Word moved through the team the way it always did — quietly, incompletely, and somehow with total accuracy despite nobody officially confirming a single detail. By the time Reese walked into the locker room for Thursday's practice, three days after the trainers' room reconciliation, it was clear that whatever privacy she and Cole had managed to preserve through the fall had evaporated entirely, replaced by a strange, careful new normal in which everyone knew and almost nobody said anything about it directly.
It was Diaz who broke the ice first, in the most literal way possible — tossing her a fresh roll of tape during warmups and saying, without any particular ceremony, "Heard the review's still ongoing. That's bullshit, for what it's worth. You're the best plus-minus on this roster and e
