Chapter 4 Before Dawn

The gym was empty at 5:30 AM.

That was the point.

Marcus had been here since five. Not because he couldn't sleep — he couldn't, but that wasn't why. He was here because the court was the only place that still made sense.

Everywhere else felt complicated. Loud in ways that had nothing to do with sound.

Here it was just him, the ball, the rim, and the math of it — angle, force, release, arc. Clean. Direct. The ball didn't care about his agent's calls. The rim didn't care about new footage or consequences.

He shot. Missed.

He retrieved the ball, dribbled back, and shot again. Missed again — slightly closer, but still off. He adjusted and tried again.

This was how he learned. Not in organized practice, or under lights with coaches watching. Alone in empty gyms before dawn, back when nobody cared who he was. Just him, the work, and the understanding that the work was the only thing nobody could ever take away.

They could take the contract. The penthouse. The endorsements. The name on a billboard in Times Square. They could take eight months of his life and give him a Hartford locker with white tape where a nameplate should be.

They could not take this.

He shot again. It went in.

He stood still and listened to the net. That soft clean sound of the ball through the mesh — the one thing that still felt honest. He'd first heard it at nine years old on a cracked asphalt court in Charlotte, using a half deflated ball his uncle had pulled from a dumpster. Even then it had felt like something opening inside his chest.

He retrieved the ball and shot again. In. Again. In. Again. In.

By the sixth shot, his body had found something. Not the old rhythm, not fully, but the beginning of it. Like hearing a song from a distance, slowly becoming familiar.

He didn't hear the door.

"You've been here longer than me."

Marcus turned.

Darius stood at the edge of the court in practice gear, a duffel over one shoulder. His expression sat somewhere between impressed and uncertain. Shoes already tied — he'd come to work, not to talk.

"What time is it?" Marcus asked.

"Five forty-two."

Marcus turned back and shot. In.

"You always come in this early?"

"When I need to."

Darius dropped his bag on the bench and walked onto the court without asking. Marcus noted it — the lack of hesitation. He respected it.

"Saw the news last night," Darius said.

Marcus retrieved the ball. Said nothing.

"The new footage thing." Not carefully, not tiptoeing like most people. Just plainly. Like stating weather. "People on the team were talking about it in the group chat."

"What were they saying?"

Darius paused. "Mixed."

Marcus bounced the ball once. Twice. "That's honest."

"You asked."

He shot. In. Then he looked at Darius properly for the first time that morning — six-two, lean, the kind of frame that would fill out in a couple of years. Quick eyes. He'd noticed that in yesterday's practice, under all the chaos of being new and quietly humiliated. Darius read the court fast.

"Show me your shot," Marcus said.

Darius blinked. "What?"

"Your shot. Show me."

Something crossed Darius's face — half surprise, half something else. He took the ball when Marcus held it out, dribbled twice, set his feet, and shot from just inside the three point line. Good form. Clean release. It rattled in and out.

"Again," Marcus said.

Same spot. Rattled out again.

"Your left foot," Marcus said. "It's turning out on your plant. Throwing your hip alignment off before you release." He walked over and stood beside him. "Set your feet again."

Darius reset. Marcus crouched slightly and checked the angle.

"There. Left toe is pointing toward the sideline. It needs to be forward. Parallel with your right."

Darius adjusted. Shot.

It went in clean.

He stared at the basket like it had done something unexpected. Then looked at Marcus. "Huh."

"You've been missing the same shots from the same spots for two years," Marcus said, moving back to his spot. "Nobody told you because it only costs you one in five. One in five doesn't feel urgent until it's a tied game with forty seconds left."

Darius reset his feet deliberately and shot again. In. Again. In. A third time. In. He let out a short breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "Where'd you learn to see that?"

"Same place you're learning everything. The floor."

Marcus held out his hand for the ball. Darius passed it.

"How long have you been on this team?"

"Two seasons."

"You trying to move up?"

Darius didn't hesitate. "Every single day."

Marcus looked at him. The kid meant it. No performance, no bravado covering insecurity the way Marcus had seen plenty of young players who talked big because they weren't sure they belonged.

Darius just meant it. Simply. The way you mean things before the world teaches you caution. He reminded Marcus of someone. Marcus didn't follow that thought.

They shot in silence. The gym filled slowly with thin gray light coming through high windows, turning the court pale and quiet. Marcus's rhythm was returning — not fully, but building. His body remembering things his mind had been too loud to access yesterday.

"Can I ask you something?" Darius said.

"You're going to anyway."

"The footage they're talking about." He paused. "Is it bad?"

Marcus caught his own rebound and held the ball. The question had no angle behind it. Just honest curiosity.

"I don't know yet," Marcus said. The most honest answer he had.

"Did you do it? What they said you did?"

The gym went very quiet. Outside a truck reversed, its steady beep faint through the walls.

Marcus looked at the basket. "No," he said.

Darius nodded slowly. "Then why didn't you just say that back when it happened?"

"Because saying no isn't enough when there's a video." His voice came out sharper than intended. He softened it. "When there are lawyers and statements and a woman with a publicist who got to the press before I got to my own agent, saying no just becomes noise."

Darius was quiet. "So what do you do?"

"You come to Hartford," Marcus said. "You get on the court. You make the noise stop the only way it actually stops." He shot the ball. It went in. "You play so well they can't talk about anything else."

Darius stared at the basket. Then he picked up his ball, reset his feet — left toe forward, parallel — and shot. Clean through the net.

"Okay," he said quietly. Like he'd decided something.

They kept shooting as the light changed and the gym warmed. At 6:40 other players began filtering in, their voices breaking the quiet between them.

Marcus was mid-shot when his phone lit up on the bench. He finished the shot, walked over, picked it up. A message from his agent. Four words.

Call me. Right now.

Marcus stared at it, picked up the phone and walked toward the tunnel.

Whatever it was, it wasn't good.

It never was anymore.