58 - Haven
HAVEN
The most surprising part was that it didn’t take long.
After everything — the noise, the buildup, the quiet tension sitting just under the surface — I thought it would drag out.
That it would be messy. Complicated. Slow.
It was none of those things.
By the next morning, Sutherland was gone.
Not rumored. Not ‘under review.’
Gone, as in pulled from the roster. Suspended indefinitely. There was a league statement, clean and clinical, dropping phrases like integrity of the game and ongoing investigation like they meant something more than what they actually did.
Which meant one thing:
He’d been caught.
By that afternoon, clips were everywhere. Not just the ones I’d put together, but more.
Different angles. Different games. Analysts breaking it down frame by frame, pointing out every hesitation, every overcommit, every moment where instinct should’ve taken over — but didn’t.
It wasn’t subtle anymore. It wasn’t arguable.
It was obvious.
And Sutherland?
He didn’t even fight it.
That was the one part no one expected. No denial, no statement. No angry post, or agent stepping in to spin things.
Just— silence.
Then, two days later—
Cooperation.
“That’s it,” Boone muttered, watching one of the segments replay for the third time on the TV in the living room. “That’s the nail right there.”
“They’ve got him,” Riley agreed.
“They had him the second he didn’t say anything,” Sebastian added.
I didn’t say a word. I just watched.
Rourke took a little longer. Men like that always did. At first it was just his name. Floating. Mentioned. A ‘source close to the situation’ or ‘a team-affiliated consultant.’
The man in the suit.
The one who never watched the game. Only the outcome.
Then the connections started. Accounts. Transfers. Patterns that didn’t make sense until suddenly—
They did.
By midweek he was on leave.
By the end of it— he was gone.
“Pending investigation,” Zack read, shaking his head like he couldn’t quite believe it. “That’s rich.”
“He’s done,” Ares said flatly.
Grayson didn’t answer. We all knew.
The best part?
Trees.
It came out quietly — a segment buried halfway through a longer breakdown. A former coach mentioned by name, almost as an afterthought—
Then not as an afterthought at all.
“Looking back,” the analyst said, circling one of the clips, “you can see where concerns may have originated. Former coach Eddie ‘Fast’ Trees reportedly raised internal questions before his departure.”
Reportedly.
I almost laughed.
“They owe him,” Sebastian muttered.
“They fucked him,” Ares corrected.
Mercer addressed it the next morning. Not in a speech. Not in some big, emotional team meeting.
Just— before practice.
Standing at center ice while the rest of them circled in.
“What happened… happened,” he said.
No buildup. No dramatics.
“They’ll deal with it,” he said.
A beat.
“We move on.”
That was Mercer.
No praise, no victory lap. No dwelling, either.
But as the team broke—
As sticks tapped the ice and bodies shifted and voices picked back up—
He caught Grayson’s shoulder and held it, just for a second.
“That was yours,” he said quietly.
Grayson nodded solemnly in response. And that was it.
It was all over.
The noise died down after that. Not completely, but enough that we could hear ourselves again. Practice sharpened. Focus locked in. The next opponent — whoever they were, because brackets were still forming — became the only thing that mattered.
And Grayson?
He came back.
Not that he’d gone anywhere. But the edge — the tightness, the weight he’d been carrying since everything started to unravel — it was gone.
He laughed more. Talked more.
Moved like himself again.
“Doesn’t matter who we get,” he said one afternoon, skating backward at center ice like he had all the time in the world. “We’re running straight through them.”
Sebastian snorted. “Is that so?”
“That’s so.”
Ares shook his head, but he was smiling.
“Cocky bastard.”
“Confidence,” Grayson corrected. “It’s only cocky if you can’t back it up.”
He looked over at me then. And just for a second—
It wasn’t the captain.
Not the guy holding everything together.
Just him.
And God… that might’ve been my favorite version.
“They’re not ready for us,” he added.
Not loud. Not for the team.
Just for me.
I believed him.
Because for the first time in what seemed like forever— everything was aligned.
No shadows. No questions. No one pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Just us. The team. The game.
And whatever came next.
Playoffs.
I should’ve been nervous. Should’ve been overthinking every possible outcome. Running numbers. Breaking down matchups.
Instead, I felt calm.
Because no matter what happened out there—
— no matter what we were walking into…
We weren’t losing anything that was ours.