Page 85 of Want You

“Complicit.” He pointed at each player, ending with his finger jammed into his own chest. “Coward.” He repeated once again ending with himself. “Pathetic.” Each time he highlighted a word, his teammates looked more and more uncomfortable. Langdon looked like he was about to piss his pants.

“It was you.” Connors sneered. “You’re the snitch in that article.” This time he stepped forward, and unlike with Nathan, three teammates jumped between them, but it didn’t stop Connors from spewing more bullshit. “What else are you telling people, eh? Did the media get wind of Pav’s divorce from you? Hell, I bet you called his wife. Perfect, sober, lonely Nathan Albertson, unwilling to have any fun and bitter seeing anyone else having some.”

“Fun?” Nathan saw red. “What exactly is fun about what you did? Forcing someone to do something they don’t want to do is fun to you? You know that’s psychotic right? And I don’t give a fuck what goes on in your personal lives,” he said, looking around at the shocked faces of his teammates. “Unless of course you’re doing what he and his buddies are into.” Several heads shook. “And you’re going to fucking wish you were lonely after you’re found guilty.” Connors’s mask slipped as if the glimpse of his possible future hit.

“I think you should leave,” Sami said through a clenched jaw to Connors before turning to face Nathan. “And I think you need to take a walk.”

Nathan watched as Connors grabbed his jacket from his locker and practically stomped from the room. He looked like a petulant child who didn’t get his way. Except petulant children don’t do what he did.

“Get changed and then go,” Sami said, his voice quieter this time. “Call your girl. Go fire some pucks at the boards. Run some laps. Just get out of here for a bit.”

Nathan changed quickly in the near silence of the room, leaving his gear out before grabbing his phone and walking toward the therapy room with every intention to leave the back way in order to avoid any potential run-ins with Connors. But before he made it past the last cold plunge tub, Shannon stopped him.

“Nate, what’s going on?” he asked, setting down a box of kinesiology tape he’d just walked in with.

Nathan didn’t know if he should get into it or if it was something that should be left with the team. But then he realized that half the problem was the belief that what was said in that fucking room, didn’t leave it. A lot of the trainers were privy to things but not always the finer points.

And so he took a deep breath and told Shannon everything he knew and everything he planned on doing.

Shannon glanced toward the hallway and the door that led to the weight room. “Close the door,” he instructed, nodding toward the hall while he walked to the other door.

Nathan did as Shannon asked before returning to the centre of the room, unsure of what was about to happen.

“You’re going to want to have all your ducks in a row before you do this, Nate,” he said, his voice low. “We all know things. We all act like we don’t, it’s not just the players. It’s everyone involved in this game.”

“I wasn’t sure how much you all were aware of.”

Shannon gave a humourless laugh. “Guys either talk around us as if we aren’t there or they share things with us knowing we’ll stroke their ego in some way. This isn’t a one-off situation. It’s just one of many and we all like our job security a bit too much to rock the boat.”

In fairness to Shannon, he looked ashamed admitting that.

“I don’t know how much power sharing something we’ve heard has,” Nathan grumbled. “And I know every one of those guys has some gold-plated lawyer with a high number in the win column. I don’t even know where to start for this foundation idea aside from throwing money at it.”

“Now that”—Shannon took his phone out of his pocket and waved it at him—“is something I can help with.”

CHAPTER 43

OCTAVIA

Nathan got home from practice, wrapped his arms around Octavia from behind while she sat at her dining table surrounded by law textbooks, and told her he had been suspended for a week from the team.

“How the hell do you get suspended during a practice?” she asked, turning in her chair to face him.

“First step is to physically threaten a teammate. Apparently it doesn’t matter if the guy is a sexual predator. Then you’ll want to snap on your teammates who can’t make eye contact with you. Lastly, you’ll definitely need to tell the general manager to go fuck himself for allowing the predator into the fucking building.”

She stared at him for a few silent seconds. “Yeah, I guess I can see how that would end in a suspension. Was it worth it?”

His hard stare burned into her before he nodded. “Hell, yes!”

“Then good. I’m glad you did it. Well, maybe not the physical assault, that may not end well.”

Nathan scoffed. “I just shoved him up against the locker. I wanted to punch him and not stop, but he’s only going to have a bruised ego.”

“Still, I hope this doesn’t come back on you.”

He shrugged. “Then it comes back on me.” He sat down in the chair next to her, resting his arms on the table. “I told you, I’ll end my career fighting for this if I have to. But I’m starting from inside the locker room. Had I intended to start the fire today? No, but I didn’t realize that piece of shit was going to strut into the room as if he’d done nothing wrong.”

“Pretty on brand way to walk in after being accused of sexual assault though, no?”