Page 88 of The Grumpy Defenseman

That was fair.

Cruel, but fair.

My hand shook exactly once when I reached for my laptop bag. I hated that he saw it. I hated more that I was glad he saw it.

I opened the file. Turned the screen toward him.

Frame 187 filled the room in blue-white light.

Him on the bench. Helmet off. Mouth open on the exhale. Tired, unguarded, more himself than he had ever meant to be inside an arena.

He looked at it for a long time.

Long enough that I started cataloging objects in the room just to keep from disintegrating: whiteboard marker, old scouting binder, frayed couch arm, my own pulse trying to break out through my throat.

When he finally spoke, his voice was almost absent.

“Jesus.”

The problem was not that it was bad.

Because it was not.

Because it was exactly what I had said it was.

He kept looking at the screen.

“That’s what they want to use.”

“Yes.”

“Of course they do.”

There was no anger in that. Which made it land worse somehow. Just weary recognition. Of systems. Of people who liked honesty most when it could be branded, flattened, and sold back under a caption about leadership.

He reached out and closed the laptop gently.

Then his eyes lifted to mine.

“I believe you when you say you didn’t send it.”

The words went through me like sudden air after being underwater too long.

Then he added, “I also believe you knew what it was and kept it anyway.”

The verdict arrived.

The whole verdict.

Not condemnation.

Both truths alive at once.

“Yes.”

He nodded once. Nothing in it. Just acceptance of the fact pattern.

Then he said, “Get it out of the system.”