Chapter 3 JUST MY NAME

Marlow's POV

I grabbed the boards so hard my knuckles turned white.

He was skating straight at me. Not slowing down for anyone else, not glancing at Coach Okonkwo yelling something behind him, just cutting a clean line across the ice like the rest of the team didn't exist anymore. My heart slammed so hard against my ribs I thought everyone around me could probably hear it too.

I told myself to look calm. I told myself I was a professional, standing here with a recorder in my bag and a job to do, and none of this was supposed to matter anymore. Three years was a long time. People change. People grow up. I had grown up plenty, thank you very much, and I was not the same girl who used to wait by her phone hoping it would light up with his name.

I was lying to myself again. That seemed to be the theme of my whole morning.

He stopped hard at the boards, spraying a little ice up that landed near my shoes, and for one second neither of us said anything. Bettina was still standing next to me, flipping through her clipboard, completely unaware that the ground under my feet had just cracked open.

"Marlow," he said.

That was it. Just my name. Not "hi." Not "it's been a while." Not even a fake, polite, professional "nice to meet you," which is what I had actually prepared myself for on the drive over, back when I still thought I could survive this assignment by pretending we were strangers.

Just my name, said low and rough, like it had been sitting behind his teeth for three years and finally got loose.

It hit me harder than any apology could have. An apology I could have argued with. An apology I could have thrown back in his face and said, sorry doesn't fix three years of silence. But my name, said like that, like it still meant something to him, like it still cost him something to say it out loud? I didn't have a comeback for that. I didn't have anything.

"Truett," I said back, and I was proud of how normal my voice sounded, even though inside my chest felt like it was folding in on itself.

Bettina, thankfully clueless, clapped her clipboard shut. "Great, you two already know each other's names; that'll speed things along. Truett, first interview's in ten. Marlow, you've got the media room set up down the hall."

Neither of us corrected her. Neither of us said, actually, we know a lot more than each other's names. We know things nobody put in any file. I know what his laugh sounds like when it's real instead of the one he gives cameras. He knows I used to be terrified of thunderstorms and would call him at midnight just to hear him talk about nothing until I fell asleep.

None of that was in Bettina's clipboard. None of that was going in my article either. I made myself remember that.

Truett skated backward a few feet, still looking at me, and for a second, just a second, something cracked open behind his eyes, something that looked almost like he wanted to say more. Then it slammed shut again, fast, like a door somebody remembered to lock.

"See you in ten," he said, flat now, professional now, like the last thirty seconds hadn't happened at all.

He turned and skated back toward his team like nothing had happened, and I stood there gripping the boards, watching him go, feeling like I'd just been hit by a truck that then apologized for the inconvenience and drove off.

I don't remember walking to the media room. I don't remember setting up my recorder or checking the battery light three separate times, even though I'd already checked it twice this morning. I just remember sitting in a folding chair that felt too big for me, staring at a closed door, trying to figure out how I was supposed to ask this boy about his championship goals when the last real conversation we ever had was him not answering his phone for the fortieth time in a row.

The door opened. He walked in and sat down across from me without a word, close enough that I could see he wasn't wearing his captain's mask anymore, not fully, not in this small room with just the two of us and a recorder between us like a fence neither of us wanted to climb.

"Ready when you are," he said.

I hit record. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the recorder for the second time that day.

"Let's start easy," I said, reading off a question I'd written in the car, back when I thought this would be simple. "How does it feel being named captain again this season?"

He answered it. Something about hard work, something about the team, something so rehearsed it could have come out of a robot's mouth. I wrote it down anyway, because that's what I was here to do.

Then I asked my second question, and that's when everything went wrong.

"Some people say you disappeared from the hockey scene for almost a year, right around sophomore year. Can you tell our readers what happened during that time?"

I hadn't meant it as anything but a normal interview question. I had asked versions of it a dozen times to other athletes, about injuries, about slumps, about anything that took them off the radar for a while. It was standard. It was safe.

His whole face changed. Not angry. Something worse than angry. Something that looked like I had just reached into his chest and grabbed something he'd spent three years trying to bury.

"I don't talk about that," he said, quiet, final.

"Truett, it's a standard question, I'm not trying to."

"I said I don't talk about that." His jaw was tight, his hands flat on the table like he was holding himself in place. "Ask me something else."

I should have let it go. I know that now. But something in me, some old wound that never fully closed, made me push one more inch.

"Does it have anything to do with why you left without telling me?"

The room went dead silent.

He stood up so fast his chair scraped hard against the floor, and for one terrifying second I thought he was just going to walk out and end the interview, end everything, before it even started.

Instead he leaned both hands on the table, looked me straight in the eyes, and said the last thing I ever expected to hear.

"You want to know why I left? Fine. But not here. Not with that thing recording." He nodded at my recorder like it was a loaded weapon between us. "Meet me after practice. Alone. And Marlow, once I tell you, you're not going to want to write a single word of it down."