I sat up straighter, forcing the exhaustion out of my voice. “Mr. Turner. Good to hear from you. I was just reviewing some game tape.”
“Glad to hear you are staying sharp,” Turner replied, but the words sounded forced. “Listen, I am reaching out because our front office just received an automated flag from the collegiate athletic registry. It says you were officially scratched from the active roster indefinitely.”
A dull pressure throbbed behind my eyes. Hastings had already filed the suspension paperwork.
“It is just a temporary scratch.” I lied smoothly. “Coach and I are working through a minor issue. I will be on the ice soon enough.”
“A minor issue.” Turner repeated the words slowly. “Because the whisper network is saying it is a lot more than that. We are hearing rumors about a pending misconduct complaint, something messy involving the Johnston family.”
I gripped the edge of the wooden bench. “That is nothing but a rumor. There is no official complaint on my record.”
“It does not matter if it is official yet,” Turner cut in, dropping the polite act. “You are a bubble prospect, kid. A depth guy. We like your style of play, but you are not a franchise star.And that is why we cannot afford to draft a depth guy who brings a media circus with him.”
“There is no circus,” I argued.
“The Johnstons have enough money and political backing to bring grief to half the teams in our league,” Turner shot back. “If you are tangled up in some locker room scandal that involves one of their kids, they will make it a public nightmare. Our ownership group will not touch a prospect who pisses off that kind of old money. The legal headache is not worth the payoff.”
“Mr. Turner, give me a chance to clear this up.”
“I’m sorry, kid, but we’re pulling our interest, Zotov,” the scout said. “Take care of yourself.”
The line went dead.
“Shit.” The word hissed out into the empty room. “What the fuck just happened?”
Lowering my phone, I watched the screen go black in the palm of my hand. That was it. Chicago was out. The draft was gone.
Every garbage night shift I worked at the Food Mart, every hard check I took on the ice to get here, was erased in a two-minute phone call.
The folded edge of the withdrawal form pressed into my knee.
Sign it and I keep the academic scholarship. Which meant two more years of sitting in classrooms while my mother broke her back on double shifts, all for a degree that wouldn’t land a job paying enough to pull her out of that moldy apartment. Hockey was my ticket. The only one. Without it, staying here was just selfish.
But tearing the paper up meant Karter got dragged straight into the fallout. A public Title IX scandal would stick a target on his back for the whole campus. Every bit of dirt they wanted to throw at me would splatter onto him. On the ice, my whole jobwas taking the hits so my teammates did not have to. I was not about to step out of the way and let Karter take this one for me.
I stared at the blank signature line, then folded the crisp paper in half and shoved it into my jacket pocket.
Standing up, I walked toward the equipment room to grab my skates. I had to do something, anything, just to delay walking back to the dorms for as long as I physically could. At the rink door, I swiped my keycard. The scanner flashed a dead red light.
I tried again. Same flat blink. Nothing.
Locked out.Whether Corby had filed the suspension paperwork or Hastings had moved quickly to kill my access himself, the result was the same. The one place I knew how to survive was sealed shut.
With nowhere else to go and no way to avoid the reality of my situation anymore, I dropped onto the concrete steps outside the arena. The bitter wind stung my face as the last gray light bled out of the sky.
I pressed my phone to my ear. The static crackle of the long-distance connection to Detroit filled the silence.
The call rang exactly three times. My mother always answered on the third ring.
“Lekha?” she said.
Hearing her use my old nickname brought a sudden ache to the back of my throat. It was a familiar piece of home, but sitting out in the dark at my absolute lowest point made the sound of it feel heavy as a stone. Her voice was thick with sleep and worry.
“You are calling too late,” she said. “What time is it there? Aren’t you sleeping?”
I swallowed hard. “I’m done, Mama. I’m coming home.”
“Home? Sweetheart, what happened?”
