Page 64 of Bro Code

How’s your head? sent Louis.

Fine. Assistant coach is here until my parents arrive. So weird. I’m just lying in bed in the dark and he’s like, sitting in the other room watching Netflix? I’m bored.

Louis smiled. Please go easy and rest. Text me if anything’s wrong?

A thumbs up. Text me when you land.

Louis hesitated, thumb hovering over the heart emoji. Was that too much? He took a breath and sent it, then sat there with his pulse racing for what felt like a thousand years, clutching the phone.

Until Riley sent one back.

Louis’ stomach did backflips. He wanted to send back another one. Five. Ten. Instead, he kept his shit together, took a screenshot, and swiped open the browser to look at the news and keep his fingers busy.

Hockey was having a day of reckoning.

Last night’s brawl had made international headlines: three homosexual players – they didn’t know about Liam – involved in a physical confrontation on the ice with a player who, it turned out, had used a derogatory slur. It was a bonanza.

NHL Players Are Coming Out (Of the Woodwork) said one headline.

A League of Extraordinarily Gay Gentlemen! said another.

Pundits from all over the world were weighing in on what had happened. Dustin Bennet had posted an opinion piece, basically defending Elliot Rodriguez for hitting his own teammate, and calling for Okafor to be prosecuted for a hate crime.

Which seemed wild, until you realized that was exactly what it was.

Okafor had used his helmet as a weapon against a player, and it was looking very likely that he’d done it because of that player’s sexual orientation. There was no hard proof yet – if it went to trial the defense would try to argue that it had been a mistake, but…come on. Everyone saw it. There were cameras.

In addition to Tampa and Montreal’s seventy-two-hour suspension, Nic was benched for the next two games, and Liam Harris for even longer, because he’d been “the third man in”, which meant he’d escalated what was already happening between Nic and Okafor. To Louis this seemed grossly unfair.

Rodriguez was benched and Okafor wouldn’t be back on the ice for at least the rest of the season, and probably never again. Riley had come through unpunished, because it was clear he’d been trying to hold Liam back, and presumably because he’d been the victim of a hate crime and it would look bad for the NHL if they punished him for that.

That made Louis’ stomach clench, and he shut his eyes and took a deep breath. He hated that he’d left Riley alone.

They were in the air and he’d been served pretzels and soda by the time he propped the phone in the seat in front of him and put in his headphones. There was a press conference he wanted to catch. He went to ESPN to find it.

Nic, Liam, Elliot Rodriguez, Coach Meyers, and a Tampa PR person were sitting behind a desk with a row of mics pointed at them. Cameras flashed madly. Nic was in his Sunday best: a royal blue suit with a smooth red tie and his wavy blonde hair slicked back, hands clasped on the table in front of him and a handsome smile on his face. Liam sat beside him in a suit jacket over a hoodie with a Canadiens hat pulled all the way down on his brow and his arms folded. Louis couldn’t see his eyes but guessed he was making a Herculean effort to keep his shit together: press conferences were absolutely not Liam’s thing. Nic had told Louis that his agent did a lot of work to make sure Liam didn’t have to do them very often.

Next to him, Rodriguez was in a flashy pink jacket, no tie, the top button of his shirt undone and a gold cross flashing in the hollow of his throat. He had on a ball-cap too – although his was perched at a rakish angle on top of his crispy black curls and still had the sticker on the brim.

Louis clicked up the volume. A reporter was asking Nic what Okafor said that made him lose his temper. Nic smiled and said, “I’d rather not repeat it.”

“It must have been pretty bad? To tick off the nicest guy in the NHL?”

A few chuckles around the room, which Nic didn’t join in with. Maybe they were expecting him to go Aw, shucks and do his Golden Boy thing where he bent over backwards to answer their questions, but he just looked the reporter dead in the eye and firmly said, “Yeah, it was pretty bad.”

“Elliot, have you had any conflict personally with Reef Okafor in the past?”

Rodriguez flashed a smile. “No comment.”

Tampa’s PR person didn’t look thrilled that that was his answer, but Rodriguez the Wonderkid could probably get away with anything. That suit was probably not what he’d been instructed to wear.

“Question for Liam Harris?” someone called. Liam didn’t look up. “Can you tell us why you got involved? Being the third man in, you must have known you’d face ejection? Now you’re looking at a six-game suspension? Any comment as to why you put yourself in the middle of this?”

Louis felt his pulse tick up on Liam’s behalf. Cameras snicked and clicked, and Liam shifted in his chair, arms folded, and mumbled something the mics didn’t pick up.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Harris would rather not answer questions,” said Nic, smiling.