Evan stands, still looking at me. “You trust her?”
The question lands harder because everyone goes quiet around it.
I could say no. It would be safer. Easier. More convenient for the men waiting to see whether their captain still belongs wholly to them.
“I trust what she wrote,” I say.
Evan goes quiet.
“That wasn’t the question.”
“It’s the answer you get.”
For a beat, Evan looks like he might push. Then he grabs his tape and sits back down.
“Fine,” he says. “But if this turns into a circus, you don’t get to pretend the elephants broke in on their own.”
Colt frowns. “Are we the elephants?”
“Some of you, yes.”
“Rude.”
Practice is brutal.
Coach Sully runs playoff-prep drills until lungs burn and legs go heavy. I welcome it. Breakouts under pressure. Defensive-zone coverage when tired. Power-play execution when everyone in the building knows what is coming.
Again and again.
My body can do honest work even when my head will not shut up.
After practice, Evan does not go straight to the showers.
I watch from the tunnel until Evan says, “If you are going to loom, commit.”
I step onto the rubber mat. “You have a problem.”
“Several. Be specific.”
“With her.”
Evan catches the puck off the rebound and holds it. “No. With us when we pretend we are not choosing what people get to know.”
I do not like hearing it in Evan’s voice.
“You think the locker room should be open?”
Evan laughs once. “Absolutely not. This is where idiots become brothers by lying about how badly things hurt.”
“Then what?”
“I think closed ranks make men stupid if nobody inside is allowed to say what is happening.” Evan stops smiling. It makes him look older. More like the player Denver paid too much for and understood too little. “In Denver, every problem was attitude until it became trade bait. Every disagreement was leadership concern. Every quote anonymous. By the time theymoved me, half the room had learned silence was safer than honesty.”
I lean one shoulder against the tunnel wall.
“You never said that.”
“You never asked.”
