Ryan
Iam still stretching when Silas Vane’s text comes in.
Upstairs. Now.
Urgent. Context-free.
Management loves urgency when they are not the ones bleeding for it.
I finish the stretch anyway.
The bruise on my shin has darkened since morning skate. I press two fingers beside it and decide it is not worth anyone else’s opinion.
Routine first.
Always.
“You hiding that from Maren?” Roman Keene asks from the next mat.
“It is a bruise.”
“It is a color I have only seen on weather maps.”
Across the training room, Dr. Maren Ellis sets down the tape, tells Zach to keep the wrist still, and crosses the floor toward me. She does not hurry. She never hurries. Hurrying would suggest the players set the schedule.
She crouches at my shin and presses the edge of the bruise with two fingers, no permission asked.
I do not move.
The training room is the one place my authority does not travel. In here she outranks the letter on my chest, she knows it, and she is decent enough not to enjoy it where the room can watch.
“Tell me when it changes,” she says.
“It is not going to change.”
She presses lower, and there it is — the bright line of it I have been pretending costs nothing. My breath catches for half a second. She watches the breath, not my face.
“There,” she says. “That is the part you planned to skip.”
“It is a bruise,” I say again.
“It is a bruise today.” She rolls the sock down, studies the swelling, rolls it back up with more care than the injury has earned. “Bruises are honest. It is the men attached to them I have to read.”
“You have read me wrong before.”
“I read your shoulder in March exactly right. You called it fine. You missed four games calling it fine.” She does not look up. “I have a long memory and a longer file.”
Maren does not get managed. Players have learned that. So has management. So have I.
“I am playing tonight.”
“I did not say you weren’t.” She stays crouched, which keeps me sitting, which is the point. “You ice it twenty minutes after your meeting. And you tell me if it stiffens by the third — out loud, to me, not to the inside of your own head where I cannot reach it.”
Roman laughs. Maren does not look at him. He stops.
“They copy you,” she says, quieter now, only for me. “A captain who plays through a thing and never says so teaches the room that saying so is the weak move. Then someone who should speak up swallows it instead.”
I have no clean answer for that.
She has a way of making a bruise sound like a confession.
“Twenty minutes,” I say. “After the meeting.”
“Out loud,” she says, and stands.
“Out loud.”
Zach, wrist half-taped, says, “You are emotionally limping.”
I leave before the room gets proud of itself.
On my way up, Evan McKinney falls into step beside me with a coffee he absolutely has not gotten from the players’ lounge.
“If this is about the reporter, ask whether she gets room access. Pretty woman with a notebook watches warmups, ends up near your hallway, and management texts like somebody found smoke in the vents. I am gifted at patterns.”
“Stay out of it.”
Evan peels off toward the executive wing, grinning. “Room does not love strangers with pens, Cap.”
He is right. That is the part that lands wrong.
By the time I reach the executive wing, I know the meeting is not a request.
Glass walls. Sponsor photos. Polished wood.
Silas sits behind his desk. Marc Nichols sits across from him, already still.
The room offers neither water nor small talk.
“Close the door,” Silas says.
“Peyton Hayes,” Silas says.
I look at the byline photo on the tablet.
The woman from the glass.
The hallway.
The pulse I watched jump when I got too close.
“I know who she is.”
Marc’s brow lifts. “Already?”
“She was where she wasn’t supposed to be.”
Silas slides the tablet back. “She requested expanded access. Profile piece. You, the team, leadership, routine.”
“What did you give her?”
“We haven’t confirmed anything without briefing you.”
I laugh once. “That is not what I asked.”
Silas’s mouth flattens. “We’re offering a sit-down.”
“You’re offering me.”
“We’re offering access.”
“Funny how often those sound the same in here.”
“She’s smart,” Silas says. “High-profile California outlet before she landed here. We do not know why she left.”
I hear the space Silas leaves around the sentence.
“But you looked.”
“Of course we looked.”
Marc leans forward. “She’s looking for a narrative. If we refuse, denial becomes part of the story. If we cooperate, we shape the frame.”
“You want me to perform.”
“I want you to be yourself,” Silas says. “Maybe the version that does not scare sponsors.”
I smile without humor.
I have learned to give less.
Peyton Hayes looks like she would hate less.
I take the tablet from Silas and scroll past her byline photo to the game recap. Two lines are highlighted in yellow by someone in PR.
I ignore both and read the sentence about Finn.
Then the sentence about Evan.
She has seen the play beneath the celebration.
“McKinney is not part of a captain profile,” Silas says.
I look up. “Then you do not understand my room.”
“We’re asking you to help protect the team,” Marc says.
The team.
There is the lever.
The room full of guys trying to make an expansion franchise matter in a city that loved them fast and loudly.
I look through the glass toward the rink below.
Peyton Hayes stands in the conference room above practice, chin lifted, notebook open, posture too rigid to be relaxed.
She would hate being managed.
That makes two of us.
“When?” I ask.
Relief crosses Marc’s face.
I hate that most.
“She’s here now,” Silas says.
Of course she is.
“I’ll send talking points,” Silas says.
I open the door.
“McAllister.”
Silas’s voice lowers. “Do not make this harder than it has to be.”
I look back. “You first.”
At 10:58, I delete the talking points without reading past Captain McAllister is proud to represent.
At 10:59, I see Peyton through the glass, notebook open, chin held high as if the room has already tried to corner her and failed.
At 11:00, she looks up.
I forget the first approved sentence I never planned to use.
Not because she is beautiful. Peyton Hayes looks inconvenient. Like a locked door with a pulse behind it. Like she might ask for the one thing I do not know how to give and then make me want to give it anyway.
Peyton taps her pen once against the notebook.
Impatient, not nervous.
Neither of us smiles.