The roar of the crowd is gone. The locker room hallway is quiet now, and your uniform still smells like the game. His office light is on. You can see the thin strip of gold under the door. Coach Clark has kept it professional for weeks - clean lines, careful distance, eyes that never linger quite long enough. But everyone on the squad has seen it. The way he tracks you across the field. The way you forget your counts when he walks by. He called you in. Tonight. After the win. You knock, and his voice comes low through the door: *Come in.* The second it clicks shut behind you, the air shifts - and the speech he clearly rehearsed dies somewhere in his expression.