Page 88 of Game Misconduct

“Oh.” Tanner laughed. “Uhh, honestly, just playing games with the boys. I beat them at Mario Kart.”

“Okay. Do you want me to let you go?”

“No,” Tanner said, pawing at the mess on his nightstand to find his earbuds. “I want to talk to you. Just … running behind. As usual.”

“Tanner,” Leif said firmly.

He lifted his head to look at the screen. “What?”

“Take a deep breath. I don’t think you’ve breathed properly since you answered this call.”

Tanner sighed, deflating. “Sorry, I was rushing and?—”

“It’s fine,” Leif said. “Just … you seem really flustered.”

“I guess.” Tanner set his phone down. “One sec, okay?”

“Okay.”

Tanner found the earbuds, popped them in, made sure they were connected, then took a couple of deep, slow breaths.

When he no longer felt like the hamster in his brain was running full tilt on the wheel, he picked up his phone again. “I’m back. Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine.” Leif certainlylookedcalm enough. “Is something wrong or were you just running behind?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I was just in the middle of the game and then you called and I realized I was running super late and had already missed a couple of your calls. And then I had to explain to Mickey and Rafe why I was abandoning them. Without like, giving away what we’re doing,” he said with a small laugh. “And just as I was leaving, Mickey reminded me that I’d agreed to do the dinner dishes, but I hadn’t stuck them in the dishwasher yet and then I remembered I need to …”

“I think you better take another deep breath,” Leif said.

Tanner flopped back against the bed with a sigh. “Anyway, this is my life.”

“It looks stressful.”

“Sometimes,” Tanner said. “I mean, mostly shit is really fucking good, you know? Like I get to play hockey on a fucking awesome team, and I have great friends and roommates and get laid whenever I want, pretty much, and it’s just … you know, I feel super fucking grateful that this is my life.”

“That’s good.”

“And stuff was hard for my mom and me growing up, you know?” Tanner said, surprised that his throat suddenly felt a little thick. “After my dad bailed. If Jeff hadn’t stepped up, I wouldn’tbehere.”

“Because you couldn’t afford gear and coaches and stuff?”

“Yeah,” Tanner said. “That. But mostly because—because I was a fucking mess. I was starting to hang out with these guys—and look, I fucking know hockey culture has its problems, like we saw all that shit that went down in Evanston with Jack Malone and there are other dudes in the league who are probably just as bad if not worse—but like, back then, I was hanging out with somebaddudes.”

“On the Furies?” Leif wrinkled his brow like he was trying to remember who they’d played with who was problematic.

“Nah, most of them were decent. It was before that.”

“Oh, okay.”

“They were—there was this hazing happening. And I went along with it. Didn’t say shit about it.”

Leif nodded, frowning.

“And like, I still feel bad about it. The kid wasreallyfucking scared. He left hockey after that. I ran into him a few years later and he fucking flinched when he saw me. I already felt awful about what I’d done to him but that made me feel even worse. I apologized but that only does so much, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“Jeff was working with me as a private skills coach. I still don’t know how my mom managed to swing that. And I know you’ll say that she probably slept with him to?—”