Then do not.
Gil: I trust you. But I need the line clear.
I stare at the words.
The line is clear.
The feelings are not.
Peyton: Professionally, it is.
Gil: What are you refusing?
Peyton: His family and the hospital. Anything Ryan gave me away from the recorder.
Peyton: The public fact can stand. He left a game for a family emergency. The rest is not mine.
Gil: And the profile?
Peyton: It ran. The private version did not. That stays true.
Gil: Put that in writing before legal asks.
Peyton: I will.
Gil: And personally?
I look toward the elevators.
Ryan is upstairs with his mother. Somewhere in the same building, Bill is trying to be steady for two girls who slept in plastic chairs. I am sitting in the middle of it with coffee I cannot drink and a heart that has stopped pretending neutrality is available.
Peyton: Personally, I am in trouble.
Gil takes longer to answer than he should.
Gil: Yeah. I was afraid of that.
Gil: Keep the two stories apart on the page. The rest we figure out off it.
Peyton: I won’t lie about which is which.
Gil: Didn’t think you would.
Gil: Good. Westwood concussion piece is ready when you are.
The other story. The one about a sophomore wide receiver put back in after a helmet-to-helmet hit. The mother who kept records. The school district that thought booster money was a shield.
The work waiting for me that has nothing to do with Ryan McAllister and everything to do with the person I wanted to become when I left California.
Peyton: Run it.
Gil: You sure?
Peyton: Yes.
Gil: Good. It is clean, and it is going to make people angry.
Peyton: My brand.