With a grunt, I watch her go for as long as I can then I turn on my heel.
Pecan’s watching me, his expression wary. “You fuck around with him again and the dean will get involved.”
I shrug off the warning. “The shit he called Denny? He’s lucky he could walk out of the diner.”
“Your temper, man. You need to get it under control.”
“I’m not the Hulk,” I snap.
“Not unless someone insults Denny. She’s mouthy. She’s always going to insult someone. You can’t threaten the teeth of everyone she pisses off.”
“Dyers’s different and you know it. He’s a bully, Pecan. I hate bullies.”
Mostly because my father is one.
As a kid, I was luckier than most. When he and Mom did their weird semi-split, his presence in my life was minimal. It meant that he never had the chance to dig his claws into me.
Aside from with the stutter I had.
Looking back, that was the only thing Mom didn’t go head-to-head with him on.
“He’s definitely a bully,” Gregg agrees. “Addison looked terrified.”
“Did she seriously steal your house key?” Joker asks.
“Yup. She’s a full-on bunny boiler.”
“I don’t know Addison all that well,” Pecan inserts, “but she’s at almost every party me and Hailey go to. I’ve never seen her that scared of her own shadow before.”
“Me neither,” Mason butts in. “She’s the instigator, not the one who sits back and takes it.”
Alec straightens in his seat and don’t ask me why, but I get the feeling he’s trying to change the subject. “Zach, we need to talk about your attitude?—”
“And not Dyers’s? He’s the problem. Zach finishes what Dyers starts.” Gregg’s chuckle turns nasty. “You need to shut the fuck up about shit that’s happening on your watch and that you’re incapable of handling. You’re the worst captain we’ve had since I’ve been on the team and that’s because of who your daddy is. You can’t keep anyone under control, Alec.
“Dyers’s doing drugs. You know he is because at least three of us have come to you to complain about him sniffing the stuff in the locker room, but you do sweet fuck all about it.”
“Neither does Coach,” Joker grouses.
“If anyone’s a problem,” Gregg continues, “it’s that cokehead.All I saw today was a teammate who’d back me in a fight if some fucker got in my face.
“I meant it when I agreed with Pecan. I’m in this for fun. There’s no fun to be had when everyone from the captain up is biased and in favor of a man like Dyers. Not after what went down last year.”
The words light up in my brain like a Christmas tree. “When he assaulted someone?”
En masse, the team grows still.
Alec’s the only one not surprised by my accusation, which tells me a lot.
Lex clears her throat, but from her pallor, I can tell she heard every word.
I send her an apologetic look, but she’s purposely hyperfixating on the checkerboard floor.
“Did you want to order replacements?”
There’s no humor in her words anymore. No lightheartedness.
Was she lying to Denny?
