The Session
862 Words
Cheryl pov.
The nurse discharged me an hour later with a bandage taped over each knee and a lecture on keeping them dry.
It was almost funny. Nothing about today had been dry, least of all my eyes.
Carlson was waiting outside. He wasn’t leaning against the wall like someone with somewhere better to be.
He just stood there, arms crossed, eyes tracking the hallway like he expected Celeste to round the corner and finish what she started.
"You didn't have to wait," I said.
"I know."
No explanation. He fell into step beside me, his long strides cutting down the hall.
I didn't have the strength to argue.
We ended up in the equipment room behind the rink. His choice, not mine.
He shut the door, cutting off the noise of the arena.
The silence was heavy, broken only by the vibrating hum of the ice chiller through the wall and the raggedy of my own breathing.
He didn't waste time. "The journal," he said.
My stomach plummeted.
"Is it true? What you wrote?"
A smaller, safer version of me wanted to lie.
But I was so tired of shrinking myself to keep the peace.
I spent my whole life doing that, and it had gotten me nothing but a sister who read my private thoughts out loud at the breakfast table.
"Yes," I said, the word scraping against my throat.
"I’ve thought about you since we were kids. I never meant for anyone to read it. Especially you."
I braced myself. I waited for the look, the curl of disgust, or worse, the suffocating weight of pity.
Instead, he went quiet. His eyes searched mine the way I’d seen him study game tape.
"Since we were kids," he repeated. He spoke the words as if testing their weight.
"There was a summer. At the public rink." I forced myself to keep talking, even as heat crawled up my neck. "It doesn’t matter.
You wouldn't remember."
"The green bench by the vending machines," he said.
I froze.
"You fell twice trying to show me how to stop," he continued, his voice dropping an octave. "You blamed the ice both times."
The air left my lungs in a rush. "You remember that?"
"I’ve been trying to find you for years." Something cracked in his tone. A raw note I’d never heard in any of his post-game interviews.
"I never had a name. Just a bench, and a girl who wasn't afraid of me before she knew who I was."
My hands felt awkward, too large for my pockets. "I broke my ankle a few months after that summer. I never went back."
"What happened?"
I told him. Not about Celeste, that door was still too heavy to open, but I told him about the stairs, the slick patch of oil, the surgery, and the joint that never quite forgave me.
The end of hockey as anything but a game I watched through a lens.
He listened, as if sitting still cost him physical effort.
"I’ve never told anyone about my father," he said. The confession felt like it had been sitting under his ribs for years, waiting for a safe place to land.
"Not the real version. Not even Remy."
"You don't have to tell me."
"I know," he said. Then, he did anyway.
He spoke of the ice at four years old, the private coaches at eight, and the day he turned twelve when his father decided hockey wasn't a sport anymore, it was his entire identity.
He didn't use the word abuse. He didn't have to.
"Does your mother know?" I whispered.
His jaw tightened, a sharp, hard line. "She knows better than anyone. She's on the receiving end of it, too."
I didn't offer a hollow. I'm sorry. It was too small for the weight of what he'd just handed me. I sat there, close enough that our knees almost brushed, and let the silence settle between us.
"I want to see your analysis," he said, breaking the quiet.
"The real one. Not what's in the journal."
My cheeks flared at the reminder of what else was written in those pages. "The game analysis," I clarified.
A shadow of a smile touched his mouth, the first real spark of life I'd seen in his eyes all day. "Obviously, unless you had something else in mind."
"I did not."
"Sure."
I reached for my shoulder, my fingers grasping empty air.
The realization hit me like a physical blow: my bag was gone. Stolen with my laptop, my camera, and three years of unbacked-up footage.
Carlson's expression sharpened. "I'll replace the equipment."
"You don't have to do that."
"I know," he said. But this time, the words didn't sound like a dismissal. They sounded like a vow. "Tomorrow. Bring whatever files you have left."
Before I could argue, he stood and walked out, the heavy metal door clicked shut behind him.
I sat alone in the equipment room for a long time, the smell of damp ice surrounding me, trying to understand how a day that began with my life falling apart had ended with Carlson Miller sharing his darkest secrets.
- Writer
