“Interpreted?” My voice drops. “Toni?—”
“Don’t.” The word cuts. “I need to know,” she says, “whether the photo was taken without your knowledge.”
“Fuze had his phone out. I saw it. I didn’t stop him.”
Her expression is doubtful. She contains it. “Right.”
“I didn’t think it would leave the team chat.”
“That was naïve.”
“Yes. It was.” I drag a hand through my hair.
She picks up the iPad. Sets it down again. Her hands are steady, but she is making them steady, and I can see the work of it. “My supervisor wants a call at nine. Damian Price wants a call at nine-fifteen.” She pauses. “The league’s ethics review process for conduct officers involves an assessment of any relationship, real or perceived, between the officer and the assigned player. If an evaluator deems a relationship to compromise the integrity of the compliance program…” she stops.
“They’ll pull you from the assignment,” I say.
“They pull me from the assignment.” A beat. “Or from the league.”
The room is noiseless. The monitor runs footage on mute. I watch her stand in the blue light, in the gray morning, holding herself with the particular stillness of a woman who spent years making sure she had no weak points. Someone found one this morning and put it on the internet. “What happened on the dock, and last night,” I say. “Was real.”
“I know that.”
“It was also private.”
“I know that, too.” Her chin lifts. “The problem isn’t what it was. The problem is what four hundred thousand people have decided it was.”
“Then we correct it.”
“You can’t correct a screenshot, Max.”
“You can correct the record. The door locked behind us. Dave can confirm we were on the dock for twenty minutes. The alarm is logged by facilities.” I step closer. “We tell the truth about the dock.”
“The truth,” she says, “is that I was on a service dock with my assigned player in a compromising photograph, and I have been meeting with him outside of scheduled sessions, and I—“ She stops. Her entire face locks down. “The truth is complicated.”
“The truth is that I was in a towel because a fire alarm doesn’t wait for clothing.” Ihold her gaze. “A conversation unfolded on the dock. And that I was holding your hand because you were cold.”
She stares at me. The words are true. They are also insufficient for what they were, and we both know it. “That’s not the whole truth,” she says.
“No,” I agree. “But it’s the truth that belongs to the league. What’s left is ours.”
“You can’t protect me from this,” she says.
“I’m not trying to protect you.” I stop close enough that I can see the careful way she’s breathing. “You can handle this. You’ve been handling things alone since the morning you strode into our locker room.” I hold her gaze. “I’m trying to be in it with you. There’s a difference.”
She goes completely still. “Toni.” My voice drops. “Let me be in it.” Her phone lights up on the table. The screen displays the name, which we both notice. Dad. The world contracts.
Her face has never done this before. Every layer comes apart at once. For two seconds, I see her younger, scared self.
She picks up the phone, looks at it, and then sets the screen to “Do Not Disturb.”
“You should answer,” I say.
“I will.” She doesn’t move. “In a minute.”
“He’s going to call again.”
“I— “She stops. Her thumb presses against the case. “He doesn’t know,” she says. “About Rockford. About any of it. He assigned me to this facility. He thought it was a straightforward compliance post.” A pause. “He trusted me.”
