Riley doesn’t say a thing.
Forty minutes. Joint statement. One position. No apology.
We nod. We stand. We leave.
He goes first. I watch the back of his neck down the hall — the way he carries himself, unhurried, like whatever comes next he’s already decided to be ready for.
Two feet apart. I know the difference.
The statement exists. My name is on it next to his and not underneath Webb’s framing, and that’s not nothing. That’s the difference between a story someone tells about you and a story you tell yourself.
I chose which one landed first.
That’s the only thing I did right.
Practice.
I do my job. Camera. Recorder. The professional version of me that has been showing up in this building long enough to know how to move through a room like I’m not carrying anything.
Katarina finds me after the morning skate. No coffee. Just her at the glass, watching the ice clear.
“He’s not mad,” she says.
“I know.”
“Do you.”
I look at the ice. “He stayed. He told me exactly what he had to say and didn’t leave.” A beat. “That’s harder than mad.”
“Yeah,” she says. “It is.”
She doesn’t move. Neither do I.
“He’s trying to figure out how to be in it with you,” she says. “That’s what scared looks like on someone with good posture.”
She leaves.
I stand at the glass for a long time.
Game 3.
I bring both notebooks.
The professional one and the personal one, side by side in the press box. I look at them and think — okay. Both. The whole thing.
The Cyclones lose 4-1. I photograph all of it anyway. Aiden’s goal — the one bright moment in the second period. Liam’s face when the final buzzer sounds, jaw set, already somewhere else. Aurora in the family section with her hands folded in her lap, very still. Brody doing something with his stick on the way off the ice that I absolutely do not photograph because some things stay in the building.
The professional notebook fills up. The personal one fills up more. The things that aren’t for print. The way Jax taps the posts after every save — left, right, crossbar, same every time, even when it isn’t enough. The way Aiden and Liam always find each other in the chaos after a buzzer like they need to confirm the other one is there. Like the ritual doesn’t change based on the result.
Both of them mine. Both of them true.
The city is quiet in the third period.
Not defeated. Just holding. Like the building knows how to absorb a hard night without letting go of the thing underneath it. Twenty thousand people who drove here and paid for parking and wore their jerseys and are going home with a loss, and not one of them leaves early.
I lower my camera.
Just watch.
