Page 189 of Fake it ’Til Fall

“That doesn’t make me a hero.”

“No,” she says, and her voice is calm enough to ruin me. “It makes you someone who did the wrong thing for the right reason, then paid for it so, she wouldn’t have to.”

I don’t answer.

Daisy steps closer, not touching me. Giving me the choice. I recognize that because I’ve done it for her.

“Does Principal Whitcomb know?”

“No.”

“Your mother?”

“Not all of it.”

“Mark?”

“Enough.”

“Wolfe.”

I look at her.

“You don’t have to bleed forever to keep her safe,” she says.

The sentence hits somewhere I thought I’d sealed off.

I almost tell her she’s wrong.

That the world doesn’t work that way.

That the minute I speak, people will go looking for the woman again. Her name. Her face. The video. The story. They’ll say they want truth, but what they’ll really want is access.

Instead, I say, “I’d never use her to fix my reputation.”

Daisy nods once.

“I know.”

“I thought if they gave me the job,” I continue, “then I’d have a reason to be here. A reason to go back to hockey. A reason to be useful that didn’t look like an apology tour.”

“And now?”

I look at the donor table.

At her cards.

At the clean little way she made help feel like dignity.

“Now I think the job is too small.”

Her brows lift.

“I don’t want to spend the whole dinner asking them to trust me with a whistle,” I say. “I don’t need them. I want them to trust us with the program.”

“Us?”

“Yeah.”