I lock the phone.
I don’t tell Jax.
I know I’m not going to tell him the moment I walk back into the press area and see him across the ice in warmups, the ritual running the way it runs before every game. I know it the way I know all the things I know about myself that I’m not proud of.
I handle things alone.
I’ve been handling things alone since I was eight years old moving to a new base and figuring out the room before anyone could figure me out. Pack light. Say goodbye clean. Don’t make it harder than it has to be. I got so good at it that I stopped noticing I was doing it.
I said I didn’t want to pack.
That was last week.
I pull out my phone. Call my editor. Get the legal team’s number. Make three calls in the hall outside the press area while warmups happen on the ice without me.
Professional. Methodical. Alone.
The legal call is not reassuring.
Webb has the photos. They’re not illegal. The V. North framing is defamatory but proving it before he runs it is a different problem — the kind that takes weeks I don’t have. My options are confirm on my terms, deny and let him frame it however he wants, or say nothing and watch it land.
I sit in a bathroom stall with my phone and my legal team on speaker and think about Jax in warmups, not knowing any of this is happening.
About the ritual.
The thirteen wraps.
The ghost quiet.
V. North wrote about that ghost like it was a character flaw.
I named it for him in a tunnel.
Now Carson Webb is about to tell the world both of those things happened and connect them, and I am sitting in a bathroom stall deciding which version of this I can live with.
I know which version I’m choosing.
I’m choosing it right now.
I am doing the thing I always do.
Moving first.
Leaving clean.
Turning pain into logistics before it can turn into a plea.
Somewhere in this building, Jax is finishing warmups and putting on his gear.
And he has no idea.
I flush the toilet I didn’t use.
Walk back out.
Pick up my camera.
Go to work.
