“Yup. More than I have on my athlete page. What can I say? The ladies love a masked man.” Ethan smirks. “I’m a chameleon. I can be whoever they want me to be.”
“They don’t know it’s you? What about your voice? Do you talk?”
“Voiceovers, Coach. Unless you know my freckles—which would be really fucking creepy—there’s no way you’d put two and two together.” He frowns when I give him back his phone. “This isn’t about that?”
“No. Ethan, I got a call yesterday letting me know you’re leading the league in penalty minutes. Again. You got into multiple fights with the St. Louis Tigers’ assistant captain the other night. Again.”
“Shit,” he whispers. “The league really tracks how much time I spend in the sin bin?”
“Yup. They’re looking for patterns. Repeat offenders, repeat victims. Most of your penalty minutes aren’t for majors, but they’re worried about how this could progress if we don’t talk about it.” I sigh. “Look. I think it’s bullshit. The league encourages fighting, but they punish you after if they deem it too severe. I just need to bring it to your attention.”
“The Tigers’ assistant captain.” Ethan fidgets with a loose thread on his shirt. “He and I, uh, aren’t the best of friends.”
“I’m all for being rough, but this is obviously personal.”
“Does the team get access to our high school and college transcripts during the draft combine?”
“No.” I frown. “Why the hell would I care about what grade you got in calculus? All I want to know is how fast you can get down the ice to protect Sullivan in goal.”
“I wasn’t a very good student.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I’ve struggled with learning disabilities pretty much my entire life.”
“Ah.” I look at him, wanting him to know he has my full attention. “Sullivan has dyslexia.”
“I know. We’ve talked about it a few times. It’s hard when everyone around you finds things easy and you struggle to read a sentence.” A shrug, a sigh. “I wish dyslexia is where my disabilities stopped. I also have dyscalculia. ADHD. The hint of dysgraphia. Needless to say, I was bullied a lot as a kid. Someone who couldn’t turn their thoughts into words? Flipping things and having trouble with math? People had a field day with me.”
What thefuck?
I remember all the times at practice I’ve seen Ethan counting things out on his fingers. How often he asks how many reps we’ve done and how many we have left. I assumed it was because he was being lazy, because he wanted to know when we were finished for the day, but boy was I wrong.
There are all the times he’s asked to take the charity items he needs to autograph home with him so he can finish them later. His barely legible handwriting every month when I ask the guys to write a reflection on how their season is going and his request to type it up.
My stomach drops to my feet.
“Ethan. I know I’m tough on you all on the ice, but my door is always open. Why didn’t you tell me? It wouldn’t have impacted your position on this team. We could’ve made accommodations or?—”
“No,” he snaps. “Hockey is the one part of my life where I don’t have to use my brain. It’s the only thing that comes naturally to me, and mentioning all the places where I struggled would mean I’d be treated differently. I’ve spent so much of my life being treated different, and I hate it. I do my best to hide it from the guys. From you. No one knows.”
Hell.
I know the pressure of being on a championship team at such a young age. I know the scrutiny you’re under from the media, from the fans. To carry all of thatandthis isn’t easy fucking work, and my respect for him multiplies.
“Can you tell me how your learning disabilities correlate to your behavior on the ice and all those penalties? It’s only February, but you already have as many minutes as some guys had all last season. I’m not mad. I just want to understand so we can come up with a plan going forward.”
“Brady Williams, the Tigers’ assistant captain, played at BU when I was at BC. We also went to rival high schools in Canada, so the fucker has been in my life for way too long. He knows I struggle when I’m off the ice, and he likes to start shit with me. Saying things under his breath. Calling me names. I’m sick of it. Punching him in the face is exactly what that dickbag deserves.He’s lucky I haven’t run into him off the ice. I’d fucking destroy him.”
“I get why you’re frustrated, Ethan, but you have to know he’s doing it because it’ll get a rise out of you.”
“Trust me, Coach. I’ve tried ignoring him, but he’s a piece of shit.” Ethan leans back and folds his arms over his chest. “It’s not just me he targets. It’s anyone he deems weaker than him. When Emmy was on the team, he said things about her. Thank fucking god Maverick never heard, or Brady would be six feet under. I know I joke around about women, but my mom raised me right. I respect them, but he doesn’t. When he mentions his ex-wife, I want to strangle him on her behalf.”
“Okay. Look. We don’t play the Tigers again until the first week in April. I need you to try to keep your temper under wraps until then.”
“Come on, Coach. Half of the fighting is to get the fans involved. You know they love it when we go at each other.”
“I’m asking you to knock it off, Ethan, and behave yourself.”
“Okay. Yeah.” Ethan nods. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean anything by it. I love this sport, and all that stuff makes it more fun.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. I’ve always hated bullies. “As for Brady Williams, I’ll talk to the league. I won’t mention names, only that I’ve heard there might be some inappropriate behavior happening behind the scenes that doesn’t align with our values. And if that doesn’t work, I played with Williams’s coach at BC. I’ll give him a heads-up.”
