Page 49 of Game Misconduct
But we’re not that kind of honest with each other.
“You came here to win,” I say. “Winning requires oxygen. Optics are oxygen. Those kids will gladly give it to us for free if you don’t choke on your pride.”
He leans forward, forearms braced on his thighs. The chair creaks, just a little, a sound that shouldn’t feel intimate but does. “You think this is about pride.”
“I think this is about choice,” I say. “You can choose to make my job harder, or you can choose to make it easier. Either way, my job gets done. Yours goes better if you don’t pick a fight with a camera.”
“That what this is? You and your job?”
“That’s what all of this is. My name is on the deed. Every misstep hits my desk first. Every win and every loss lands on my back. So, yes. It’s my job. It’s also your job. We do them or we watch other people do them for us.”
He studies me for a long moment, and the weight of it is almost physical.
I feel it at the base of my throat. Along the inside of my wrists. Behind my knees.
Other places no one can see, but I can sure as hell feel.
“Listen, media day wasn’t all your fault,” I say, because it’s true and because I need one moment of truth between us that isn’t a weapon. “They came for you. You protected yourself. I don’t blame you for that.”
Surprise registers subtly in those icy blue eyes, shifting the heat from fury to focus.
“You don’t blame me,” he says, not quite a question.
“No. But I do need you to course-correct. And I need you to do it quickly.”
He looks back down at the folder, his thumb dragging along the edge, and I almost feel the scrape against my skin.
He’s thinking about the cameras, the kids, the way the world turns fast when you invite it to watch.
“The hospital…you’ll be there.”
I nod. “Yes.”
“With me.”
“Yes.”
“Reading,” he adds, like he can make it sound ridiculous enough to end the conversation.
I roll my lips inward to keep from smiling. “A book called ‘The Hockey Sweater.’ And if you complain about the translation I’ll let the eight-year-olds correct your French on live local television.”
For the first time since he walked in, his mouth moves in something that could almost be a smile if you glossed it in fiction and put it under soft lighting.
“You’ve thought this through,” he says.
“I make a living thinking things through.
He tilts his head, that stare on me once more. “Do you make a living doing it for me?”
“That depends on whether you insist on making it necessary.”
He sits back again with a sigh.
“I’m not a celebrity. I’m not polished. I’m not pretty. I’m thirty-nine, and I creak when I get out of bed. Half the guys in that room want my job because they should. Cameras make me feel like I’m supposed to lie. I don’t like who I have to be to make you happy in front of a lens.”
The truth of it hits hard. Not because I want him polished. Not because I want him to lie.
Because there’s something indecent about asking a man whohas built his life on control to hand a piece of that control to strangers with tripods.
