Chapter 18 - Aleksey
Iknew a setup when I saw one.
Coach Corby had texted me to come in an hour before the rest of the team. At first, I thought I was called in to sit in the dark and watch footage of my shifts from our last game, breaking down my hits and defensive positioning on the screen the way we usually did during solo reviews.
Instead, I walked into the athletic offices at ten in the morning and found Athletic Director Gerald Hastings sitting perfectly still in Corby’s chair.
My duffel bag hit the floor with a thud as my brain immediately threw out everything I knew about our defensive strategy and braced for whatever new bullshit the AD was about to drop on me.
The second Hastings met my eyes, I felt a cold spike of dread, but I shoved it down. Growing up playing in the rinks that I did, you learn fast that showing fear or anger just gives the guys in charge more ammunition. So, I locked my jaw and wiped my expression, scanning the room for an angle.
Hastings sat with his fingers interlaced on the desk. Then he pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose.
“Have a seat, Aleksey,” Hastings said.
This time, scraping the metal chair back, I actually sat down. Coach Corby stood over by the filing cabinet, rocking on his heels with his arms crossed tightly against his chest. He refused to meet my gaze.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
“My sense is that we have a difficult situation regarding university liability,” Hastings said. His tone sounded soft and corporate. He opened a manila folder on the desk. “We received an anonymous complaint this morning.”
I let out a short, harsh laugh. “Another one? Are you guys running this team based on a suggestion box?”
Hastings ignored the attitude. “It claims you have been engaging in inappropriate conduct with a freshman player.” He glanced at the paper. “The complaint describes late-night visits to a freshman’s room. It also mentions using tutoring to hide harassment.”
My mouth clamped shut. I knew exactly who was behind this.
Trenton.
A flash of pure red heat spiked behind my eyes.
I could picture it perfectly. Dragging Trenton by his expensive collar, slamming his head into the locker room wall, and driving my fist into his smug face until his jaw splintered under my knuckles.
I wanted to cave his teeth in. But I kept my breathing steady and my hands relaxed on my thighs, burying the thought back down.
“Did someone actually step up and say I harassed them?” I asked, leaning back in the chair to look as bored as possible.
“The report is anonymous,” Hastings said. “But it is highly specific. Have you been in any freshmen’s rooms after team curfew?”
Curfew. What an absolute joke.
We barely had a curfew at the Ice House to begin with. It was a loosely held rule Coach Corby only brought up the night before major games, and nobody ever actually checked our doors.
Meanwhile, the legacy kids in their luxury apartments lived with zero oversight. The rule existed purely to keep a leash on the guys who had nowhere else to go.
Holding his gaze, I didn’t blink. “No.”
It was a flat-out lie.
“Are you sure?” Hastings tilted his head. “Because if we find out otherwise...”
“I said no. I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Shifting my attention to Coach Corby, I waited. He still refused to meet my gaze. A pen clicked rhythmically in his hand, the sound sharp in the quiet room.
A beat later, Corby stopped clicking his pen and let out a tired sigh. “Zotov,” Corby muttered, his voice tight. “The Title IX code of conduct protocols dictate how we handle this. I do not have a choice here. My hands are tied.”
“Meaning what?” I asked.
“You’re suspended from practice until we, you know. Sort this out.”
“You’re pulling me?”
“The suits upstairs are forcing a temporary suspension until the investigation clears,” Corby said.
He rubbed a hand over his thinning hair, looking genuinely pissed off.
“I hate this political bullshit as much as you do, kid, but I can’t override the Athletic Director on a Title IX claim. You are benched for Friday.”
The words felt like a stick to the teeth.
Friday was when the Chicago scouts would be in the stands.
That game was the entire point of my being here.
Every garbage night shift I worked at the Food Mart, every time my mom killed her back working doubles at the nursing home just to keep me in skates, it all came down to Friday night.
And now I was scratched from the roster.
I dug my fingers into the underside of the metal chair to keep my hands from shaking. This was not a random complaint. Trenton timed this perfectly. He knew exactly how to kill my draft chances and burn my one shot at going fully pro.
“Coach, you know I need to play in that game,” I said. I bit back annoyance at the hint of desperation that had crept into my voice. “The scouts are gonna be there.”
“It’s out of my hands,” Corby muttered, staring at the floor. “I’m sorry, kid. One game at a time. We have to follow the rules.”
“When do the interviews start?” I asked.
“Monday morning,” Hastings answered. “We will be speaking with the entire roster.”
Grabbing the strap of my bag, I stood. “I’ll see you on Monday, then.”
Three days.
That was the only thing circling my brain as I pushed through the arena doors and out into the parking lot, gray road salt crunching under my boots.
I needed to find Perez. I knew that he had an eleven o’clock lecture across campus, meaning he would be heading to his car right about now, and he always knew what the rest of the team was saying behind closed doors.
Scanning the rows of vehicles, my eyes landed on his beat-up sedan two lanes over. He was standing by the driver’s side, digging for his keys.
Closing the distance, I leaned against the SUV parked next to his. “Hastings just pulled me in. They are launching an investigation.”
Perez stopped chewing. He looked at me for a long moment, then checked over his shoulder, scanning the arena doors. “First off, hello to you too. Secondly, shit. They actually did it.”
“It was Trenton. I need to know how far this has spread.”
Perez rolled his shoulders, cracking his neck hard to the side. “Fuck, man, I don’t give a shit that you’re banging the Johnston kid. But if this blows up...”
I grabbed the front of his jacket and shoved him hard against the side of his car.
“Hey,” Perez held both hands up near his face, but his voice stayed steady. “Chill the hell out. It’s me. I am not the one trying to ruin your life.”
My grip held for another second. Then my brain caught up, and I let go, shoving my hands into my pockets.
Perez straightened his coat and punched me on the shoulder. “Asshole,” he muttered. The tension bled out of him, and we were good again.
“So you knew,” I said.
“About you and Elliot’s little brother?” Perez leaned his lower back against the car door, fishing a fresh stick of gum from his pocket. “I’ve got eyes, man. You’ve been staring at that kid like he’s the last bus out of Detroit.”
“Screw you.”
“I’m serious. It’s tragic. My abuela watches telenovelas with more subtlety.” He folded the gum into his mouth. “You’re lucky the rest of the team’s too busy kissing Trenton’s ass to notice.”
“What exactly did Trenton say?”
“He was holding court in the showers yesterday, laughing with a couple of the other legacy guys.” Perez’s jaw tightened around the gum.
“Said Karter was slumming it, getting on his knees for the Russian charity case. And he said the school needed to sanitize the locker room before the infection spread.”
My hands fisted inside my pockets. The knuckles cracked on their own.
Perez pointed at me with his chin. “That right there. That face. That’s the face that’s gonna get you expelled.” He pushed off the car. “Trenton’s just looking for a reason to prove guys like us don’t belong on the team.”
I fought back the urge to punch something, anything.
Trenton wasn’t some faceless administrator following a rulebook. He was a prick who hated me, and he would happily burn a legacy freshman to the ground along with me, if it meant clearing out the guys who didn’t grow up with trust funds.
Karter had no idea what was coming for him.
“I have to warn him,” I said.
Perez stopped mid-chew. “Warn who? Karter?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you insane?” He grabbed my arm before I could turn. “If Hastings is investigating, you need to stay far away from him. Let the rich kid fend for himself.”
“I can’t do that.”
Perez stared at me. Then he dropped my arm and shook his head, exhaling hard through his nose. “Is Karter really worth all this?”
Yes.
“Probably.”
He muttered something in Spanish I didn’t catch and yanked open his car door. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
I shrugged. “No promises.”
The car door slammed. Through the window, Perez shook his head, but the corner of his mouth twitched before he pulled out of the lot.
The cold bit through my jacket as I turned toward the street and headed straight back to The Ice House.
I needed to get Karter alone, but I couldn’t risk his roommate overhearing the conversation. So, I spent the rest of the afternoon pacing my room.
The wall between our rooms was paper-thin, so right around eight o’clock, I heard Matt complaining about a massive history paper, telling Karter he was going to pull an all-nighter at the campus library.
So, I waited until the thud of Matt’s footsteps faded down the stairs, counted out a full sixty seconds, then left my room.
Out in the attic hallway of The Ice House, I stood in front of Karter’s door, knocked once, and turned the knob. I walked out on him in the equipment room two nights ago and have spent every hour since then forcing myself to keep my distance.
Now I was seeking him out like I couldn’t stay away.
I told myself I was only here to deliver the warning, but I knew the reality. No matter how hard I tried to cut him loose, I could never stop myself from getting pulled right back to him.
I ducked under the low, slanted ceiling and stepped inside, finding Karter at his desk with his color-coded notes spread out under a bright lamp.
He turned around when he heard me come in, and the second he realized it was me, the corners of his mouth pulled up into a look that was way too welcoming.
“You came to me this time. I knew keeping my door unlocked just in case was a good idea,” Karter said with a grin. He stood up, but then his eyes darted toward the hallway behind me. “Wait. Did anyone see you come in here?”
“No,” I said, shutting the door and locking it. “We are the only ones living up in this attic, remember?”
“Okay, good.” Karter let out a breath, his shoulders dropping. “Matt is gonna be at the library for a while, so we have time to talk.”
“I am not staying,” I said. I kept my back planted against the doorframe.
Karter finally took a real look at my face. His smile vanished. “What is it?”
Protecting him drove every thought in my head. If Hastings found out the truth about us, Karter’s father would find out too.
“Someone filed a complaint,” I said.
Karter stepped away from his chair. “What kind of complaint?”
“The school is investigating us,” I said, keeping my voice down so it would not carry through the floorboards to the guys downstairs. “Title IX. Harassment under the guise of tutoring.”
Karter’s expression hardened. The reality of the situation was hitting him, but he was trying like hell not to show it.
I walked over to his bed and sat down on the edge, staring at the scuffed floorboards. “Perez told me Trenton has been running his mouth all week. Bragging about clearing out the dead weight.” I looked up at him.
If this investigation moved forward, Hastings would interview everyone. The team, the RAs, the professors. He would dig until the truth came out. And I knew exactly what happened when the truth came out at Ridge Cross.
Pearson. A strip of athletic tape with Pearson’s name on it stayed stuck to the bench for weeks before someone finally peeled it off. The official team email called it a conduct violation, but every guy in that locker room knew a legacy alum caught him with another player and made one phone call.
By Monday, his scholarship was gone.
“We’ve got two choices,” I said, looking up at Karter. “Tell the truth, and we both get screwed over. Or we end this right now, publicly, and I take the fall alone.”
Karter blinked, staring at me as if I’d started speaking a different language. “What the hell does that mean, Aleks?”
“It means I’m going to Hastings tomorrow. And I’ll tell him I made a pass at you, you turned me down, and I kept pushing it.”
He just kept staring at me.
“It is the only play that works,” I told him, my voice dropping flat. “The harassment charge sticks to me. Hastings gets to protect his donors, he gets to quietly expel me, and you walk away completely clean.”
Karter ran a hand through his hair. “Are you out of your mind!?” He took a step forward, his shoulders squaring up. “Do you really think I would lie to the AD to back up some fake harassment story?”
“You have to,” I said. “My life is already done, Karter. Corby benched me for Friday. The Chicago scouts are gone. But you still have a future. If we fight this, they will treat us like they treated Pearson. They will drag you right down with me, and your dad will cut you off. Right?”
“I do not give a shit about my dad,” Karter shot back. “And you are just trying to run away before I can.”
“I am handing you a clean exit,” I shot back, frustration bleeding into my voice.
“I do not want a goddamn exit!”
I expected him to panic. I fully expected him to realize his family reputation was on the line and take the deal. Any sane guy with his kind of money and privilege would have walked away.
But Karter just stared at me and didn’t flinch.
“I am not letting you take the hit on this alone,” he said.
I stared back at him. I’d come into this room ready to throw everything away just to keep his name out of Hastings’ mouth.
But looking at the stubborn line of his mouth, I realized my plan was already dead. He was not taking the out.
“Alright then,” I said with a firm nod. It probably looked more confident than I felt. “Then we take the hit.”