Peyton
Practice does not sound like a game.
That is the first thing I write down.
No anthem. No crowd. No broadcast music trying to bully the building into drama. Just blades cutting the ice, pucks snapping off sticks, coaches calling corrections, and men talking in shorthand.
From the media rail above the lower bowl, I can see the entire shape of the Stampede at once.
Ryan is not the loudest person on the ice.
That is almost disappointing.
Finn O’Sullivan fills silence like it has insulted his mother. Colt Riley turns every drill into a one-man comedy revue. Evan McKinney skates with the loose arrogance of a man who believes structure is useful mostly because it gives him something to violate with style.
Lex Volkov, in net, taps his left post, then his right, then drags one skate through the crease before every rep.
I write: Volkov crease ritual. Left-right-sweep. Do not call superstition unless confirmed.
On the ice, Finn tries to jump a passing lane early and gets burned when Zach slides the puck behind him.
“Again,” Ryan says.
One word. Not loud.
Finn circles back.
The drill resets.
Evan leans on his stick near the blue line, smiling like he has discovered a private joke. Ryan does not look at him. He does not need to.
“McKinney,” Ryan says.
“I am a model citizen.”
“You are in the wrong lane.”
“Creatively.”
“Wrong creatively is still wrong.”
Colt laughs so hard he misses the first pass. The puck hits his shin guard and pops sideways. Samantha Cole catches it on camera from the bench tunnel, her lens moving from Colt’s grin to Ryan’s unimpressed profile.
Ryan sees the camera without turning his head.
I write: Knows where every eye is.
Then I cross out every and write most.
Because he has not found mine yet.
That should not please me.
It does.
The next sequence moves faster. Shift-change drill.
Forty seconds hard, then off. I watch Ryan control tempo without owning every puck.
He points once at Roman, two fingers down.
Roman drops lower before the pass arrives.
Zach looks over his shoulder before Ryan speaks.
Colt adjusts his angle because Ryan’s stick blade opens by half an inch.
It is not command in the obvious sense.
It is gravity.
Even here, on open ice, the team moves around him.
I forget to write.
That is dangerous.
I force my pen back to the page.
Captain as pressure valve.
Below, Evan breaks structure again.
This time it works.
He jumps the middle, steals the pass, and sends a ridiculous backhand feed to Finn, who buries it and immediately celebrates like the drill is a legally binding playoff series.
“O’Sullivan,” Coach Sully barks. “You scored in practice; you did not overthrow a government.”
Finn points at Evan. “He started it.”
Evan lifts both hands. “I inspire excellence.”
Ryan skates past my side of the rink and finally looks up.
Not long.
Just enough.
His gaze hits my notebook, then my face, then the line of my mouth like he remembers the hallway and has decided to be annoyed about it all over again.
I keep writing because dignity is a muscle and mine needs exercise.
Ryan turns back to the drill.
Colt notices anyway.
Of course, Colt notices.
He coasts by Ryan with a grin I can see from the rail. “Press box, Cap. Your favorite constitutional violation is watching.”
“Skate,” Ryan says.
“That was not a denial.”
“It was a warning.”
“Same tone.”
Ryan shoves him lightly with one glove. Colt laughs and accelerates into the next rep.
I write: Riley chirps him about me. Ryan does not deny it. Possible ego issue? Possible my ego issue.
The last note is not for publication.
Unfortunately, it is true.
After practice, Jennifer walks me toward the elevator with the alert cheer of a woman escorting a lit match through a fireworks warehouse.
“You’ll have ten minutes with Ryan after media,” Jennifer says. “Questions on the profile, leadership, team culture. Nothing medical, nothing family without prior clearance.”
“You say prior clearance like I brought a shovel.”
“You wore boots.”
I look down. “These are professional boots.”
“Those boots have trespassed.”
“Allegedly.”
Jennifer’s smile suggests she admires the boots and would still confiscate them if necessary.
The elevator doors open.
Ryan is inside.
He would be.
Base layer under a team quarter-zip, hair damp at the edges, tape still around two fingers. He looks from Jennifer to me, then back to Jennifer.
“This is not subtle,” he says.
Jennifer steps in anyway. “Neither are you.”
The three of us ride down two floors in a silence that has legal implications.
At the next stop, a staffer waves Jennifer over before the doors have fully opened. Jennifer gives me a look that says, “Do not make paperwork with your face,” then steps out.
The doors close.
Ryan and I are alone.
The elevator hums downward.
I look at the numbers above the door because looking at him feels too much like admitting the air has changed.
“You take notes during practice,” he says.
“I am a reporter.”
“You stopped writing during the shift-change drill.”
My head turns before I can stop it.
He is watching me now. Not the notebook. Not the badge. Me.
“You were busy,” I say.
“Still noticed.”
“That must be exhausting.”
“It is useful.”
“For hockey?”
His eyes flick to my mouth, then back, with irritating discipline. “Not always.”
The elevator seems to shrink around us.
I can smell soap and cold air under clean fabric. I can see a bruise along his wrist where the tape does not quite cover it. I want to ask if it hurts. I want to know whether he would answer honestly. I want a lot of things that belong nowhere near a profile outline.
“You should watch yourself,” he says.
The same warning. Softer this time. Worse.
“With the story?”
“With what you think you see.”
I look at him fully then. “Maybe you should watch what you let me see.”
The elevator doors open on the service level.
Neither of us moves.
Then Ryan steps back first, giving me room to pass.
It should feel like victory.
It feels like a delay.
As I walk out, his voice follows me.
“Peyton.”
I turn.
His face has gone unreadable again, but his eyes have not.
“Ten minutes,” he says. “Ask better questions than everyone else.”
My pulse moves before my pride can stop it.
“Try giving better answers.”
For a second, the corner of his mouth lifts.
Then the captain returns.
I walk toward the media room with my notes pressed against my chest and the terrible certainty that the story has just leaned closer.
Ryan
I almost do not go to her room.
Later, I will like that version best: the almost.
Almost makes me sound cautious.
The truth is that ten days of sanctioned access have happened in between, and none of it has stayed sanctioned.
Practices. A shootout win at home. Postgame availabilities where she asked clean questions and looked at my hands when she thought I would not notice.
The team charter to Dallas with Peyton three rows back, close enough that I kept losing the thread of whatever Colt was saying.
She kept the recorder on for leadership and culture and saved the dangerous questions for elevators, bus doors, and hotel lobbies, where no one could hear enough to call it unprofessional.
By the time we landed, the interview had stopped being the reason either of us kept ending up in the same hallway.
After the road game in Dallas, the hotel corridor is quiet except for the ice machine losing a fight with itself and someone laughing too loudly three doors down. I stand outside my own room with the key card in my hand and Peyton’s text on my phone.
Peyton: I know you are pretending that limp is strategic.
I stare at it longer than I mean to.
My hip hurts. My shoulder hurts. My mouth still remembers the way she looked at my hands during postgame availability, like she could read every bruise I refuse to name.
I should shower. Sleep. Let the team plane and the next morning put distance where sense has failed.
Instead, I walk the hallway once. Then again.
Ridiculous.
Colt opens his door halfway as I pass the second time, toothbrush in his mouth, expression delighted.
“You lost, Cap?”
“Go to bed.”
Colt looks down the hall toward Peyton’s room, then back. “Hydrate.”
I point at him. “Do not.”
Colt shuts the door, laughing around toothpaste.
He will not say a word. He will just know.
That is worse.
I make it to Peyton’s door and stop.
I can still leave.
I knock.
She opens immediately, which means she has been waiting near the door and intends to pretend otherwise.
Oversized shirt. Bare feet. Hair down. Notebook on the bed behind her. No blazer armor, no media-room distance.
Her eyes go to my shoulder, then my mouth, then back to my face.
“This is a bad idea,” she says.
“You texted me.”
“I said your limp was fake.”
“You were wrong.”
“So you came here to correct the record?”
“I came here because you noticed.”
The truth lands between us, too blunt to retrieve.
Peyton’s hand tightens on the edge of the door.
For once, she does not answer quickly.
I should take that as mercy and walk away.
Instead, I say, “Tell me not to come in.”
Her breath shifts.
“Would you listen?”
“Yes.”
That matters. I see that it matters.
Peyton steps back.
I enter.
The door clicks shut behind me.
The room is small and too warm, lit by one lamp near the bed. Her laptop is open to a blank document with my name in the title.
I see it and look away.
Wanting her is bad enough.
Seeing my name on her screen is worse.
“We should talk,” she says.
“We are talking.”
“No. We are using words as foreplay.”
My laugh comes out rough. “That a professional diagnosis?”
“Field observation.”
I move closer because she has not told me to stop. She tips her face up because she is brave or reckless or both.
“If this happens,” she says, “it cannot be because you are angry after a game.”
“I’m not angry.”
“You always look angry.”
“Not right now.”
Her gaze drops to my mouth. “No. Not right now.”
I touch her wrist first. Two fingers, light enough to be refused. Her pulse jumps under my hand.
“Peyton.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“No,” she says, and the honesty nearly ruins me. “But I want to.”
That is enough.
The first kiss happens with the door closed and the room still pretending to be ordinary.
My mouth finds hers lightly, once, like a question neither of us can ask in daylight.
Peyton answers by fisting one hand in my shirt and pulling me closer.
I give her the second kiss slower because the first told me too much.
Her mouth is warm and clever under mine, opening on a breath that sounds almost angry.
Peyton makes a small noise against me, half protest, half permission, and I feel it travel straight through the discipline I have spent years pretending was bone-deep.
I keep my hand at her waist, thumb still, fingers spread over the thin cotton of her shirt.
Not lower. Not higher. The restraint feels obscene because it is deliberate, because every place I do not touch her becomes something we both know I have thought about.
Peyton releases the kiss just enough to breathe. “Are you always this controlled?”
“No.”
The answer comes out too rough.
Her eyes darken. “Good.”
I should step back now. I should let that be the edge of the mistake.
Instead I dip my head and put my mouth to the hinge of her jaw, open and slow, and feel her fingers tighten in my hair hard enough to sting.
“Ryan.”
My name does not sound like a warning in her mouth.
Neither of us has moved.
After that, restraint becomes difficult.
I press her against the wall beside the door, one hand resting on her shoulder and the other at her waist, giving me a place to hold all my desire without losing control.
Her kisses match her arguments.
She comes straight at me and dares me to answer.
“Still trouble?” I ask against her mouth.
“Worse.”
“Tell me to go.”
Her fingers slide into my hair.
“No.”
The word goes through me harder than any hit.
I kiss her again, and the hallway, the game, the team fall away until there is only Peyton’s breath, Peyton’s hands, Peyton choosing me with every inch I give her the chance to refuse.
I stop first because one of us has to and because if it is her, I will spend the rest of the night wondering whether I have taken too much before she finds the words.
I press my forehead to the wall beside her head, breathing hard.
Peyton’s hand stays in my shirt.
“That was noble in a very irritating way.”
“It was survival.”
“Whose?”
I laugh once, low and not happy. “Both.”
For a moment, we stand there with the lamp throwing yellow light across the bed and the whole hotel quiet outside a door I have not locked. Her mouth is swollen. My pulse is stupid. The story on her laptop has my name in it, and the woman in front of me has my restraint in her fist.
I want to stay.
That makes leaving necessary.
“Lock the door,” I say.
Peyton’s expression shifts. Not hurt. Not exactly. More like she catches the wound before it can hide.
“Ryan.”
“Please.”
She lets go slowly.
I leave before I can be talked into becoming careless, and I hate myself for the relief that follows me down the hall.