Under other circumstances, I might tell him to shut up. Under these, I come close.
Silas intercepts me by the offices with two phones in one hand and an expression I hate on sight.
“Bob is putting the helicopter up,” Silas says. “Car will take you from the practice facility. You can be there in under two hours if the weather holds.”
“Fine.”
“There’s another issue.”
I stop. “Choose your next sentence carefully.”
Silas does not flinch, which is one of the things that make him valuable and unbearable. “Peyton’s follow-up files Tuesday. Right now, her version is built on the article, last night’s game, and whatever she got from the owner’s box. If she is frozen out during a family emergency, she’ll write from outside again.”
I stare at him. For a second the hallway has no sound except the muffled clatter of sticks from the equipment area.
“You want me to take a reporter to my mother’s surgery.”
“I want you to decide whether the story gets context from you or assumptions from everybody else.”
“My mother is not context.”
“No. She is your mother. And if Peyton is half the reporter you think she is, she knows the difference.”
I step closer. Silas does not move back. Smart or suicidal. I do not have time to decide.
“Do not use my family for cleanup.”
“Then don’t let Jennifer do it from a distance.” Silas lowers his voice. “You know what happens if you leave this empty. We fill it. Bob fills it. Fans fill it. Your father answers one call from a local outlet while exhausted and suddenly the whole thing is sentimental garbage with three wrong facts and a sponsor-friendly photo.”
My jaw tightens until it hurts.
I think of Peyton in the hallway after Houston, not soft, not cruel. I think of her at the rink, watching what other people missed and writing what I wished she had not. I think of her in the owner’s box last night, visible above the ice, surrounded by people who would have happily turned my life into a corrected headline.
I trust her judgment less than I want.
I trust the organization’s more.
“My terms,” I say.
Silas exhales. “Name them.”
“No hotel. Closest real hotel is two hundred miles away in the nearest city, and I am not putting her in some roadside motel with every local reporter sniffing around. If she comes, she stays at the farm because my father will insist on it. Keep cameras away from my family. My mother is off-limits for quotes, and nobody puts Peyton in the hospital room unless my family says so. No PR copy. No Jennifer.”
“Reasonable.”
“Do not call my boundaries reasonable like you invented them.”
Silas is already texting. “I’ll ask.”
“Ask?”
“Peyton. She still gets to say no.”
I hate that, too. The tiny flare of respect. The worse flare of wanting her to say yes.
I shove my gear into a bag without remembering crossing the hall to my stall. Roman packs my chargers. Sully gives me the next two games off if I need them, then comes by and bumps my shoulder without saying anything. Evan lingers near the end of the row, taping and untaping his stick with unnecessary violence.
“You got the room,” I say to Roman.
