Is she the woman Dyers and his buddy hurt?
We place our orders, but Joker isn’t willing to let the subject drop. “Is that what happened?”
“I have it on good authority that it did. What did you think happened last year?”
“We were never given the details, just told that there was an incident. The moron he hung around with was suspended from the team and got yeeted to another school. Derek couldn’t play for a couple games but then he was back. Would the board of governors have allowed that if he’d…?”
“Of course they would. A name like his?” I sneer. “Especially with a captain on board who’ll look the other way.”
“I don’t appreciate the insinuation?—”
“Fuck you, Alec,” Pecan shouts. “If I’d known he sexually assaulted someone, then I’d never have agreed to play with him.”
I’m so proud of my best friend but…
“You didn’t know?”
“You think I’d have played with the asshole if I had? To be honest, I thought the suspensions and that kid moving onto another school was drug related.”
Gregg and Mason nod.
“Me too.”
“Same.”
“You think Dyers’s a junkie, that’s nothing to his bud. What a psycho he was.” Joker rubs his chin. “You’re sure about this, Zach?” He raises that same hand when I glower at him. “Just saying, he’s a bragger. I’m not sure if he’d have been able to keep his trap shut if he managed to get away with something like that.”
He has a point.
“My source is unparalleled,” I tell him, stealing Denny’s adjective.
“His father probably gave the college a massive donation to smooth things over,” Gregg muses. “That knob jockey.”
“All we knew, pretty much, was that his game collapsed before he was suspended and they let him back as if nothing happened, despite a few of us questioning Coach about his comeback when he was on drugs. A couple of us even offered to go on the record about it.”
“That they let him return is just bullshit,” I growl.
Cutting a look at Lex, I find the ordinarily sassy server’s shaking. Eyes large in her pale face, she’s listening into the argument from the counter like she can’t stop herself.
Alec takes my distraction as an opportunity to slide out of the booth and scamper off like the rat he is. I scowl at his exit but let him go because we’ll get more done without his presence.
“He knew,” Mason seethes, banging his fist on the table so hard that the container holding salt, pepper, sugar, ketchup, and mustard rattles.
“Yeah, he did. What a piece of shit.” Gregg grits his teeth. “Think we should quit the team? I don’t want to play with either of those slimy fuckers?—”
“Why should we be the ones who quit?” I reason.
“They’re not going to push either of them out, Zach.” Pecan rubs his temple. It’s a surprisingly somber look on a man who takes nothing apart from hockey seriously.
“You didn’t know about any of this?” I can’t stop myself from asking twice.
This kind of shit—the cover-up—it’s too big to fly under the radar.
“One day, Dyers enters the locker room with a set of black eyes and a busted nose. We were coming up to the conference quarterfinals. We needed to win to stay in the competition,” Pecan states with a crack of his knuckles. “It’s no excuse, man, but your mom had just had that second-to-last stroke and Denny and I were in pieces. It’s why my game went south.”
Gregg pats him on the back. “Alec told us that Dyers got into a fight with a door and the door won.”
“He played like shit,” Joker butts in. “Pecan looked like Hellebuyck in comparison. No offense, bro.”
