A playoff win should make the room louder than this.
Instead, the celebration comes in pieces. Gloves tapping helmets. Breathless laughs. Music started too late and too low. Finn sits at his stall with his jersey half-off, staring at the floorlike he is trying to decide whether being protected feels different from being benched.
I want to tell him it does.
I am not sure I can.
After the game, Evan finds me in the corridor.
“Peyton’s at the press exit,” he says.
“I know.”
“Of course you know.”
I keep walking.
Evan falls in beside me. “She’s going to ask about Finn.”
“She already did.”
“And?”
His face changes.
“Jesus, Cap.”
“I handled it.”
“No.” Evan’s voice stays low. “You answered it.”
I look toward the media hallway. Jennifer is there with two staffers, directing traffic like the building itself might say something unapproved if she stops moving. Peyton stands beyond the press cluster with her notebook held against her chest, watching the wrong doors.
Watching for me.
“She doesn’t have anything concrete,” I say.
“She has you not answering your phone for three days. And me being quiet. And Finn on minutes management in a playoff game.”
By the next media availability, silence will read like confirmation. I know it; worse, Finn knows it too.
Evan leans against the wall. “She reports for a living. That’s already something.”
“I’m protecting him,” I say.
“Maybe.” Evan’s eyes flick once toward the locker room. “But from who?”
That pisses me off because it is the question I have been avoiding.
“From becoming the story.”
“Or from making the room look bad?”
The hallway seems to tighten around the words.
Evan does not smile. Does not soften it.
“You’re protecting the part of him that keeps the room clean,” he says. “That’s not always the same thing.”
