I have spent a career handing this city pieces of myself it was safe to love. Jersey. Goal. Captain. The version that does not scare sponsors.
I am done handing out the safe version.
“I’m going to say it out loud,” I say. “Where they can’t pretend it’s a secret.”
Evan’s mouth curves. “That’ll cost you. The C. Endorsements. Silas’s blood pressure.”
“Probably.”
“Good,” Evan says. “About time something cost you something you chose.”
Silas is waiting outside the lounge. Of course he is.
“We should talk messaging,” he says. “The smart play is space. You and the reporter, a little daylight between the stories. For the team. For her, even.”
The kind, reasonable, managed version. The one I was holding in my own hand a minute ago.
“No,” I say.
“Ryan—”
“I’m going to the podium, and I’m going to tell them she’s the woman I love and her work has nothing to do with my bed. Then there’s nothing left for anyone to expose.”
Silas’s jaw works. “That is not a managed statement.”
“No. It’s a true one. You can keep the other kind.”
I walk past him before he can find the lever.
For the first time, there isn’t one.
Peyton
Iam still under the awning of my own building, stuck on a sentence that will not move, when Ryan’s truck turns the corner.
He should be at the rink. He should be anywhere a photograph of the two of us isn’t worth more to my enemies than anything either of us could say.
He parks badly and gets out anyway.
I have the sentence ready. I built it in the bar while my father offered me the exit — clean, merciful, the kind that ends a thing while pretending to save it. We should cool it for a while. For the story. For you. I will not have to mean it for it to work.
He crosses the sidewalk. I open my mouth to be noble.
And I hear it coming — the exact shape of California in my own voice before a word is out. The softened paragraph. The quote moved down the page. The true thing handed over so a powerful man could stay comfortable and I could stay safe. I swore Iwould never do it again. And here I am, about to do it to the one person I cannot stand to lose, and call it mercy.
No.
“Don’t,” I say, before he can. “Don’t get the careful look. I had a speech ready. The reasonable one, where I let you go for your own good and get to feel brave about it.”
He stops on the sidewalk.
“Peyton—”
“I am done being brave like that.” My voice is not steady. I do not care. “I have given up every single thing I ever wanted to stay out of trouble’s way, and it has never once made me safe. It just made me good at being alone.”
His ribs are still taped. I can see the line of it when he breathes.
“I’m keeping you.” It comes out hard, like something held too long underwater. “Not for a while. Not until it gets expensive. The next person who calls that a conflict of interest can read it in print, under my name, with my father’s right beside it if that is the price. No exceptions. Not this time.”
