ICE AROUND MY HEART

Marlow's POV

My press badge ripped in half the second the security guard tried to scan it.

"Great," I muttered, staring at the two pieces in my hand. "Perfect start."

The guard didn't even blink. He'd probably seen a hundred nervous reporters try to talk their way into the Kestrel training complex. I wasn't going to be the girl who got turned away on day one because of a stupid piece of laminated plastic.

"I have the confirmation email right here," I said, pulling out my phone so fast I almost dropped it too. My hands were doing that thing again, the shaking thing, the thing they only did when I was about to walk into a place I couldn't walk back out of.

I wasn't nervous. I kept telling myself that. Nervous was for people who weren't prepared. I had read every article, memorized every stat, practiced my first interview questions in the mirror until they didn't sound rehearsed anymore. I was ready.

I was lying to myself, and I knew it.

The guard finally waved me through after checking my name on his tablet, and I walked into the loudest, coldest building I had ever stood inside. Skates cutting into ice. Whistles. A coach yelling something about line changes. It smelled like rubber and metal and cold air, and under all of it, my heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.

This was my shot. Six weeks embedded with the top junior hockey program in the region, writing the stories that would decide if I got a real byline before I even finished high school. I had fought for this assignment. I wasn't going to waste it being scared of a building.

Bettina, the media director, met me at the edge of the rink with a clipboard and a smile that looked permanently stuck to her face. "You're Marlow, right? Winters?"

"That's me."

"Good. You're covering the team all season, but especially the captain. He's the story this year. Scouts everywhere. Big money sponsors watching every move he makes." She flipped a page on her clipboard without looking up. "You'll want good quotes from him early. He's not always easy to crack."

"I can handle difficult," I said, and I meant it. I had interviewed grumpy coaches, silent athletes, one girl who cried the entire time and somehow still gave me the best quote I'd ever gotten. Difficult was fine. Difficult was normal.

Then the announcer's voice came over the speaker system, calling the team out for morning skate, reading off names one by one so photographers could get their first shots of the season.

"Number nine, defense, Marcus Aldean."

I wasn't listening. I was digging through my bag for my recorder, making sure it was charged, making sure I looked like someone who belonged here.

"Number twelve, forward, Callum Reyes."

Still digging. Still not listening. My fingers found the recorder, and I pulled it out, checking the battery light like it was the only thing that mattered in the world.

"And your captain, number seven,"

I looked up out of habit. Just a reflex. Just because everyone else in the room had looked up too.

"Truett Sorensen."

The recorder slipped straight out of my hand.

It didn't even hit the ground. I don't remember catching it. I don't remember anything except the sound of that name landing in my chest like something heavy falling from a very high place.

Truett Sorensen.

There were probably other Truett Sorensens in the world. That's what I told myself in the half second before the gate at the far end of the rink swung open and a boy skated out onto the ice, fast, easy, like he'd been born with blades on his feet instead of shoes.

There weren't other Truett Sorensens. Not one that skated like that. Not one whose shoulders were exactly that shape, whose stride ate up the ice like he was daring it to slow him down.

Three years. Three years since he disappeared from my life without a single word, no goodbye, no explanation, nothing but a space where a boy used to be. Three years of telling myself I was over it, that I didn't think about him anymore, that whatever we were when we were fourteen didn't count as anything real.

Three years, and my whole body remembered him before my brain could even finish the thought.

"You okay?" Bettina asked, glancing at me sideways.

"Fine," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt, which felt like its own small miracle. "Static shock. From the recorder."

She didn't look convinced, but she didn't push it either. She just tapped her clipboard and said, "Good, because you start with him today. First interview's in twenty minutes."

Twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes until I sat across from the boy who used to know every single one of my secrets, the boy whose disappearance had rearranged something permanent inside my chest, and I was supposed to ask him professional questions and write down his professional answers like he was any other athlete on any other team.

I watched him circle the ice, faster now, cutting sharp turns like he was working something out of his body that words couldn't fix. He hadn't looked toward the boards yet. He hadn't seen me.

I had exactly twenty minutes to figure out how to breathe normally before that changed.

I didn't get twenty minutes.

I got four.

Because that's when Truett Sorensen glided to a stop at center ice, pulled his helmet off, shook out hair that was longer than I remembered, and looked straight across the rink like something had pulled his attention there on purpose.

Straight at me.

His face didn't move. No shock. No confusion. Nothing that told me what was happening behind his eyes.

But his stick, the one he'd been resting easy across his gloves a second ago, hit the ice and clattered flat against the surface like he'd forgotten he was holding it at all.

He knew exactly who I was.

And from the way his whole body went rigid, as he'd just seen a ghost he thought he buried a long time ago, I understood something that made my stomach drop straight through the bleachers under my feet.

He wasn't surprised to see me here.

He had already known.