AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The head of the legal team clears their throat and asks everyone to take their seats, and although he’s my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss, Bob pulls one of the cushy chairs out for me and waits for me to sit down. Then he pushes me back in and takes a seat on my right. He winks as he folds his hands on top of the table and I’m trying very hard not to be charmed by him. Not when I know that this meeting will not go well for me or my workload.
There’s a projector at the far end of the room and Curtis Haine’s player promo photo is zoomed in until his face fills the entire screen. Number eleven and one of our top defenders, Haine isn’t someone I know very well. I haven’t had to take over his social media after he DM’d his dick to an uninterested model. I haven’t had to tell him to archive photos of himself drinking beer out of a skate while wearing his practice jersey—I really hope it wasn’t a used skate, but I’m pretty sure it was—and I also haven’t had to remind him to make posts. Sure, policing the antics of the young and famous is tough, but for some guys, getting them to post anything is like undergoing a root canal. Sans anesthesia.
For a moment, I’m almost lulled into a false sense of security. If Haine hasn’t been on my radar before, whatever happened can’t be a public relations nightmare. Maybe he’s sick. Maybe he’s donated a six-figure sum to a worthy cause. Maybe it’s someone in his family. Or an injury.
I know better than to have any wishful thinking. I’m usually more of a pragmatist, which turns out to be a good thing because I was wrong.
It’s none of those.
It’s worse. So much worse.
“We pulled some strings, and Haine’s wife bailed him out about an hour ago.” The man at the head of the table says. “We have legal on the case and we’re hoping to keep everything as quiet as possible, but the list of charges is extensive, and the team is going to need to do preemptive damage control. The sooner the better.”
List. Of. Charges.
As in more than one.
As in, this man was arrested and while he’s already bailed out, it’s bad enough that we’re having a meeting. There have been player arrests in the past. Usually, I get an email memo and devise a plan of action for content and posting. This is an all-hands-on-deck-meeting.
“The PR team will talk to the players and the coaching staff. No one is to make any comments to any members of the press. We are focusing on our game play. We don’t want the media getting any more information on this situation than they already have. We are a closed-lip unit.”
Right. Lips sealed is standard operating procedure until the organization chooses what side they want to take. Then we spoon feed the answers to the right people.
“What did Haine do?” One of the younger men at the table asks. He has the roundness of middle age, but the face of a fraternity brother. He’s grinning like this is juicy gossip to be spilled over shots of Jameson. And yes, it’s the question we all want answered, but it looks like everyone else had enough common sense not to ask.
The head of legal looks pained. It’s the same pinched look—brows furrowed, lips pursed—that my parents wore almost my entire childhood. It’s the look of someone who’d rather chew their way through a bucket of live earthworms than be where they are right now. He sighs, rubbing a hand across his forehead. I wonder if he’s deciding what to share.
“Last night, Curtis Haine’s car crashed into the side of a local daycare.”
There’s a collective gasp around the table and several people ask if the kids are okay. If they’d take one minute to think, they’d realize it had to be closed. Daycares hold business hours and if this had happened while the place was full of kids, there’s no way we’d be finding out in a meeting. Haine would have been headline news across the country. He might have even made the BBC.
“Police responding to the scene reported he was under the influence.”
“Drinking?” Bob Seever has been sober for thirty years. He can’t expressly ban his players and employees from drinking, but it’s well known that he does not tolerate alcohol-inspired stupidity. There’s that pinched expression again as the head of legal stares down the head honcho.
“Among other things.” The man at the head of the table looks like he might faint. “Both Haine and his female passenger were transported to Grace Hospital and are in stable condition.”
I might not know Haine well, but his wife Shelly is a darling. She’s got a real knack for her social media and has developed quite a following as a mommy and lifestyle influencer. The couple has two-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. They feature in posts frequently, often in Arctic jerseys. Shelly is a social media goldmine for the team. I hope they’re doing okay.
“Should we offer childcare support while Shelly and Curtis recover?” Twelve sets of confused eyes turn to me. For a moment, I think that it’s a gender divide. That not a single one of these suits understands the concept of toddlers—twins!—and then the poor man at the head of the table clears his throat again, his face almost magenta.
“Shelly… wasn’t injured.”
What he’s not saying hits me like a hockey puck to a tender part of my body.
Shelly wasn’t in the car. Curtis had another woman with him when he got drunk and/or high and plowed his vehicle into a place of business. While his wife was home. With their toddlers. That, and Curtis probably isn’t going home once he’s discharged. He’s probably going to jail.
Asshole.
Actually, that’s too good of a name for Mr. Haine. I hope that whenever he puts on a new pair of socks, he immediately steps into something wet. For the rest of his life. I hope he goes flaccid every time he wants to have sex. I hope he needs to imagine Muppets doing an Irish jig to get off. I hope…
Someone—Bob—is patting the back of my hand and it takes conscious effort to unclench my fists. I’m fairly certain that I’ve left little half-moon cuts on my palm from my nails. I take a deep breath to calm my racing heart and try to focus past the roaring in my ears. I’m at work. I can rage about Curtis the swine later, under the spray of a scalding hot shower. The kind that will flay the skin from my bones and the thoughts from my mind.
“That’s actually where you come in, Tristan.” Chris leans across the polished table and smiles at me like I don’t know exactly what’s coming. “We’re going to need you to do some preemptive distraction. Get people buzzing about something else on the team via our social media pages, or about the players themselves. That way, we can minimize any damage this whole debacle might cause to our image.”
Actually, that’s not nearly as bad as I expected my role would be. It’s pretty much my job, anyway.
“Seattle has had a lot of success roping in new fans,” someone down the table says and my smile grows tighter because I’m not pimping out our players on social media just to distract from one louse’s criminal idiocy.
