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"No."

"You didn't tell the kid."

"No."

"Why?"

I look at the paper. I look at Brandt's name, printed in a plain font by a machine that doesn't care about any of it.

"Because it would've made it worse," I say. "If I make a thing out of it, it's a thing. The room splits. Brandt and Kowal have been here a long time. Half the guys came up with them. You want a war in October?"

"I want to know why my captain covers for two guys who hung a tutu in a twenty-year-old's stall."

"I didn't cover for anyone."

"You threw out the evidence and told nobody." He takes his glasses off. Moretti never takes his glasses off. "Owen. I've known you since you were nineteen. You don't let things go. You held a grudge against a linesman from Winnipeg for four years."

"He blew an icing call in a playoff game."

"It was the right call."

"It was the wrong call."

"The point," Moretti says, "is that you don't let things go. So why this?"

I don't have an answer. Not one I can say in this office. I sit there, and the printout sits there, and Moretti waits me out, because he's always been better at waiting than I have.

"I'll handle Brandt," I say finally.

"How?"

"I'll handle it."

"Owen."

"I said I'll handle it, Coach."

He looks at me a long time. Then he puts his glasses back on, folds the printout in half, and puts it back in the drawer.

"I'm not doing this to punish you," he says. "The rooming thing."

"It feels like it."

"I know it does." He shuts the drawer. "That kid needs somebody in his corner who everybody in that room respects. You're the only guy who fits. If I'm honest with you—" He stops. Moretti doesn't stop. "You've been living in a hotel in your own head since June. Maybe it'll be good for you to have somebody in the other bed who won't shut up."

"That's not a reason to assign me a roommate."

"No, it's not," he agrees. "The brand people's reason is the reason. Mine's a bonus." He picks up his phone. "Get your knee looked at. Monday, eight a.m."

Dana takes one look at the knee and says a word I've never heard her say.

"It's fine," I tell her.

"It's the size of a grapefruit, Owen." She presses around the edges with two fingers, and I grab the side of the table. "You dove on it."

"The puck was right there."

"The puck was in Denver's net about half a second later." She sits back on her stool. "You want to tell me what that was?"