A short unedited teaser from First Season, Railers Hockey 2, written with VL Locey.
Book 1, Changing Lines, is available to pre-order now and is releasing 12 July.
Excerpt
Layton’s first meeting with Adler… Layton’s POV
“Hell no, I’m sensitive, I can be sensitive.”
“It’s standard procedure,” I reassured and lied at the same time.
“Oh,” he deflated a little. “You mean everyone has to do it?”
I wish at that moment I had just said yes, because that would have stopped Adler in his tracks. But no, I had to be all cagey. “That’s confidential.”
He frowned. “So not everyone then.”
“Like I said, confidential.”
“What about Arvy?”
I couldn’t for the life of me think why he was picking on Arvy as an example, so I missed another opportunity to cut this dead. “Confidential,” I said.
“I see, so he has this gay cousin which gives him an out from an entire day wasted listening to shit about what I can and can’t say?”
“Mr. Lockhart—“
“So if you know someone who knows someone then you have an out. Right?”
“That’s not how it works—“
“I know Arvy,” he said, and sat back in his chair. “I have to think about what I say in front of him, so that is me being sensitive.”
“You’re missing the point,” I began patiently, and then I really screwed the pooch. “Wait, Arvy was there when you were handling your junk in the parking lot.”
“Oh,” Adler said and sighed noisily. Then he scrubbed at his eyes with his fingers. “Hate that political correctness shit,” he muttered.
I assumed he meant the sensitivity training, but I wanted to move on from this. “It’s all common sense, and with the changes on the team it’s vital we have a united front to any and all media inquiries.”
“Hell, I don’t care what Ten and the Coach do.” He looked at me and I waited for more because he seemed like he was going to add to that sentence. Only he didn’t, his lips thinned like he was trying very hard to hold someone back.
I took that as a sign that he was about to say something crass and almost felt proud that he’d held back. I looked down at my sketched notes.
“This is a question you don’t need to answer, but it would be helpful to know if you have any religious objections to the situation that we should make a note of.”
“Christ no,” he said, and then snorted a laugh at his own joke. He quickly stopped and schooled his face into all serious business. “Sorry, couldn’t stop myself.”
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