Peyton
Jennifer’s office is designed to make influence look tasteful.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the practice rink. Succulents line the sill. The desk is organized without becoming sterile. A framed photo of Jennifer with the team after the franchise’s first home win sits behind her right shoulder, exactly where a visitor can notice it without feeling forced.
Power with good lighting.
I respect the craft. I hate being inside it.
“Peyton, thanks for coming in.” Jennifer stands as I enter. Navy suit. Cream blouse. Smile polished enough to survive a deposition. “Coffee? Water?”
“I’m fine.”
“Of course.”
We sit across from each other and pretend this is a conversation.
“I wanted to touch base about the profile,” Jennifer says. “Your editor reached out about timing, which we appreciate. We want to make sure we’re aligned on approach.”
“Aligned how?”
“You were at the farm. You saw how Ryan handles family, how the organization supports players through personal crisis. That’s important context.”
I cross one ankle over the other. “I’m aware.”
“Good. Sometimes when we’re focused on one angle, we miss the broader story.”
“What angle do you think I’m focused on?”
Jennifer leans in slightly, lowering her voice like we are both reasonable women helping each other avoid a mess. “Ryan’s leadership, yes. But also the Stampede’s values. The way we take care of our people.”
Our people.
Jennifer is folding me into the frame now. Making proximity feel like trust. Making trust feel like debt.
“You’re asking me to soften it,” I say.
Jennifer’s eyes widen a fraction. “I’m asking you to be fair.”
“Fair to Ryan, or fair to the organization?”
“Those are not separate here.”
“They are to Ryan.”
That one lands.
Jennifer’s smile stays in place, but the air behind it changes.
“Ryan is the organization in many ways,” she says. “His story reflects us. The helicopter, the farm, the way Bob Hartley made sure he could be with his mother. That matters. Readers should understand that culture.”
“Readers should understand what happened.”
“Exactly.”
“Then stop telling me where to look.”
Silence.
Short, sharp, enough.
“We respect your integrity,” Jennifer says.
I smile. I can feel how little warmth is in it. “Do you?”
“We would not have given you that level of access otherwise.”
“You gave it because you were afraid of what I would write without it.”
Jennifer sits back.
There. Finally.
The mask does not fall. It never does with someone this good. But it slips enough for me to see the work underneath.
“Access is built on trust,” Jennifer says.
“Access is built on usefulness. Trust is what people call it when both sides still like the trade.”
Jennifer’s mouth tightens.
I stand. “I’ll make sure the piece is accurate.”
“That’s all we’re asking.”
We both know it is not.
Outside Jennifer’s office, Samantha Cole is packing a camera into a black case on a bench by the rink windows. She looks up as I pass.
“You look like you just declined a sponsorship package.”
“Do I?”
“Professionally. With cheekbones.”
I nearly laugh. “I may put that on a mug.”
Samantha zips the case. “For what it’s worth, Jennifer isn’t wrong about the organization taking care of people.”
Samantha lifts one shoulder. “She’s also not neutral. None of us are.”
“Including you?”
“Especially me. I make people look worth believing.” She taps the camera case. “That can be honest. It can also be convenient.”
I look through the glass. Practice has already started below. Players move in hard, clean lines, cutting through the cold air. “Does that bother you?”
“Only on days when I’m paying attention.”
I appreciate the answer too much to say so.
“Ryan cares about that room,” Samantha says. “Jennifer cares about what caring looks like from the outside. Those are different jobs.”
“And you?”
“I try to catch the moment before everybody decides what it means.” Samantha smiles faintly. “Good luck with yours.”
I start to leave it there.
Then Samantha adds, “For what it’s worth, the photo package they asked me to prep this morning was all farm-adjacent.”
I turn back. “Farm-adjacent?”
“Ryan at the farm last summer. His mother at the charity barbecue. One old shot of him with the twins on the glass after a home win.” Samantha’s expression stays neutral, but her fingers tighten on the camera strap. “Nothing current. Nothing private. Still.”
“Still gross?”
“I was going to say strategic, but yes.”
The anger that moves through me is sharp enough to be useful.
“Did you send them?”
“I sent the ones that already ran publicly. I held the twins.” Samantha looks toward the rink. “Kids don’t get volunteered into grown people’s narratives because a man in a suit likes emotional texture.”
I look at her for a beat.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Just revising my theory of photographers.”
“Please make it flattering. We are vain and under-caffeinated.”
I leave the arena, get halfway to the Airbnb, and turn around at a red light.
No.
I am not letting Jennifer be the last voice in my head before I write this piece.
Practice is still running when I slip into the upper level. My credential works.
For now.
Below, the Stampede move through drills with playoff urgency. Coach Sully’s voice snaps off the boards. Pucks crack. Skates carve. The bench gate opens and shuts with a metallic slap.
Ryan is easy to find.
The ice keeps answering him.
He works a two-on-one with Colt and Kowalski, defending both with edge work, timing, and focus that makes everything around him look louder than it is. Coach barks a correction. Ryan adjusts. No argument. No pride.
Then Finn misses a read and drifts too high.
Ryan taps his stick once. Finn drops back into position. The drill resets. No embarrassment. No lecture. Just correction.
I hate how much that matters.
Evan McKinney takes the next rep and blows through a seam I barely see until he is already past it. Ryan closes him off with one shoulder and a clean stick lift. Evan laughs, spins away, and sends the puck back through traffic to Roman like the whole drill is an insult he is answering personally.
The team has edges.
Ryan does not smooth them all down.
He uses them.
I write that in my notebook, then cross out the line because it sounds like a thesis and I am tired of my own brain trying to wear a blazer.
At the end of practice, Ryan is the last one off the ice. He skates one slow lap after everyone else heads for the tunnel, breath visible in the cold air, body moving through something private.
Centering himself.
Or punishing himself.
Maybe both.
He looks up before he reaches the tunnel.
I should step back. I do not.
Our eyes meet across empty seats and rink glass. No smile. No signal. Only the awful knowledge that I have touched the man under the captain, and tomorrow I might hurt him in public.
Ryan lifts one gloved hand to the boards, not a wave. A pause. A question he would never ask where cameras could catch it.
My hand tightens around my notebook.
I do not lift it back.
If I did, Jennifer’s whole office would be right about the danger of access.
Ryan drops his hand and disappears into the tunnel.
Back at the Airbnb, the cursor blinks on a blank page.
I could write the piece Jennifer wants.
The helicopter as generosity. The farm as values. Ryan as the captain molded perfectly by a benevolent organization that knows how to care for its own.
It would be beautiful.
It would be false.
I think about Susan telling me not to make him smaller. Bill warning me that wanting a true story could make a person greedy. Ryan at my door, saying there was no interview tonight, and the way I let him in anyway.
Then I type the headline.
The Captain They Keep Trying to Sell
I sit with it for one breath.
Then I start writing.
The words come faster than they should. The owner’s box. The helicopter. Jennifer’s our people. The hits Ryan takes without complaint.
Then the farm.
I meant to write around the kitchen. I meant to write around a lot of things tonight.
My fingers find it anyway: the refrigerator.
The school photo of two grinning girls pinning down a grocery list, a cardiology appointment card, and a clipping from a Stampede win with Ryan’s face circled in red pen.
A working house holding him up between math homework and a heart that keeps trying to quit.
It is the truest thing I have. It is the entire piece in four objects. A reader will understand everything I have failed to say for three weeks the instant they see that fridge.
I type it.
I know what I am doing while I do it. I was in that kitchen because Bill sent me there to sleep, because Mrs. Alvarez handed me a toothbrush in plastic, because a child asked through a ceiling whether I knew her brother. I was let in as a person. I am spending it as a reporter.
On the nightstand, three weeks old and facedown, my notebook still says Do not steal in my own handwriting.
I leave the sentence in the draft.
For now.
That is the part I do not get to call honest later.