Peyton
Ryan is dressed by six.
Bag packed. Coffee in one hand. Truck keys on the small table by the door. He stands at the hotel window with Austin still gray outside the glass, looking less like a man leaving my bed than a man going back into the fight.
I lean in the bathroom doorway wearing his T-shirt and the kind of expression I hope does not say please stay.
“Morning,” I say.
“Morning.”
His eyes move over me once. Slow enough to warm my skin. Restrained enough to remind us both that the twins are asleep in the next room, his father is across the hall, and his mother is in a cardiac unit four blocks away.
“I’ll be back after the game,” he says.
Logistical. Not romantic.
More intimate than a promise.
The elevator is empty. We stand side by side, both watching our reflections in the brushed steel doors. I look rumpled and under-slept. Ryan looks like a man who knows exactly where he is going and still does not want to leave.
In the lobby, he stops before the parking garage.
His hand comes to the back of my neck. He pulls me in until our foreheads touch. Not a kiss. Something steadier. His breath is warm against my mouth.
“Call me if anything changes.”
“I will.”
“And Peyton?”
“Yeah?”
“I meant it.”
Last night. The staying. The asking. The choice.
My throat tightens. “Me too.”
He kisses me then. Brief. Controlled. Dangerous because it is controlled. Then he walks away with his bag over one shoulder and the whole public world waiting to take another swing at him.
He leaves me the truck. Someone from the team will swing by for him instead.
By eight, the noise is worse.
I am in Susan’s hospital room with coffee going cold in my hand when the first photo lands in my feed. Me at the arena. Baseball cap. Sweatshirt. No credentials. Jennifer in front of me, a restricted corridor behind us.
Former Stampede beat reporter seen inside arena during McAllister departure.
Then the uglier version:
Did Peyton Hayes influence Ryan McAllister’s playoff exit?
There it is. The role they have been waiting to give me.
Not reporter, not woman. Variable.
Susan is propped up against pillows, pretending to hate her breakfast more than she hates being watched by monitors. Bill is reading something on his phone. The twins are arguing over whether hospital pancakes count if nobody actually likes them.
My phone rings.
Gil.
I step into the hall.
“I saw the photo,” he says.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Peyton.”
“I delivered a family emergency. That is all.”
“I know. But the story is not behaving like that is all.”
I close my eyes. The fluorescent light hums overhead.
“Are you writing about him?” Gil asks.
“No.”
“Are you covering the team?”
“No.”
“Are you personally involved with the subject of your revoked-profile story?”
The question is clear, brutal, necessary.
I look through the room window. Susan is watching the twins with a tired smile. Bill is pretending not to listen. I think of Ryan’s hand on my neck in the lobby. Ryan saying he is done leaving rooms he wants to stay in.
“Yes,” I say.
Gil exhales, unsurprised and not pleased either.
“Then we protect your work from his story and his story from your work.”
“I understand.”
“Then we’re square,” Gil says. “Go take care of your family.”
When I hang up, Susan is watching me from the bed.
“I am involved with him,” I say before she can ask.
She nods once. “Then don’t lie about that either.”
It is too simple, which makes it impossible to dodge.
Game Six is tonight. In San Antonio.
I have spent the whole morning saying what I am not. Not covering the team. Not writing about Ryan. Not the story. All of it true. None of it explains why I cannot make myself watch this one from a chair in a cardiac ward.
Susan reads it off me before I find the words.
“Go,” she says.
“You just had heart surgery.”
“And I have Bill, two children, and a very good television. I do not need an audience.” Her eyes are tired and certain. “You want to be in that building. So be in it.”
“It is eighty miles.”
“Then stop arguing and start driving.”
I look at the twins on the floor with their cards. At Bill, reading the side of a granola bar like it owes him answers. At Susan, stitched back together and still running the room from a hospital bed.
“Text when you get there,” she says. “And Peyton—” She waits until I look at her. “Watch the whole thing. Not just him.”
I kiss her forehead.
Then I leave Austin with the afternoon already going long, and drive south.