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"Nine o'clock. Both of us."

Webb nods slowly. He blows on his coffee. "What are you going to say?"

"I don't know."

"You know." He doesn't look away. "You've known since you saw it. I can see it on your face. You've got the Nashville face on."

"Marcus—"

"I'm not going to tell you what to do. I told you in Toronto I'd never ask you anything you weren't ready to tell me, and I meant it." He sets the coffee down on the nightstand, carefully, next to the lamp. "But whatever you say in that room, Owen, you say it knowing he's sitting right there. Listening. That's all. Just know he's listening."

He gets up. At the door, he stops.

"Twelve years," he says. "I've never seen you as happy as you've been since Christmas. Not once. Not even when you got the C."

He leaves. I sit there with the coffee going cold in my hand.

Pruitt's suite is on the top floor, with a view of the river. He's standing at the window in his team quarter-zip when I come in, and he doesn't turn around. Nadia's on the couch with her tablet and both phones and a face like she's been awake since four-forty. Priya's in a chair by the door. Moretti's standing in the corner with his arms crossed.

Rémy comes in five minutes after me. He stands on the other side of the room from me, by the door.

"Sit down," Pruitt says. "Both of you."

We sit. Not next to each other. Two chairs, with the coffee table between.

Pruitt turns around. He looks tired. He looks older than I've ever seen him.

"I want to say one thing first," he says. "I don't care who anybody on this team sleeps with. I want that on the record, in this room. I don't care. I've got a brother in Phoenix who's been married to a man for fourteen years. I was the best man."

Nobody says anything.

"What I care about," Pruitt goes on, "is that we have game four of the Final tonight. What I care about is that the league called me at six this morning. Frostline's marketing VP called me at six-oh-five. I've got three sponsors in my inbox asking for clarity. I've got a head coach who needs his top line to be thinking about hockey tonight. Not this."

He sits down on the arm of the couch, next to Nadia.

"So I'm going to ask you once," he says. "Just once. I need a straight answer. Nadia's going to write a statement either way. But I need to know which statement."

He looks at me. Not at Rémy. At me.

"Is there anything to this?"

The room's quiet. The air conditioning hums. Out the window, a barge is going down the river, slow and gray.

I can feel Rémy looking at me. I don't look back.

I think about the picture. About two point one million people. About the comment that said the kid is 20. do the math. gross. About Frostline, and section nine, and every kid who's got his poster on their wall. About my knee, and the word replacement, and seventeen years of never giving anybody a reason.

I think about Danny in a parking lot, saying I thought you were different.

"No," I say.

I hear Rémy breathe in. Just once. Sharp.

"It was the ice machine," I say. My voice sounds normal. Completely normal. The voice I use for reporters. "He went to get ice. I held the door. I leaned down to tell him something. The picture's bad. It looks like something it's not."

"Owen—" Moretti says, from the corner.

"It's nothing, Coach." I look at Pruitt. "It was a mistake. To be in the hall that late. To leave the door open like that, with the Final going on. That's on me. It was a mistake, and I'm sorry it's become a distraction. It won't happen again."