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The office is so quiet I can hear the clock on Pruitt's wall.

"We've been together since November," I say. "He's not— I didn't— He's an adult, and it was his choice, and mine, and nobody on this team knew except the people who figured it out on their own. It never affected the hockey. It made the hockey better. You all saw that."

"We saw it," Moretti says quietly, from the corner.

I look at him. Then at Pruitt again.

"I'm bisexual," I say. It's the third time I've ever said it out loud. Laurel. My mother. Now here. In the bathroom mirror in Toronto, I couldn't get it out at all. It gets easier every time, a little. Not much. A little. "I didn't know until this year. I didn't let myself know. I'm thirty-five, and I didn't know. I'm telling you because I'm not going to lie about it anymore. Not to you. Not to anybody."

Pruitt leans back in his chair. He takes his glasses off. He looks at me for a long, long time.

"Okay," he says.

That's all. Okay. The same word Laurel said on the phone. The same word Rémy said on the orange couch.

"What do you need from us?" Pruitt asks.

I tell them.

I tell them I'm not going to make a statement before game seven. It's his game. It's his night. The whole world's going to be watching him, and I'm not going to put my business on top of his game.

"But if anybody asks me," I say, "I'm not going to say no comment. I'm not going to say it was a mistake, either. If a reporter asks me tomorrow in the hallway if that picture was me, I'm going to say yes."

Nadia's typing now, fast. "Okay. Okay. We can work with that. We can get ahead of it. If we⁠—"

"There's one more thing."

She stops.

"Anything I say is about me," I say. "Only me. I'll say I'm bisexual. I'll say the picture was me. I'll say I lied, and I'm sorry. But I'm not going to say anything about him. Not his name. Not what he feels. Not what we are. That's his to say. If he wants to. When he wants to." I look at Nadia. "I've taken enough from him. I'm not taking that too."

Nadia looks at me for a long moment. Then she puts the tablet down on the couch next to her. She doesn't pick it back up.

"Okay," she says. Her voice is different. Softer. "That's right. That's exactly right."

Priya clears her throat. She's been quiet the whole time, in the chair by the window, with her printout folder on her knees. She's been handing me index cards for six years.

"Can I say something?" she asks.

Pruitt nods.

"In Santa Monica," she says. "In October. When he walked you in past the cameras. I was on the bus. I saw his face when he did it." She looks at me. "Then I watched you in the scrum in Nashville, in January. I stood behind the cameras and I watched you say I didn't hear it, and I didn't stop it. I said last question. I helped you get out of there."

"That was your job."

"No," Priya says. "My job's to protect the players. I protected the wrong one." She opens her folder and takes out a single index card and holds it up. It's blank. "Tomorrow, if anybody asks you in the hallway, I'm not handing you anything. You say whatever you want. I'll stand right next to you."

I look at the blank card.

"Thank you," I say.

"What about Frostline?" Priya asks. "They're going to⁠—"

"He turned them down," Moretti says. "Thursday night. His agent called Pruitt yesterday."

I didn't know. I turn around in the chair so fast my knee screams.

"He turned them down?"