Chapter 30 Fletcher
FLETCHER
Afan whirs in the field office as Lawrence and the rest of my cousins comb through the data copied from Dana’s iPad.
“Does she know her iPad is missing?” I ask.
“She’s been pinging it from her phone.” Lawrence looks over. “I’ve blocked it.”
I shift on my feet. “I can just take it back to the stadium, stick it in the lost and found.”
“We need it to unencrypt some of these files.”
“Oh, here we go!” Talbot whoops. “The mother lode. Look at that.”
“Shit.” I read over his shoulder. “That looks intense.”
“Yeah, this is tax-loss harvesting.”
“She’s just running the team into the ground to offset her tax burden for this year.” Anderson whistles.
“Damn.” It’s a gut punch.
“We tried so hard.” I sit down slowly on a folding chair. “This team… It’s people’s entire lives, and it means nothing to her. It’s just numbers.”
My cousins don’t seem that emotional about it.
Jake shrugs. “Them’s the breaks of dealing with billionaires.”
“Just business as usual,” Talbot adds.
“They all do squirrely stuff around this time of year, with it being the tax deadline and all.” Lawrence shrugs.
“Why I hate Christmas.” Hudson glowers.
“Bah humbug, Hudson,” Anderson chirps. Hudson kicks his brother’s chair.
“If we didn’t have to package all of this for the Svenssons, we’d come see your last-ever game at the NHL.” Elsa is cheery.
“The team’s not dead yet,” I grumble.
“Your debt is repaid,” Hudson informs me. “You’re free to go after this game. After, you understand? Don’t want to tip anyone off until the Svenssons are ready to move.”
“I’ll write you a receipt.” Elsa waves me over and prints out something I don’t read.
Hudson signs it, then he burns it.
Lawrence makes a papal cross in the air with his energy drink.
“You coming to Christmas?” Elsa calls after me.
“Nah, he’s gonna go travel, finally live life as a free man after the military and Hudson.” Jake snickers.
“He should be grateful—if it weren’t for me, he’d be in jail,” Hudson says.
The door to the nondescript field office slams shut behind me. I’m alone in the alley. The winter wind rushes in my ears as I zip up my jacket.
My last NHL game. Ever. In my entire life.
And the last night I’m going to spend with Ellie.
I don’t know what the Svenssons are planning, but it sounds like it might end with the team folding and her out of a job.
Once I quit the team, Ellie will know that I was a fraud. She won’t want to be with me anyway.
Ellie’s on the ice. I watch her skate for a moment—sharp, focused, relentless. Every movement is clean. Controlled. Beautiful. Her quick release sends puck after puck at Ren in the net, and I can’t help but admire her form even as something curdles in my gut.
I trudge into the locker room and start pulling on my gear. If this is my last night in the NHL, I’m spending every second of it on the ice.
Zayne’s sitting on the bench, hunched over, looking like he needs a drink. He probably already had one. Eddie shoots me an angry glare when I walk in. Cookie’s sobbing on the floor, his helmet still on, his gloved hands covering his face. The sound rips through the room like a gut punch.
“What happened?” I demand.
“Guess you didn’t hear the good news,” Bramms mutters bitterly.
“What?”
Bramms says, “She’s leaving.”
My gut clenches. “Who?”
Bramms stares at me, dead-eyed. “Ellie. They’re hiring a new coach. She’s leaving us.”
Jonesy sighs. “Does that mean no more snacks?”
“Shit,” Ziggy says soberly. “No more winning.”
A black hole opens up inside my chest. This is not how I’m going out.
“Put your gear on. Now,” I snap at the players, trying to dig deep and remember whatever that self-important colonel preached in that leadership seminar they all forced us to take one rainy day on base.
“I don’t fucking care if Ellie’s about to…
leave.” I almost choke on the word. Almost. “We’re in the NHL.
We’re here to play hockey, and we’re here to win. ”
I look around, meeting every eye. “If we don’t want her to leave, then we give her a reason to stay.”
I don’t know if I’m getting through. I’m not a captain. I’m not an inspiration. I’m not Zayne. Especially not sober Zayne.
My hero looks shaky as he puts on his skates. He thinks I don’t see when he takes a swig from a bottle that’s not water.
The walk-off song makes me want to vomit, the vibrations rattling my ears when we step on the ice, circling to the roar of the crowd.
She’s leaving.
Leaving.
The words loop in my head like a curse.
Ellie is leaving.
The crowd’s too loud. Everything feels like it’s cranked up a dial too far.
The captain reeks of alcohol as he takes his position for the face-off.
He loses the face-off.
The Montreal Vortex take the puck, and I already know—we’re done. My head’s not in the game. My legs feel slow.
All I can think is: this is it. The last time I’ll play in the NHL. I can’t enjoy it, can’t go out in a blaze of glory—instead, it’s the agonizing death of my dream.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Yankee?” Ren hollers at me, slamming his stick on the net. “You forget how to play?”
“Ellie’s leaving.”
“She what?” He chokes on his water—it leaks out through his missing teeth onto his jersey.
“They’re hiring a new coach,” I say desperately. The lights are too bright here on the ice. I squint at the players.
“Fuck.” He lets in a goal then rallies, but it’s too late.
The team—my team—implodes on the ice. We can’t keep possession of the puck.
Ren is a hair too slow. The fans are disappointed.
Our last two wins were a fluke. The scoreboard lights mock us, goal after goal, and by the time the final buzzer sounds, the stands are half empty—fans filtering out before the traffic hits.
The buzzer sounds, and mercifully, the game is over.
Back in the locker room, we’re wrecked. Silent. Beaten.
“Well, I know that’s not how we wanted this game to go,” Ellie tells us when we’re nursing our wounds in the locker room.
I can’t even look at her.
Is it her decision to leave? Really? Or is it my fault?
It’s good I’m leaving. I don’t deserve to be here.
Dana probably caught wind of what Hudson and the Svenssons are digging up. She’s trying to get ahead of it. Cut her losses. Fire Ellie, sweep the damage under the rug.
“This was it.” I feel delirious. “My big shot, and it’s over.”
I look to Zayne for something—comfort, wisdom—but he’s slumped on the floor, drunk as shit. So I stare down at the bright-yellow Lunchables package in my hand. “Jovi,” I call, raising it to toss to him.
Before he can catch it—
BANG. The locker room door slams open. Lights flicker overhead.
“You fucking piece of shit.”
Dana Holbrook descends into the locker room. She’s one of those ancient Greek goddesses—vengeful, divine, terrifying. The kind I used to read about in battered mythology books on stained casino carpets while my mom gambled away her sister’s disability check.
“You think I didn’t know it was you the whole time?” Dana rages at me.
Shit. I look to the exit, but it’s blocked by shocked hockey players.
“Guess I shouldn’t have come back to play after all,” I mutter.
“No.” Dana’s voice becomes poisonously sweet. “You should have run far, far away, because you can ask anyone on the Eastern Seaboard—no one fucks with me and gets away with it.”
“Oh my God, you were sleeping with him?” Ellie screams.
The rookies gasp. Dana’s mouth twists in derision as she turns back to a teary Ellie. “That’s what you think this is about, Ellie? Sex? Grow up.” Dana turns back to me. “You stole something from me, Sullivan. Or should I say, Wynter?”
“That’s, uh, my mom’s maiden name. And I, um, my cousin actually has your tablet.” My voice cracks worse than when I went through puberty, and my balls are shrinking under Dana’s wrath.
“Look,” Ellie, who’s a head shorter than Dana in her high heels, cuts in. “I don’t know what happened, but Fletcher is my—”
“Fletcher Sullivan isn’t a hockey player,” Dana spits out.
“He barely graduated high school. He didn’t play in Switzerland—he enlisted in the Marines to escape prison.
He is certainly not NHL material. His cousin bribed someone to let him into the minors then bribed our former GM to get him put on this team, all so he could spy on me. ”
My teammates are shocked.
Jovi looks betrayed. “But I saw the stats,” he says in a small voice. “On Hockey Match, you had all those seasons on that Swiss team.”
“I played hockey when I was a high schooler, and it’s actually really easy to doctor a website”—I stare down at the rubber floor—“when your cousin is a computer guy.”
Watery ice puddles at my feet, melting off the skates.
“Wait, Fletcher—” Ellie’s voice breaks. “But you can skate—you’re good. What do you mean you’re not an NHL player?”
“He’s as much a player as you are a coach,” Dana says snidely.
“No wonder you’re cutting and running,” Eddie snarls.
“Did you know about Fletcher?” Bramms demands.
“What? No!” Ellie cries.
“Did you bribe someone to be on the team?” Eddie yells.
I jump to her defense. “Leave her the fuck alone,” I snarl at the team as Cookie sobs into the Finn’s shoulder. “She’s not the problem. Dana—”
Her blue eyes flash at me. I steel my spine. If I’m going down, she’s going down too.
“Dana’s defrauding the team,” I yell over the chaos. “She’s using it for tax harvesting, purposefully running the team into the ground. Bet you’re going to sell it for parts in the new year, huh, Dana?”
“You can’t—” Ellie gasps, tears welling up. “Dana, that’s horrible.”
“Are we getting paid?” Carlsson demands.
“Oh my God, I didn’t get paid this week!” Jovi freaks out.
“We get paid every other week, so next Friday,” Jonesy says out of the side of his mouth.
“Should have stayed in the minors.” Bramms shakes his head.
“Shit, I should have stayed in Germany,” Carlsson snaps.
“Dana, everyone here worked so hard.” Ellie clutches her arms around herself. “I can’t believe you’d do this to all the players, the fans. That’s not what hockey is about.”
“Oh, fuck off, Ellie,” Dana sneers. “Considering you’re fucking one of my players, you don’t get to have the moral high ground.”
The room explodes.
“I fucking knew it!” Eddie snarls. “That’s how you got the A, Sullivan! You’re her little fucktoy. Or is she your little puck slut?”
My fist hits his nose with a crunch. Blood spurts. He goes down hard.
Bramms moves, but I growl—and he freezes.
The Finn gives me a look I can’t read.
“So she gets to play house with some fake-ass player and then peace out? Nah.” Eddie coughs blood. “No thanks.”
I knee him in the jaw. “Fucker.”
“I’m…” Ellie is teary. “I’m really sorry. I’m so sorry. And I didn’t have any intention of quitting. The NHL just thought that you all deserve a real coach, especially since you all started winning games.”
Dana has a sour look on her face.
“We wanted you,” Cookie says in a small voice.
“I didn’t,” Eddie mutters.
I kick him.
“Stop hurting my player,” Ellie snaps. Eyes flashing, she turns on me. “Fuck you, Fletcher. You’re a liar. You took a spot from someone more deserving. There are people who work their entire lives to make it to the NHL.”
“I could say the same thing about you,” I roar at her. “You’re not a real coach—you’re a preschool teacher playing grown-up.”
“I never lied about my qualifications,” she screams at me.
“No, but you made us all believe in you. If you’re not going to fight for your job, then why should anyone believe you’re going to fight for us?”
“Stop making this about me,” Ellie screeches. “You snuck in here and pretended to be part of this team, pretended to care.”
“I do care.”
“Liar. You’re just here to steal from Dana and get your dick wet. You were planning on leaving after this game, weren’t you?”
The room stills.
“Weren’t you?” Her eyes flash. “You were going to leave us all high and dry.”
“What does it matter?” I’m up in her face. “You just said I didn’t deserve to be here, that I was stealing someone’s spot, so what does it matter if now I’m about to leave? You just said I wasn’t important to the team. Or…” I circle her. “Are you mad I fucked you and lied about it?”
“I don’t need whatever the fuck is happening here,” Dana cuts in.
“You can have your little girlfriend-boyfriend spat—not on my property. And the NHL doesn’t get to tell me what I do with my team, Ellie.
I don’t care what your father thinks,” she sneers then turns to sweep her gaze over the team.
“Ellie will be at practice, and so will all of you, if you want to get paid,” Dana warns.
“But you.” She points at me. “You need to clean out your locker. You’re done.”