pittsburgh at the end of January.

Now as the plane finally touched down in the Steel City, all Sid wanted to do was take a long hot shower and have a relaxing evening with the woman he loved. Turning on his cell phone when the plane landed, he expected to see a text from Caroline confirming the new time. He had let her know back in Boston that the flight had been delayed and to meet him at his house at 7 o'clock. But looking at his phone, she hadn't replied. Frowning he punched a few buttons and called her. The phone went straight to voicemail. Sidney felt a strange sense of foreboding. By the time he was sitting in the back of taxi taking him home he had called three times and texted twice.

Still nothing.

Sidney didn't even go up to his condo when the taxi pulled up to his building. He hopped in his SUV and headed straight for Caroline's house, his mind racing at all the things that could have happened to her.

Caroline closed the tab to her Facebook page as if it was a virus. She looked at her phone like it was a disease and without thinking turned it off. Her heart raced and her palms were sweaty. Oh my god, she thought. She looked around the room as if someone was watching her. In the back of her head a voice of reason spoke, told her to calm down, everything was going to be ok. No one was hurt. This was bound to happen. But that voice of reason was hard to hear with the sound of her heart beat reverberating through her head. Taking a deep breath she reopened the browser and navigated to Google. Typing in her name and Sidney's in the search box, she pressed enter and awaited the results. It only took a second or two for the results to load and the number one entry held a description that included their names.

It wasn't so bad. The article or really blurb. There was a video attached of her at the airport handing Sidney his phone and him leaning down towards her. It was dark and grainy but definitely them. The video ended with her car driving away and her license plate very clearly shown. That must be how they figured out who she was. She was curious about "the source." And calls to Sidney's camp? What was that? Did he know about this? Why hadn't he said anything? She thought to check her phone, but the chickened out. She didn't...couldn't deal with anyone in the outside world right now. Not until she figured this out. She read and re-read the article, her mind racing. Finally when she nearly had the article memorized and had smoothed her sweaty palms on the soft fabric of her sweat pants for the hundredth time she felt like she could regroup from this. Pressing back button on the browser she began a new search for the delta website to confirm Sidney's flight arrival time, when the previous search listings caught her eye. The Chill Factor blog wasn't the only site that listed her and Sid's names together, there was a whole list. She bit her lip and told herself to close the window. It didn't matter what else was being said. She had promised she wouldn't look at that stuff and she hadn't, but the rawness of the article wore on her and before she could stop herself she clicked on another result.

Somehow three hours had passed.

Caroline reeled back from the vortex she had been sucked into. At first it was just reading a few forums and social networking sites that talked about her and Sid. They had the pictures from the Woodlands, a photo from Tableau, where she was just standing off to the side of Sidney and the crowd he had drawn. The comments were hard to read. The over analysis put Caroline's over active imagination to shame. Some said she was pretty, some said she was old. Some said she was ugly, some said she looked nice. Most agreed it wouldn't last. Caroline felt numb. So much so that when the next link on the tumblr feed was a video of Sidney from a few years back she clicked on it without thinking. Instantly she was brought to the YouTube search results of Sidney Crosby and there were hundreds of videos. She knew she shouldn't do this, but she didn't have the strength or the energy to stop. Interviews, game clips, commercials, the Olympics, the Stanley cup, the fucking Tonight show. It was all there, he was there. Videos that mocked him, videos that celebrated him. She watched him over and over again until she didn't even see him anymore, all she saw was this character, this unknown hero or in some cases, villain to so many people. It didn't stop there. There were endless articles, doctored photos, dolls and action figures, even made up stories about him. Information was endless. Talk about his 104 million dollar contract, he was the face of the NHL and...the commercials, the guy hocked everything. And at the end of those three hours she emerged her stomach in knots and her eyes red from staring at the screen so intently. She had just graduated from the University of Sidney and she felt sick. She felt hollow. She felt like she had lost him, when the truth was that she had finally found him. Who he really was, what his life was really like. She was so naive. She had lived in this tiny bubble, thinking that the scope of his fame and accomplishments lived in that bubble. But it wasn't a tiny bubble, it was everywhere, he was everywhere and this life she thought they could have was just a silly dream. He had the world and she couldn't compete with that. She would be a speck on the timeline of his life.

Insignificant.

The money. He would never want for anything. His family, his children, would never know anything else than obscene wealth. Hell, she had bounced a check 3 weeks ago. Did he have any idea what that even meant? And the fans, the girls, all of them, they saw her as low class, they knew her now and they saw right through her. Out of her league. She stared at his image, trying to see, trying to remember how he looked when he looked at her and in the two days since she had seen him, she couldn't remember, all she could see was this...superstar.

And then a second later the real thing was there. A knocking caused her to tear her eyes away from his smiling face on the Google images of her computer screen and to the door where the sound was coming from. Not even aware of how she looked, she floated to the door and opened it completely disconnected to whatever was on the other side.

"Oh thank god." He breathed.

Caroline just stared at the face she had watched all afternoon and while her instinct was to bury herself in his embrace, she knew she couldn't do that anymore, not with Sidney Crosby, #87.

Caroline looked like hell, but all Sidney could think was how glad he was that she was ok. Something looked wrong, but at least she was standing and breathing and not in some ditch somewhere.

He was so relieved to see her that he didn't notice the vacant look in her eyes, as her grabbed her and embraced her in a tight hug.

He did notice that her arms didn't come around him; instead they lay limply at her side.

Pulling back, he put his hands on her shoulders and held her out for inspection.

"Are you ok?" he asked.

She stared at him blankly.

"Caroline?" he was getting worried. "What's wrong? Did you get my message about the delay?"

"Delay?" she asked looking at him like he was a stranger.

"My flight. I texted you, hell I called you like 6 times, but it went straight to voicemail." Sid was getting frustrated, why wasn't she talking and why was she looking at him that way?

"Oh," then her eyes seemed to clear and she stepped back from him. Not meeting his eyes she fixed her stare on the Christmas tree that sat in the corner of her living room. Her sad, Charlie brown Christmas tree. His Christmas tree probably reached to the ceiling of his parents house...their mansion, she thought stupidly.

"I um, my phone died. I lost my charged. I think my brother took it," she sounded like a moron.

Sid stared at Caroline. What was going on? She looked shell shocked.

"Do you want to sit down?" he asked, unsure what to do. "I missed you. We can catch up? Order some dinner?"

That seemed to snap her out of it, a little bit at least. Her vision cleared and she finally looked at him. A blush stained her cheeks.

"yes." her voice was high. "Yes, let's sit down."

He took a seat on her couch. He wore just jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. He was wearing his lucky penguins hat. Worn and covered in sweat stains, he always wore his lucky cap the night before a game...it was one of his rituals. Caroline sat on a nearby chair fidgeting and giving him a weak smile. She wore grey sweat pants and an oversized Garfield cheetahs elementary school t-shirt. Her hair was a wavy mass around her head; it was tousled in an unusual way, as it someone's hands had been running through it all day. Sid squashed any thoughts of her having someone else over. Caroline would never do that. But something was definitely off.

"I'm starving. You haven't eaten have you?" he asked, his dark eyes intent on her.

"No, no I haven't. We can order something." she said looking at his shoes.

"Caroline. I need you to talk to me. What is going on?" he reached his hand out to hers and she recoiled.

"Let's order dinner." she said, not willing to answer his question. She sounded robotic, like someone he didn't know.

Then like she was quoting a passage from a book or an article she said, "You eat spaghetti for dinner the night before a game."

Sid just stared. "Yeah," he said slowly.

Her eyes looked up to his head.

"Your lucky hat." she said, "you wear the same one all season, no matter how dirty it gets."

"What's going on?" he was perplexed.

"You don't talk to your mother on game day because twice when you did you got injured." She was standing now, he eyes hard on his. "After you tape your stick, you won't let anyone touch it. You eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before every game. You worked out your contracts so you make 8.7 million dollars, same as your number, same as your birth date. You fuck me because the first time you did you broke your losing streak. Those are your superstitions. What other ones am I forgetting?"

Sid felt like the air had been knocked out of him. He started to speak and then something caught his eye, her computer at her dining room table and the screen was all him.

He returned her hard look and brushed past her, stalking towards the computer.

Her hollow voice behind him.

"I saw you win the Stanley cup. I saw you score that Olympic goal. I also saw your commercials, all those commercials. I saw your parents, I saw your house. You were on the Tonight Show." he voice was wavering now, shaky.

He stared at the screen and could see the tabs open all across the screen, they all read his name.

He turned to her. She was crying now.

"I have 63 dollars in my checking account. You are worth 30 million dollars. I never had a boyfriend before. You dated a sports illustrated swimsuit model."

"Why did you do this?" his voice was hoarse, staring at her come apart, saying these things like they mattered. "You promised me you wouldn't look this stuff up. I told you what it would do to you, why didn't you listen to me? You fucking promised!" he was starting to come apart himself.

"You promised too!" she yelled at him. Her arms crossed around her waist, tears rolling down her face. "Calls to Crosby's camp were not returned for comment. You are supposed to tell me these things, I need to know and not find out from goddamn Facebook!"

Sidney was angry, he was tired and confused and the first woman he had ever loved was staring at him like he was some traitor.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he roared, throwing his hands up in the air.

"Everyone knows! They all know. It's all over the Internet. You may have no problem with people analyzing you to death but I do! How long will it be until they know the whole story? Until they know all I am is a whore."

"Don't say that!"

She ignored him. "How am I different than those other women? Because we fell in love, or think we did?"

Why was she saying this?

"And I have perfect strangers asking me to either be their Facebook friend or saying that I am too out of my league to be seen with you. And from what I have seen today, I think they are right." she choked back the tears and looked at him in misery.

He looked at her for a while.

"You don't see me anymore do you? You see him." he gestured to the computer behind him.

Caroline looked down and then replied quietly "you are him."

A piece of his heart broke. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, a thousand things wanting to rush out of his mouth and into the heavy air that lay between them.

This wasn't different. She wasn't different. It was the same as before, it just came in a different package.

"Well, if that's what you think, then I don't think there is anything more to say." and with that he brushed past her and out her front door.

And out of her life.