Chapter 4 THE CALL I COULDN'T ANSWER HONESTLY

Truett's POV

I slammed my locker so hard the metal echoed down the whole hallway.

I shouldn't have said that. Meet me after practice. Alone. The words were already out before my brain caught up to what my mouth was doing, and now there was no taking them back. I sat down on the bench in front of my locker and pressed both hands against my face, trying to breathe, trying to figure out what exact kind of mistake I had just made.

Three years. Three years of keeping that door shut, and I had just handed Marlow the key in a room with a recorder running.

"You okay, man?" Marcus dropped onto the bench next to me, peeling off his gloves. "You bolted out of that interview room like the place was on fire."

"I'm fine," I said, which had officially become the biggest lie I told on a daily basis.

"You sure? Because Coach said the reporter looked kind of shaken up too when she came out."

My stomach twisted. Of course she looked shaken up. I had just asked her to meet me somewhere I could finally say the truth out loud, a truth I had swallowed for three years because saying it felt like ripping my own ribs open. And now I had a countdown clock running until practice ended, and no plan for what I was actually going to say when she showed up.

Marcus must have seen something on my face because he held up both hands. "Say no more. Not my business." He grabbed his bag and headed for the showers, leaving me alone on the bench with my thoughts, which was the worst possible company I could have had right then.

I sat there a long time, longer than I should have, staring at the floor tiles like they were going to give me answers. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her face in that interview room, the second I said her name, and something in her expression cracked wide open like she'd been waiting three years for exactly that.

I didn't get to sit with it long. My phone buzzed against the bench, loud in the empty locker room, and I already knew who it was before I even looked. Nobody else called me during practice hours except one person.

Dad.

I almost let it go to voicemail. I almost let it ring out completely and dealt with the fallout later. But letting my dad's calls go unanswered these days always led to worse conversations later, so I picked it up.

"Hey, Dad."

"Truett." His voice had that tight sound it got whenever money was involved, which lately was almost every time we talked. "Got off the phone with Merriton Sports Group again. Good news. They're still interested. Very interested."

"That's good," I said, and I tried to mean it, because it was good. After all, this sponsorship was the difference between my little sister staying at the school she loved and us packing up everything we owned into a moving truck again.

"There's a condition though," he said, and I could hear him pacing, the way he always paced when he was nervous, back and forth across our kitchen floor like he could walk a hole straight through it. "They want total control over your public image this season. No off-brand headlines. No personal drama. No distractions of any kind. You understand what I'm telling you?"

"I understand." I did understand. I'd understood it for two years now, ever since he lost his job and our whole family's stability got balanced on top of how well I could skate and how boring my life could look to strangers with checkbooks.

"I mean it, Truett. This isn't just about hockey anymore. This is the house. This is Sadie's school. This is everything." His voice cracked a little on that last part, just enough that I felt it in my own chest. "One bad story, one photo that makes you look anything less than completely focused, and it's gone. All of it."

"I know, Dad." My throat felt tight saying it. "I'm not going to mess this up."

"I know you won't. I trust you." He paused, and I heard him take a breath like he was steadying himself. "How's the season starting? Anything new I should know about?"

And there it was. The exact moment I could have told him. I could have said, actually, funny thing, remember Marlow? The girl from three summers ago, the one I never explained leaving to? She's here. She's covering my whole season. She's going to be standing three feet away from me every single day until the championship, and today I asked her to meet me alone after practice because I can't keep lying to her anymore.

I didn't say any of that.

"Nothing much," I said instead. "New reporter joined the coverage team today. Seems fine so far."

"Good, good. Keep it professional. Keep it clean." He said it like a reminder, like a rule I already knew, because I did already know it, I'd known it for months, I just hadn't known yet how impossible that rule was about to become. "I love you, son. We're all counting on you."

"Love you too, Dad."

I hung up and sat there staring at my phone, at the black screen reflecting my own face at me, and I felt something heavy settle into my chest like a stone dropped into still water.

I had just lied to my father. Not a big lie, not technically; I hadn't said anything false. But leaving something out on purpose, hiding the one thing that actually mattered, that was its own kind of lying, and I knew it the second the words left my mouth.

Because the truth was, nothing about today had been fine. Nothing about Marlow walking back into my life felt like something I could keep professional and clean, not when just saying her name out loud in that interview room had cracked something open in my chest that three years of silence hadn't managed to heal.

I checked the clock on the locker room wall. Practice ended in twenty minutes. Twenty minutes until I had to walk out to wherever she was waiting and finally tell her the truth I'd buried since I was fourteen years old.

I stood up, grabbed my bag, and headed for the door.

That's when my phone buzzed again. Not my dad this time.

A text from an unknown number, sent thirty seconds ago, three words long, and it stopped me dead in the hallway.

I know why.