Page 114 of Slap Shot Scandal
Harbor: Tell Bennett to get a lawyer
Harbor: Be cooperative, but don’t answer anything without representation
Mercifully, he texts me back immediately.
Weston: They’re taking B and that asshole down to the station
Weston: That dude’s gonna press charges
Shit.
And there’s video footage of the fight, probably circulating as we speak.
Harbor: Call your lawyer and agent
Harbor: I’ll loop management in
Weston: Tori already called Prince
Fu-u-u-ck.
Of course she called Daddy.
My cell vibrates with an alert.
Bile rises in my throat as I read the words:Coastal Crushers player Bennett Steele’s on thin ice
Oh. My. God.
I click into the TikTok video and there I am, front and center. That creep pawing at me. Then Weston’s next to me, his hand on my back. There’s a flash of light, the camera shakes. Loud noises and screaming as Bennett pummels the guy.
Blood. Tons of blood.
Callum and Weston pulling Bennett off the man, Tori’s arms waving at the DJ and telling him to shut it down.
I play the video again, then again. Zooming in, pausing, searching for angles.
Watch myself looking disoriented as that asshole grabs at me. Then Weston’s suddenly there. Too close, too intimate. Looking very much like a possessive boyfriend. Theoptics are career-destroying: the PR consultant drunk and getting groped at a team party, the captain swooping in.
“It’s going to come down to optics,” I mutter. “Bennett looks like the aggressor on the video—and defense of others only works if the response wasn’t excessive. He snapped. That’s what people will see.”
The sound quality’s not good enough to hear what the creepy guy’s saying to me, not close enough to catch how he pulled me up against him.
Dammit.
This is bad. Very, very bad.
“That’s not good.” Piper’s quiet, watching the video over my shoulder.
“No, Pipes. It’s really not.”
“But Bennett was protecting you.”
“I know. He can explain everything to the cops, and hopefully the guy won’t press charges. Plus, there were witnesses. Maybe no one else caught everything on camera. But surely people saw and heard what happened.”
“Shit, what a mess,” Piper mumbles.
“Shit is right.”
