Chapter 4 #2
“Because . . .” He seems to struggle for an answer.
“Because no club wants a weak link made public. None of us can talk about anything that could help another team’s game-play tactics.
The penalties are too costly.” He’s silenced by passing voices.
Once they fade, he continues. “But it did remind me of someone else who was dropped out of nowhere. No one knows why. It got locked down tight. All I can think is that the guy did something bad enough to trigger a disrepute clause but not something he could be prosecuted for.”
“So you intend to . . .”
He squares those massive shoulders. “Dent the club’s image. It’s the one way left to make them cut ties with me voluntarily. Only I’d need to let them down big time. And in public. Pull the same kind of integrity trigger so hard that I shame them into letting me walk away. And you’ve—”
I square my own shoulders. “Got a track record for being a shame-maker?”
He shrugs. “Someone had already tanked Jack’s confidence.”
I bet I know which sleazy event photographer did that initial tanking.
Calum lays some more blame much closer to home. “But that video of yours going viral must have felt like the whole world was laughing at him. The comments were rough.”
I never meant to topple a domino that led to so many subscribers typing things like ha ha, loser. Now I get to hear the consequences.
“It took Jack a long time to recover. To let himself believe we saw the real him. All of him. Not a snapshot that a manipulative content creator uploaded to make him look stupid.”
We’re alone in this alley. Calum’s older brother might as well share it with us—I can still feel Reece’s disappointment in me, which leaves me feeling weirdly greasy. At least that Lito Dixon reminder brings another option to my mind.
“You need a drug habit. Coke, maybe, or something harder.”
Calum shakes his head. “It’s too late to make a hardcore addiction convincing. I passed testing at camp, and at the start of the season, even before the battery of tests I went through after I was injured.”
I mention what Lito all but confirmed with his party-powder comment. “But what if I videoed you supplying it to other players?”
“No way. I can’t risk getting busted for doing something actually illegal, and then not being able to play again after this is over.”
“Wait. You want to stay in the game?”
“Of course I do.” I can’t see him clearly, but he sure sounds reverent. “Hockey is life.”
I’d laugh if I didn’t feel the same way about every single video in my backlist.
“Booze, then. The strong stuff. I’ll upload a video of you washing down your Cheerios with Jack Daniels.” I touch my camera. “Zoom in on you filling your water bottle with neat vodka.”
Again, he shakes his head. “Nope. Plenty of players are already in twelve-step programmes. Alcohol won’t get me out of this contract, just get me in the player assistance program.”
“And you think I can magic up some other reason? It still doesn’t explain—”
“Exactly why I want out?”
I nod, and Calum must see that—he nods too. Then he slowly shakes his head and lets out the kind of hopeless sound I last did when la Sylvie was on the point of sinking. If I didn’t hear that all-is-lost noise with my own ears, I’d think his reason was weak.
“I need to come home.”
Home is the last place I ever wanted to be, unless it had my grand-mère in it. Especially at Christmas. A pang of missing her chimes so loudly I almost shout what seems an obvious solution.
“Then you need a sex tape.” I backtrack just as quickly. “I mean that I could fake a sex tape for—”
He cuts me off. “You think there isn’t one already?”
I add witnessing a massive set of shoulders hunching to my list of unexpected events this December.
“It leaked the year I first got signed. Taught me a lot about the power of NDAs, but Mum wasn’t impressed.” His head dips for a third time. “Said she didn’t raise me to put the Ho in hockey.”
That surprises me into laughing. It echoes in this narrow alley.
Thankfully, he laughs too, and I catch the gleam of a quick smile even though he grumbles.
“She never, ever lets me forget it. Even knitted me a Christmas sweater with it right here.” He lands a hand over his heart.
“I’m a Ho Ho Ho for hockey. Expects me to wear it each Christmas. Video-calls me especially to see it.”
“You don’t spend Christmas together?”
“Not unless the fam flies over, but that doesn’t always fit around Reece’s workload.
Or Seb’s. We do all celebrate together—early or late, depending on my season.
This will be the first time I’ll make it home for the real deal since turning pro.
” He closes his eyes, and this is quieter.
“Be my first Christmas in Cornwall since right before I turned eighteen.” For a moment, that’s how old he sounds instead of getting up there in his late twenties.
His next growl reminds me that he’s had years to become ferocious.
“Whatever we agree—if we do agree—that Cornish visit is completely off-limits. You’d only have the three weeks that I’ll be based here in London. ”
“So there’ll be no Ho in hockey for me this Christmas.”
“Nope. And no sex tape. Besides, management didn’t see anything too immoral about a rookie fucking first and thinking later. Mum did. And yes, the media team got it taken care of, but nothing online is gone forever, is it?”
“Non.”
“Trust me,” Calum all but sighs. “That video did me a favour. Gave me a head start at seeming like a serious player, yeah? A real sex tape didn’t get me out of my contract back then.
Faking a new one won’t work either.” He looks up and his eyes don’t hold ice chips.
They reflect the red blink of my GoPro, and that colour usually signals stop or danger. “You can drop the subject.”
If I were smarter, I would. He’s giving me the same warning traffickers did when I chased them with my camera.
Back off or else.
That always told me I was getting closer than they wanted to the heart of their business operation. And just like every single time I got close enough to the real truth to almost grasp it, I can’t stop myself from sailing straight into the path of trouble.
“But what if your next sex tape was with a man?”
He doesn’t answer.
Or move.
If I ever needed a definition of preternatural, his stillness gives it.
I more than half expect to get mashed or crushed like one of his opponents for suggesting what comes naturally to me, even if I didn’t outright offer myself as a co-star. “I-I didn’t mean with me. Or for real. I’d be behind the camera, that’s all. Then I’d . . .”
My mouth dries at him somehow looming closer to me without moving a muscle.
He’s huger than before, and again, I should bail before he can land a curled fist on me.
I speed up my speaking, gabbling faster. “B-but I did read that hockey and Pride don’t truly go together. Faking it could get you off the hook, right?”
“Wrong.”
I’ve faced underwater killers. He surges forward, as powerful as any orca, and I should say my prayers.
Instead, I get kissed by a big, bad hockey player.