I see.
She knows I see.
Let the ice do what the conference room could not.
“You going to write that?” I ask.
“That you are injured?”
“That I hide it.”
Her pen does not move. “Depends on whether it matters.”
“Everything matters when you put it in print.”
“Then give me a reason to understand it before I do.”
Peyton Hayes makes a demand sound like restraint.
I lean my forearms on the top of the boards. The rule between us stays unnamed.
“Houston is tonight,” I say. “Bus leaves in forty.”
“I know.”
“Road games are different.”
“So are unsanctioned practice invitations.”
“This wasn’t an invitation.”
“No?”
“It was a test.”
Her mouth curves, quick and sharp. “Did I pass?”
I look at her notebook. At the line of her throat. At the pen caught between fingers that have gone still.
“Not sure yet.”
The arena door opens again before I can push off.
Evan McKinney comes in with his stick over one shoulder and his helmet dangling from two fingers. He stops when he sees Peyton on the bench.
“Media gets morning skate now?”
“Private session,” I say.
Evan steps onto the rubber. “That sounds like a sentence Jennifer would hate.”
“Good thing Jennifer is not here.”
Peyton looks between us, pen lifted, eyes too interested.
Evan sees it. Evan makes a hobby of inconvenient timing.
“You the reporter who wrote Cap like he was a man and not a commemorative statue?”
