BANG. The locker room door slams open. Lights flicker overhead.
“You fucking piece of shit.”
Dana Holbrook descends into the locker room. She’s one of those ancient Greek goddesses—vengeful, divine, terrifying. The kind I used to read about in battered mythology books on stained casino carpets while my mom gambled away her sister’s disability check.
“You think I didn’t know it was you the whole time?” Dana rages at me.
Shit. I look to the exit, but it’s blocked by shocked hockey players.
“Guess I shouldn’t have come back to play after all,” I mutter.
“No.” Dana’s voice becomes poisonously sweet. “You should have run far, far away, because you can ask anyone on the Eastern Seaboard—no one fucks with me and gets away with it.”
“Oh my God, youweresleeping with him?” Ellie screams.
The rookies gasp. Dana’s mouth twists in derision as she turns back to a teary Ellie. “That’s what you think this is about, Ellie?Sex?Grow up.” Dana turns back to me. “You stole something from me, Sullivan. Or should I say, Wynter?”
“That’s, uh, my mom’s maiden name. And I, um, my cousin actually has your tablet.” My voice cracks worse than when I went through puberty, and my balls are shrinking under Dana’s wrath.
“Look,” Ellie, who’s a head shorter than Dana in her high heels, cuts in. “I don’t know what happened, but Fletcher is my—”
“Fletcher Sullivan isn’t a hockey player,” Dana spits out. “He barely graduated high school. He didn’t play in Switzerland—he enlisted in the Marines to escape prison. He is certainly not NHL material. His cousin bribed someone to let him into the minors then bribed our former GM to get him put on this team, all so he could spy on me.”
My teammates are shocked.
Jovi looks betrayed. “But I saw the stats,” he says in a small voice. “On Hockey Match, you had all those seasons on that Swiss team.”
“I played hockey when I was a high schooler, and it’s actually really easy to doctor a website”—I stare down at the rubber floor—“when your cousin is a computer guy.”
Watery ice puddles at my feet, melting off the skates.
“Wait, Fletcher—” Ellie’s voice breaks. “But you can skate—you’re good. What do you mean you’re not an NHL player?”
“He’s as much a player as you are a coach,” Dana says snidely.
“No wonder you’re cutting and running,” Eddie snarls.
“Did you know about Fletcher?” Bramms demands.
“What? No!” Ellie cries.
“Did you bribe someone to be on the team?” Eddie yells.
I jump to her defense. “Leave her the fuck alone,” I snarl at the team as Cookie sobs into the Finn’s shoulder. “She’s not the problem. Dana—”
Her blue eyes flash at me. I steel my spine. If I’m going down, she’s going down too.
“Dana’s defrauding the team,” I yell over the chaos. “She’s using it for tax harvesting, purposefully running the team into the ground. Bet you’re going to sell it for parts in the new year, huh, Dana?”
“You can’t—” Ellie gasps, tears welling up. “Dana, that’s horrible.”
“Are we getting paid?” Carlsson demands.
“Oh my God, I didn’t get paid this week!” Jovi freaks out.
“We get paid every other week, so next Friday,” Jonesy says out of the side of his mouth.
“Should have stayed in the minors.” Bramms shakes his head.
