“Good morning to you too,” I say, tone sterilized. “Put the phone down.”
He doesn’t. He kicks the door gently shut. “PR’s on fire. Compliance pinged me for logs. Owner wants a statement he thinks I wrote.” His jaw flexes. “I didn’t.”
“I’m not asking you to.” The urge to punt his phone into the cryo cart hums; I keep my hands on the table. “Remember what protocol looks like outside a crop.”
He drags a hand through his hair and finally lowers the phone—only to swipe to another angle. “Protocol looks like this? The league won’t care how you tell it.”
“Protocol looks like a fever brought down, a wrist stabilized, and a player who didn’t re-injure on my watch,” I say, each clause a rung. “Also looks like me off the bench for optics while still running his rehab because outcomes matter.”
Miles stares at the board.No hero reps. His eyes catch the small line:If pain > 3/10, STOP. Text me.Something sharp crosses his face. Not jealousy. Older, harder.
“Text you?” he echoes, bite blatant.
“Patient compliance,” I say evenly. “He listens.”
“That’s the problem,” he snaps, too fast—then softer, rubbed raw: “That’s the problem.”
Sophie brightens to hide the blade. “Miles, darling, if you came to help, help. If you came to lecture, I only schedule those Tuesdays after carbs.”
He looks at her, then me. Some heat drains. “Owner wants you back after skate,” he says. “He’ll push for a statement. He’ll push reassignment if Julia’s plan doesn’t take.” His phone buzzes again. “This is trending in sponsor channels. They aren’t patient.”
“I am,” I say. “And I’m the one with the patient.” I point at the board. “Briefing in three. You, me, assistant, Adams. Then I’mout of camera lanes.” I hold his eyes. “Help me keep him on the ice instead of in an MRI.”
A long second inventories a thousand taped ankles and late nights. He nods once. “Three minutes.”
He opens the door—and freezes. In the rectangle of hallway, a reporter I don’t recognize pretends to scroll, phone angled just wrong. Her gaze bounces from his badge to the whiteboard behind me, hungry.
Sophie steps forward like a bouncer in ballet flats. “Nope.”
The reporter’s thumb rises, subtle as a snake. The lens lifts a breath.
The floor tilts. The distance I negotiated, the seventy-two-hour thread I’m balancing on—everything tightens to a single, awful choice: shut the door and look guilty, or leave it open and get eaten alive.
Miles hovers in the doorway, caught between blocking and retreat.
“Riley,” he says, without looking back. “Call it.”
I plant my feet, feel my pulse knock once against my ribs, and decide which thing I’m willing to pay for.
“Leave it open,” I say, calm enough to sign. “We have nothing to hide.”
Sophie’s chin lifts. Miles squares his shoulders, halfway shield, halfway usher. I step into the reporter’s frame on purpose, clipboard high, whiteboard at my back, the plan visible in black marker, my face set to professional boredom.
“Training update in three minutes,” I tell her, even and unhurried. “Until then, no photos in the medical suite.”
She blinks, recalibrates to the rules of this particular game. “Is it true you?—”
“We don’t comment on personal rumors,” I say, already turning toward the table, already writing the next protocol in my head. “We take player health seriously. Please step back.”
For once, the corridor does what I ask. The phone lowers. The lens blinks. The door stays open. And I go back to work.
Chapter 10
Lines Crossed
Jason
The corridor smellslike sanitizer and rubber, the kind of clean that burns. I’m unlacing when I hear Miles say it through the cracked training-room door—voice low, steady, criminally calm: “You can’t save him—and you’re about to cost us both our jobs.”
