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"Bullshit," Luke yells beside me, and for a second, I think he's pissed at me. "Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. You said it, Monk. We are a team. We win as a team, and we lose as a team. One guy doesn't win or lose a game. If we're going to assign blame, put it on me. I dove for the puck when I should have taken the man. Blame Bam-Bam, who should have shot the puck through Bobbington's stick. We lost because the hockey gods didn't give us a damn inch tonight."
The guys all start nodding, agreeing and muttering to themselves. A couple of "hell yeah's" echo in the room.
"You didn't lose the game, Ryan," Luke reiterates as the guys give a cheer of agreement. Luke turns to Owens and asks, "Jake, if that little fucker, Hummel, called April a whore, what would you have done?"
Jake's face darkens.
"I would have snapped him in half."
"Ziggy," Luke calls. "If he had called Sunny a little slut, would you let that shit slide?"
"Fuck no! If he trash-talked Lily, would you?"
"Fuck no!" Luke and Chase growl at the same time, causing Luke to shoot Chase the stink eye. I've wondered if maybe Wilder has a hard-on for Valentine's sister. “And if Hummel said one word against Holly, I would have put that dipshit's snively ass in the hospital."
All the guys cheer again. Pebbles and Bam-Bam tap their sticks on my shins, and Drake and LaRoux pat my back. I grin back at the guys, thankful this team is so fucking awesome. I wasn't kidding when I said we have something special. Some locker rooms are poison, but this one is the strongest-knit group I've ever seen.
Case in point, Ollie and Ozzy have often said New York has a few assholes on the team that ruin the whole room. Guys who cheat on their wives or that fuck their teammates' wives and girlfriends. Guys who drink too much, party too hard, and don't pull their weight.
The Northmen are different. We have one focus, and that's winning.
Holly breezes into the dressing room, and I immediately notice Em is missing. She smiles, silently letting me know everything is alright, but it doesn't make me feel any better. I know something is up, and I am owed some explanations.
After debriefing us and sending some players out to talk to the media, Holly hurries over to me.
"Avery is fine. She went home with Colton," Holly tries to soothe me and cuts me off before I can start my interrogation. "She's waiting for us there and we'll explain everything."
The ride home feels like forever as I follow Holly and Luke in my SUV. Before going up, I run across the street to the convenience store and grab a few bags of Skittles, the original kind, sour ones, berry ones, and some new tropical-flavoured ones. I buy enough Skittles for ten rainbows. Anything to make Em feel better.
She's sitting on the couch watching reruns of "Friends" with a glass of wine, wearing her pink flannel pyjama bottoms; the ones with the pineapples in sunglasses she loves so much. Her makeup is washed away, and her hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail. Nothing about Em is polished or perfect right now, but everything about her is perfection to me.
"Hey," I call over to her, trying to sound light and cheery, despite the loss and whatever else is going on with Em. "I brought you Skittles."
She jumps off the couch and throws her arms around me, pressing her nose to my neck and inhaling.
"Thank you," she whispers. Something about how she grips me makes me squeeze her tighter. She's holding on by a thread, and I'm keeping her together.
When she pulls back, Holly and Luke have joined us, sitting at the kitchen table. Luke looks furious. Colton's reading on his phone, and as I pull out Em's chair, a sense of foreboding washes over me. Something is very wrong.
"Payton came to the game tonight to talk to us," Em says.
"Okay, did they find the guy who hacked my dashcam?" I ask. Em looks at Holly and then at Colton. Luke's fists are white. Everyone at this table is tense and in the know except for me, and it's getting harder and harder to stay calm.
"No," Em says with a mixture of anger and fear. "But we're pretty sure it's Randy, and he's been doing a lot more than just embezzling money from Tyra."
"What the fuck does that mean?" My voice comes out more like a bark than I intend it to.
"It means Randy is into some serious drugs and he owes money to a lot of bad people," Colton explains, and as he continues to tell me about a possible connection to a drug lord, I can feel the vein in my head start to pound. What the fucking fuck?
"We think Randy sold the video to a gossip site for cash," says Holly. "And we think he might have tried breaking in the first time to plant a camera, but then he chose to hack into your dashcam when that didn't pan out. Payton's swept the condo. It's all clean."
This is fucking psycho and I say as much, but then I realize what Holly said.Tried breaking in the first time.If there was a first time, there's been a second time.
I'm a hairsbreadth away from Hulk smashing something, and Luke and Colton have to keep me calm. Holly explains everything in more detail while Em sits at the end of the table in silence, oddly serene. Just when I think Holly has finished dropping bombs on me, she shows me a picture that was texted to Em when we were in Boston.
"He was in her room?" I roar. "Why didn't you say anything? No wonder you have more fucking locks on your door than Fort Knox. Why aren't the police doing anything?"
"They're doing everything they can, Ryan." Em finally speaks. "Payton has people watching our building, office, the arena, and everywhere else I go. There's nothing we can do but wait until they catch him."
