Dick move or not, I bounce on my heels and wiggle with delight until the team draws him into a post-goal celly.
Still buzzing, I glance at the scout, who’s taking notes.
The UConn goalie had a .928 save percentage with a high tendency to lead last year’s Frozen Four winners to a shutout. In fact, Zach just broke his streak, and if the scout isn’t taking that info home to Daddy, then I’ll eat my beanie.
Once the puck drops again, I go to pick up where I left off, but Callan asks, “You sure you’re not dating?”
“Callan!”
“Fine, fine. Okay, you were saying.”
“So, we all grew up in Fort Lauderdale. Pecan and I are Florida natives, but Zach’s dad coached—” I hiss when a UConn defenseman boards Zach and the ref does shit about it. “—the Jaguars for a couple years. Then Team Canada hired him and he coached them to gold, but by that point, he and Zach’s mom were on the outs. She refused to disrupt Zach’s life when he was so close to us, so they kinda led separate lives. Him back in Canada during the season, them in Florida?—”
“So Zach resents him for leaving them?”
“Yeah, because it wasn’t a clean split. His dad spent the off-season in Florida and bitched about it and they weren’t technically separated. It was weird. Then Zach’s mom got sick and his dad never changed the way they lived.”
“Whoa!”
“Yeah, fucked up, right? She struggled for a long time before things became terminal, and in the end, she decided to go back to Canada when the doctors told her how bad things had become.”
“To be with her husband?’
“Yeah. Who promptly got a job with the Stars.”
Callan gapes at me. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I were but no.” I hitch a shoulder as Alec fucks up yet another pass. “How the hell they made him captain is beyond me.”
“Don’t you know who his dad is?”
“No?”
“The president of the school.”
I bark out a laugh. “Nepo baby. How do you know that?”
“I like research.”
“You mean you’re a snoop.” Elated, I turn in my seat to face him, finding even more pleasure in his bashful expression.
Callan Korhonen’s hard to make out. He’s pretty quiet on the surface, but dig a little and he’s kinda loud. Plus, in the short time I’veknown him, I’ve come to learn that he has a bunch of tasty nuggets in his arsenal—just like that one about Alec.
“I take an interest in the people around me,” he states, crisper than freshly fried chicken.
My smirk only widens. “I love it. What other shit do you know?”
“Derek Dyers’s on his last chance?—”
“WHAT?!”
The people around me glower at my volume, which says a lot in a hockey crowd. But I don’t care, not when Zach’s been bitching about Dyers since he started practicing with the jerk and could use the ammo.
“Last year, he and this other kid, Ben Sanders, were accused of misconduct.”
“On the ice? Jesus!”
His expression turns grim. “With a woman at a Rhos’ house party.”
