Page 46 of The Grumpy Defenseman
“Wouldn’t offer you one. He doesn’t deserve one.”
The bluntness of it took some of the air out of my argument before I could make it.
Brick turned the coffee cup once in his hand.
“He snapped at you. In front of the room. He took something private and made it public in the ugliest possible way. You were right to leave. You were rightto pull back. I told him that. Sully told him his own version. Nobody in that room thought you were the problem.”
I swallowed.
“Okay,” I said, because it was the only word I trusted.
Brick nodded once.
“I am going to tell you something else,” he said. “It does not make him right or make what he did smaller. I’m telling you because you deserve the whole picture, and because the whole picture is the only one you ever seem interested in taking.”
That landed closer than I wanted it to.
I looked down at my camera.
“He had a contract call,” Brick said. “Seattle. Big number. Big enough to move the room before the room knew it was moving. He found out in the middle of practice. Came back looking like someone had pulled the ground sideways.”
“How big?” I asked.
“Ninety million, give or take enough money to make the rest of us bitter.”
The number landed with a clean, cold weight.
“That doesn’t excuse it,” I said.
“No.” Brick’s answer came immediately. “It explains the room he was standing in when he did it. That’s all.”
I breathed through the tightness in my chest.
The camera strap pressed into my palm.
“Then why are you telling me?”
“Because he went looking for the person who sees him.” Brick’s voice softened, not gentle exactly, but careful. “And she was gone. And I think that scared him more than the thing that cracked him open in the first place.”
The words settled into me, heavy and sinking.
I looked out at the ice. Players were beginning to drift on for warm-ups. Ryan first, controlled as ever. Finn behind him, all restless motion. Mack and Colt talking near the bench. The room assembleditself around routine, as if routine could hold anything if you gave it enough repetition.
“I wasn’t wrong to leave,” I said.
“No,” Brick said. “You weren’t.”
He let that sit.
Then, softer:
“But you were not the only one hurt.”
Brick pushed off the boards.
“That’s all I came to say.”
“Does he know you’re saying it?”
