I turn.
His face has gone unreadable again, but his eyes have not.
“Ten minutes,” he says. “Ask better questions than everyone else.”
My pulse moves before my pride can stop it.
“Try giving better answers.”
For a second, the corner of his mouth lifts.
Then the captain returns.
I walk toward the media room with my notes pressed against my chest and the terrible certainty that the story has just leaned closer.
Ryan
I almost do not go to her room.
Later, I will like that version best: the almost.
Almost makes me sound cautious.
The truth is that ten days of sanctioned access have happened in between, and none of it has stayed sanctioned. Practices. A shootout win at home. Postgame availabilities where she asked clean questions and looked at my hands when she thought I would not notice. The team charter to Dallas with Peyton three rows back, close enough that I kept losing the thread of whatever Colt was saying. She kept the recorder on for leadership and culture and saved the dangerous questions for elevators, bus doors, and hotel lobbies, where no one could hear enough to call it unprofessional. By the time we landed, the interview had stopped being the reason either of us kept ending up in the same hallway.
After the road game in Dallas, the hotel corridor is quiet except for the ice machine losing a fight with itself and someone laughing too loudly three doors down. I stand outside my own room with the key card in my hand and Peyton’s text on my phone.
Peyton: I know you are pretending that limp is strategic.
I stare at it longer than I mean to.
My hip hurts. My shoulder hurts. My mouth still remembers the way she looked at my hands during postgame availability, like she could read every bruise I refuse to name.
I should shower. Sleep. Let the team plane and the next morning put distance where sense has failed.
Instead, I walk the hallway once. Then again.
Ridiculous.
Colt opens his door halfway as I pass the second time, toothbrush in his mouth, expression delighted.
“You lost, Cap?”
“Go to bed.”
Colt looks down the hall toward Peyton’s room, then back. “Hydrate.”
I point at him. “Do not.”
Colt shuts the door, laughing around toothpaste.
He will not say a word. He will just know.
That is worse.
I make it to Peyton’s door and stop.
I can still leave.
