ICE AND ALIBI

Chapter 4

Marlowe's POV

I almost didn't go to practice that day. Coach Reyes needed someone to track shots on goal after the last stats kid quit, and somehow that someone had become me. I almost didn't go.

But on my way to the rink, I passed the front office, and through the glass I saw Eli sitting in the hard plastic chair outside the principal's door, shoulders hunched forward, staring at the floor like it owed him an answer.

The principal's voice carried just far enough through the door. "...decide by Friday whether this goes to a formal hearing. Depends what Brody's family wants to push for."

A hearing. That word sat heavy in my stomach the whole walk down the hall.

Eli was already on the ice when I got to the rink, running warm-up laps, jaw tight, eyes nowhere near the boards.

"Hey," I said, when he skated past the bench for water.

"Hey." He grabbed the bottle, drank, skated off without another word.

I picked a spot near the boards and got my clipboard ready, but I couldn't stop thinking about that word. *Hearing.* Sharae and a couple of her friends had drifted in to watch — dance practice must have let out early — and they leaned against the boards a few feet down from me, talking low and laughing, eyes flicking toward Eli every few seconds the way mine kept doing too, whether I wanted them to or not.

Coach blew his whistle and the drills started, fast and loud. Skates carved the ice in long hissing lines. Pucks cracked off the boards close enough that I felt the sound in my teeth. Eli ran the drills like he needed to outrun something, faster than everyone else on the line, sharper turns, harder shots.

"Two-on-one, let's go!" Coach barked. "Calloway, Reyes, you're up against Marchetti on D!"

I leaned forward to mark the rush in my notebook, half listening to Sharae's friend Nadia gushing about something two feet to my left, and never even saw her shift her weight back without looking. Her shoulder caught mine hard, off balance, mid-laugh, already apologizing before I'd even started falling.

"Oh my gosh, sorry—"

My feet went out from under me on the mat.

I didn't even have time to be scared. One second I was falling, the next a pair of arms caught me — fast, sure, no hesitation at all — and I landed against him instead of the floor.

"Got you," Eli said, breath coming hard, chest rising and falling against mine like the drill had cost him more than it should have, or maybe it wasn't the drill at all.

For a second neither of us moved.

I could hear him breathing, could feel my own breath catching to match it without my permission, the rush of the fall and the catch and the sudden closeness all tangled together until I couldn't tell which part of my racing heart belonged to which.

His eyes weren't just blue up close. There was green caught in them too, like the color hadn't fully decided what it wanted to be. A small mole sat just under his left eye, half-hidden by his lashes. And right at the corner of his chin, barely there, the start of a tiny pimple he'd probably hate that I noticed — except I did notice, every imperfect human piece of him, all of it close enough to actually see for the first time.

"You okay?" he asked, quiet, just for me.

"Yeah," I said, voice smaller than I meant it to be. "Yeah, I'm okay."

Neither of us moved to let go. His hand was still warm against my back. My fingers were still curled into his jersey. And for one stretched-out second, I forgot completely about Friday, about hearings, about anything except the fact that his eyes hadn't looked away from mine yet.

Then I heard it. The unmistakable click of a phone camera, followed by another, and another, rapid-fire, like rain starting all at once.

"Oh my god, get a room," somebody called out, laughing.

I turned my head and saw three different phones up along the boards, screens angled right at us, already recording — and the warm, dizzy feeling in my chest dropped straight into something cold.

"This is going straight on my Insta," one of the JV guys said, grinning behind his phone.

"WiloChat's getting this too," a girl by the bench added, already typing.

I thought about Friday. About a hearing that already had Brody's family pushing for something. About how easy it would be for someone to clip this exact moment — his hands on me, both of us too close, breathing too hard, right after a fight that already had his name in trouble — and make it look like one more reason he didn't belong here.

"This isn't going to help you," I said, low, just for him, panic creeping back into my voice even as some other, quieter part of me was still stuck on the mole under his eye, the green in his blue, the way he'd looked at me like nothing else in that rink existed.

"I know." His jaw tightened, the wall sliding back into place fast, his hand dropping off my back like it had been burned. "I know exactly what it looks like."

He stepped back, putting real distance between us, glancing once more at the phones still pointed our way before skating backward toward center ice without another word.

I stood there with my clipboard forgotten on the ground, watching three different red recording dots blink steady and patient, already capturing exactly the kind of moment that could make Friday so much worse for him.

And underneath all that fear, in some small, useless corner of my chest, I was still thinking about how close his face had been to mine, and how badly some part of me hadn't wanted to step back at all.