Page 7 of Gross Misconduct
Chapter Four
Jeremy
Iwas on lockdown. I refused to take any calls or answer any texts until I talked to my agent. All morning I’d been waiting for Taylor to call me back, and while I’d been waiting, I’d thrown up once and trashed my new coffee machine when I couldn’t get the top closed. Coffee was probably a bad idea anyway.
I’d barely thought about Orla, and that made me a piece of shit, not that I had to worry about her handling Lex. The guy was totally in love with her, and if I had to guess, he’d probably already forgiven her. What he didn’t know was that half the team was lusting after her, and I’d been the stupid one to bite into her forbidden fruit, but fuck, it had been worth it … at the time. Now I realized how badly I’d screwed up, and more importantly, how it was going to affect the team. I was their captain! Their leader. I’d also been screwing around with our top defenseman’s wife. There was no coming back from this. I expected Clay to ship me out of town as soon as possible since I had no doubt I was going to wreck the morale in the dressing room. Who would respect me now?
Every damn time my phone rang, I checked to see who was calling. I’d already ignored Ethan’s and Ryan’s calls, but this this time, I stopped to take notice. Orla’s name popped up on my screen.
“Hey,” I said in an instant, my heart pounding in my chest. Maybe Lex had freaked out on her, and she needed help. Or maybe someone had sent her death threats. Didn’t people do that when they were acting irrationally?
“I don’t have much time to talk. Lex is in the shower. Listen and don’t interrupt.”
The usual seductive tone of her voice was replaced by something more militant, and there was certainly no fear in it. Why had I doubted that Orla would take charge of this scandal?
“Okay.”
“I’ve been thinking it over, and this is our story. You and I happened to see each other in that lounge. Pure coincidence. We were both drinking, acting stupid, and we kissed. Nothing more. We deny anything else happened. That’s the story I told Lex, and he’s forgiven me.”
No shock there. “But what if more pictures come out. How do you know that this is the last of it?”
“Don’t you think they would have already? Why do you think I waited twenty-four hours to call you. We just deny it until it all blows over.”
She sure was optimistic, but then again, her husband had already forgiven her. She could now hide in the shadows. As for me, I was out there in the open, and a pretty easy target. “What makes you think it will?”
She sighed. “Lex is asking for a trade. I told him it was the best thing we could do. We’ll start fresh someplace new, and this will be forgotten in no time.”
I paced my condo. Yeah, maybe it would be forgotten forher, but I still had to walk into the dressing room almost every day to face my teammates. And while this plan of hers sounded easy, what if the other shoe dropped? “And if something else comes out?”
“Then it does,” she said with irritation. “I’ll be gone. Who cares? The only problem is if Lex and I stick around. Are you getting it yet?”
Right. I got it loud and clear. I was on my own. “Yeah, I’m getting it, but?—”
“Look, we had our fun. What we did was stupid, but if no one can prove it, then we just say it never happened. We were both careful other than that one time. A huge mistake. You’ll go on with your life, and I’ll go on with mine.”
I grimaced. We weren’t exactly an item, and it wasn’t like we loved each other or anything, but how she casually blew off what we had was … I don’t know, a bit cruel?
“Okay. If you think it will work.”
“Just remember the story. You were getting a drink to wind down, I ran into you with some friends. We got to talking and drinking and did something stupid that we both regret. Nothing else happened.”
“And you have friends who will cover for you?”
“Don’t worry about me. Like I said, gotta go. Have a good life. We can’t talk again.”
She hung up, and I stared at the phone. How many times had she done this? Screwed around with other guys and then walked away?
I replayed what she said in my head, and when Taylor called about an hour later, I had the story straight. When he asked me what had happened with Orla, and told me to be honest with him, I repeated the lie. It sounded mechanical and rehearsed, but I was determined to stick to the story Orla had concocted.
Taylor was quiet for a long time, and knowing him like I did, he wasn’t believing a word of what I was selling. I didn’t believe it either. I massaged a temple as I waited for my agent of nearly ten years to say something. He’d been the one to take me on after my first agent blew my relationship with the Kodiaks and nearly ruined my career. Glenn, my old agent, had always been a hard-ass, going for more than a player was worth. Sometimes it paid off, and most times it didn’t. In my case, the Kodiaks were prepared to let me go, which would normally be fine, but no other team came close to offering me what Glenn wanted. Glenn had us all bamboozled. Even my parents, who were usually levelheaded. Had my mom not stepped in and convinced me and Dad to dump Glenn, I’d probably we wallowing in some minor league, with a “difficult” label tattooed on my forehead.
Instead of calling my BS, Taylor took a different approach. “I’m going to come out there for a few days. I think it’s best if I meet with Dave and talk things over with him. We need to get ahead of this as soon as possible. I know the Kodiaks have their PR team on this. But that video … it’s not great.”
“Like I said, it was a onetime thing.”
“Yes, you have mentioned that,” he said, his voice dripping with doubt. If I couldn’t convince Taylor, how the hell was I supposed to convince anyone else? “I’ll be in town tomorrow, and I think we should have a talk. In the meantime, keep lying low until this matter is worked out. I hear rumblings that Lex has asked for a trade. That may be the solution to all this, but the stink will be left on you for a while. We’ll need to mitigate that somehow. Anyway, my flight is first thing. I’ll see you then.”
For the first time in a long time, I had no idea what todo.