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“Sure, I can spend a few hours petting puppies.”
“A few hours for a few days for a few weeks. Just enough to impress on any judge that you’re not the bad boy everyone thinks you are.”
Dex jerked to full awareness at this update. “A few weeks? Where am I going to find time for that? I have practice, away games, a very full schedule. I can’t fit in that much time with a bunch of animals.”
“Yes, you can. And you will.” Kit’s voice had turned serious. “Do you have any idea of the strings I had to pull to get this for you? The Rebels didn’t have to go along with it. They could have benched you and let you ride out your contract. Which may I remind you is up at the end of the season. As it stands they’re probably going to trade you as soon as it’s expedient.”
Dex slumped on the sofa. What did he care about being traded? He was used to moving around, being the team’s new guy. No big deal.
“So I go to another team.”
“And who wants a troublemaker who makes headlines for anything but how well he plays? Because you might think your play will supersede all that, but it won’t. Orgs want guys who are 100% devoted to their game, solid, team and family-oriented guys, not people who are a distraction. If the Rebels put you on waivers, then good luck trying to find a team to pick you up. You’ll be lucky if you get a spot on the Bumfuck Titans or whatever AHL team cares to have you. Your brand is cheapened, Dex. Sex tapes, the Tara business, and now punching a colleague?—”
“He wasn’t a colleague,” Dex said morosely, desperate to get a word in and end the lecture. “Just someone I don’t get along with.”
“Right. Meanwhile you’re losing fans by the truckload. That’s why we need you to be spending all your spare time with cute fucking animals. Jesus, Tara couldn’t rein you in, so these kittens better do the trick. I want you to head down to that shelter today, do your duty, and stay in the good graces of the people who run the place until Sophie, Fitz, and I decide you’re done. Got it?”
“Got it,” Dex mumbled. Damn, everyone was so serious.
Kit hung up before Dex could get the jump on him. Usually, he was able to laugh off the disapproval of his elders, but he wasn’t quite feeling it this time. What Kit had said rankled.
He had a good relationship with the press and his fans. The sports media enjoyed his antics because it yielded plenty of clicks and the fans got a kick out of his class clownery. It didn’t stop him from playing lights-out hockey. The team should recognize that and anything else shouldn’t matter.
Into his second year as a Rebel, he was playing well. Still second- or third-line, so it could be better, but every team needed second, third, and fourth-line players. It wasn’t that he was unambitious, but he preferred to stay in his lane. No one expected more from him, and he’d rather be of use wherever he went. If that was to another team, then so be it.
Except he liked Chicago. He hadn’t expected to, given that this was where he’d been born and raised. His early memories of it were fuzzy and fractured. After all that shit went down, he’d hoped his aunt in Dallas would pick up the slack. But she had too many kids of her own to worry about him, and so began the Dexter Roadshow to all points in Chicagoland.
Most families found it hard to deal with his energy. He chewed up the goodwill of six of them over the course of sixteen months before landing back in the group home. And there he would’ve stayed except for a curious stroke of luck.
He was discovered.
A chance encounter with a hockey Hall of Famer, a placement with a family of hockey nerds, and eventually the career of his dreams. A career that could be cut short at any moment.
Which reminded him he really needed to answer that text from Anton. His old coach had checked in this morning (and yesterday morning). Dex opened the thread and reviewed the last message.
Anton
You good?
Dex
Never better.
The phone rang because Dex had just sent proof of life.
“Hey.”
“Don’t ‘hey’ me. Why haven’t you been answering my calls?”
Because I’m embarrassed. “Didn’t want to bother you.”
“Bother me?” Anton spluttered, which sent Dex’s mind back to those days when the guy would have a conniption every ten minutes over some antic his hockey protégé engaged in. “Why would hearing from you ever be a bother? Tell me what’s happening.”
Dex filled him in. “Don’t know why they want to go to all this effort if they’re just going to dump me anyway.”
“Maybe they see your potential. It’s happened before.”
When Dex was twelve. The first time he held a hockey stick, years later than most of the hockey-playing kids his age, something magical had happened. He’d gone from some down on his luck street kid to someone with a future. On a day out from the group home, a man had called him over after seeing Dex gliding around on a crappy rink with a bunch of other charity cases.
