“What the fuck do you mean she’s suing the hockey franchise?” I ask, the rumble of my voice echoing off my general manager’s office walls.
I can hear his assistant, Penelope, jump out of her seat from her desk outside his closed office door.
“She thinks it’s a bigger payday… and she’s not wrong,” Sam Roberts says, his hands pinched at his hips and a stern look on his face, a Hawkeyes baseball cap in team colors, black and turquoise, covering most of his dark hair.
“It’s all bullshit. She’s lying,” I tell him, leaning forward and planting my fists against the desk between us.
“I know. We got an anonymous package in the mail a few days ago with pictures from the surveillance footage that night that the club refused to give us. It corroborates your story and proves she’s lying, but that doesn’t mean she can’t try to drag our name through the mud in the process.”
His eyes cast down on his desk, and he shakes his head.
“She can’t get away with this,” I say, standing straight up and beginning to pace in his office.
“Briggs, the legal team is on this thing. With the surveillance proving that you never entered into that back room with her, and Altman and Powers being nowhere near the club during the alleged attack, she doesn’t have any leg to stand on.”
“This just doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been going to that club regularly for over a year. I thought Dixie and I had an understanding… and more than that, I thought we were friends, or at least friendly. With everything we’ve shared with each other, this just doesn’t make sense. Except… I know she needs money. Could she be so desperate that she’s willing to end my career for it?”
“What exactly have you two shared? Or do I even want to know?” he asks, the brim of his ball cap riding low , blocking some of his light blue eyes.
The stress of being the general manager of a hockey team beginning to show in the peppering around the sides of his sideburns and ears, and showing his age of somewhere in his late fifties.
I ignore his question. I don’t want to get into it. My father’s illness isn’t something I want to talk about if I can avoid it, thus the reason I’m in this mess.
“Let me talk to her,” I offer.
“Don’t,” Sam says, his palm up to stop me. He’s a few inches shorter than my six-foot-four, and he’s gained a few pounds around his belly since I started at The Hawkeyes five years ago, but he still tries to keep up with us and maintain a relatively built body for a guy no longer playing sports for a living. With the deep timber of his voice, he demands that I fall in line, and I do. “Legal doesn’t want you making this any worse.” His expression almost daring me to challenge him under the bill of his hat.
And I’m stupid enough to try.
“If I could find out what her motive is—”
“Briggs! She’s accusing you and two of our other players of some heinous acts against her. You, those players, and this hockey franchise are lucky as shit that the footage inside the club proves her allegations are fabricated; otherwise, we’d all burn for this. Don’t go fucking near her, do you understand me? Or your hockey career with this franchise, and possibly your career playing in the NHL, will be over,” he barks, leaning forward with his hands on his hips and his eyes piercing across the desk.
Sam is always calm under pressure. That’s what made him a killer hockey player in his heyday, and that’s what makes him the best general manager in the business now.
His eyes lock on mine, and silence drifts between us for a moment. He doesn’t say a word, but I know he’s disappointed in me. I can feel it, and my chest squeezes uncomfortably at letting down my GM and the man who took me under his wing when I first started out here as a rookie.
I can’t stand the silence anymore. Finally, I ask, “They think I’ll make this worse? How much worse could it fucking get? She accused me of sexual assault!”
“Jail time, Briggs, that’s how much worse it could get. If a jury believes her over the evidence, you could be in jail for the next twenty years.”
“Fuck.”
I swallow hard.
“I swear to God I didn’t do anything to her that night, or even with her.”
“I know. I picked you up while you were passed out on the couch in the main part of the club, remember?”
Now I’m the one hanging my head. I forgot that Tyler, the bartender, had called Sam to come to pick me up from the bar after I had passed out well over an hour before the sexual assault that Dixie claims happened.
Sam continues, “But even if a jury doesn’t side with her, there’s no way that if this goes to court, all of our names won’t be trashed. It’s too good of a story for the gossip blogs and news channels not to go ape-shit over this. I can see the headlines now: Three large pro hockey players take advantage of a defenseless dancer in a strip club during a lap dance in a private room, out of view of anyone else in the club.”
With a groan, I fall into the leather chair behind me. “Kaenan Altman wasn’t even there, and Lake Powers left hours before. There are too many holes in her story for anyone to believe it.”
Light blue eyes under the shadow of his hat look back at me. “People will believe what they want to believe. People love a good witch hunt. We need to do whatever we can to make sure this story doesn’t see the light of day. Legal is looking for a way to keep us out of court.”
I guess I never considered it would go this far, mostly because it isn’t true, and the number of contradictions in her story would leave anyone assuming that Dixie is making this entire thing up, but Sam is right. This doesn’t look good.
“Phil Carlton and I have a meeting with Legal this week. We’ll see what they’ve come up with. For now, no more drinking, keep your nose clean and out of the press, and skate your damn ass off. You need to prove to the press that you didn’t do anything wrong by keeping your head in the game. Moreover, you need to prove to Phil that you’re worth keeping after all this headache is over with.”
Phil Carlton, the owner of the team, has been pushing for a more family-friendly image for the franchise, and this is the kind of scandal that would blow up the work he’s done to get things on track and get bright, shiny new sponsorships in the door.
“Sam, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t say it, Conley… show me. Prove to the world that you didn’t do anything wrong.”
How the hell was I going to do that?
