41. Sebastian
Chapter forty-one
Sebastian
“Hey,” Wes greets me when I walk up to him standing outside the coffee shop the next morning, scrolling on his phone, wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes.
“Morning.”
He shoves his phone into his pocket, shifting on his feet. “You ready for this?”
I peer at him through my sunglasses. “Ready for what? I thought we were just going to talk.”
He knocks his shoulder into mine. “I meant for tonight’s game.”
“Yeah. For a second, I thought you were implying we were going to, I don’t know, intimidate this guy.”
Before Wes can answer, a guy, who is maybe five ten, dressed in a pair of jeans and a Charlotte Hornet shirt, walks up to us. “Reynolds?” He puts his hand out to Wes.
“Whittaker. Didn’t recognize you without your skates and pads. Forgot how short you were.” They do the awkward one-armed hug before Wes turns to me. “This is my teammate and friend, Sebastian Henderson.”
Whittaker shakes my hand. “Nice to meet you. You can call me Will or Whittaker, either is fine.”
I nod.
“How about we go grab drinks, and we can talk?” Wes gestures to the café.
I pull the door open, and we file inside.
We take a few minutes to peruse the menu before putting our orders in at the counter.
The person making our drinks definitely recognizes us based on the flicker of recognition on their face, but they don’t say anything, thankfully.
I’m grateful to our fans and usually don’t mind being stopped and asked to take a picture or sign something, but today I’m not in the mood.
I just want to hear what Will has to say.
“So,” Wes says once we’re all seated around a table in the corner.
“Right,” Will says, setting his coffee cup on the table.
“I don’t know if this means anything to you all, but when you mentioned crazy shit going on …
” He turns to Wes. “I figured it can’t hurt.
” Wes nods. “The other day, I got to the arena early for morning skate and was halfway to the ice when I realized I’d forgotten to put my phone on silent, so I headed back to the locker room.
When I walked in, I could hear voices near the shower area.
” He fiddles with his cup. “I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I heard someone say ‘make easy money,’ and I thought, oh, shit, one of the rookies is thinking of doing something stupid, so I walked toward the voices to discourage it.
As I rounded the corner, I realized it was our fourth line center and one of the defensemen—who have both been in the league long enough to know better—and they were talking about someone paying them to go after certain players. ”
“Bloody hell,” I mutter. Are we actually going to get lucky?
“Shit,” Wes whispers. “Do you have proof?”
“I do. One of the rookies came to me last night with these.” He leans forward so he can reach into his back pocket and takes out a couple of folded sheets of paper and hands them to Wes.
Wes reads them and then hands them to me while Will sips his coffee, watching us.