An eyebrow arched, and I contemplated telling him I needed to grab some sleep, but I couldn’t say no when he said something was tradition. Not if I wanted to be part of the team.
At the base of the stairs, we popped out of the stairwell into a long, square, tube-like passageway. It should’ve felt claustrophobic, but it was anything but. It looked big enough that I could drive my Jeep through it. The elevator bank I’d bypassed upstairs set off to the left at the end of the passageway with a matching set of elevator doors on the opposite wall. There was a matching stairwell door across from us as well, with an ID card access panel on it. Off to the right, the passageway continued into darkness. This hallway must bethe underground passageway to the arena I’d heard so much about. With the renovations not wrapped up, we hadn’t been allowed in the arena, and they had shut down access to the passageway.
“The women’s dorm is on that side,” he explained. “There’s a split up ahead that leads to their facilities.”
His voice echoed loudly, bouncing off the concrete walls and ceiling. It wasn’t just mundane gray concrete, though. Concrete floors stretched forward into the tunnel, covered by a black carpet runner with red accents. The ceiling paint matched the floor. Beautiful, but nothing compared to the walls. Those took center stage.
Black and gray painted murals depicting still shots from games graced the walls, with Manchester U red being the only color dashing through the design as accents. The wall across from us appeared to be images from the women’s team, and as I spun around, I realized I was right because the painted wall surrounding the door we walked through held images from past men’s games.
Wow.
The word bounced around my head several times, lit up like fireworks in July. Every new sight here had me fighting to keep my mouth from dropping wide open. The shock and awe must’ve shown on my face because Trey smacked my shoulder, giving me a shove to get my feet moving, as he chuckled.
“Crazy, huh?” he asked as we made our way away from the stairs and elevators.
I nodded, then gasped as a set of lights popped on in front of us and a set behind us went dark.
“Freaking motion sensor lights? Jesus. They seriously thought of everything.”
“I think that was the idea. I know The U is hungry for a championship win. I guess this was their way of helping it along. Make sure we wanted for nothing and had zero worries about anything but bringing home the trophy. It’s been a few years. Plus, with us having so many alumni who are either currently playing or who have played in the pros, and with the enemy to the north shelling out the big bucks for their new facility, I guess the university felt we warranted an upgrade. At least according to Muncy and my dad.”
“So you were close with Muncy?” I asked. I’d wanted to since we moved in, but he’d not been around much.
Trey gave me a hard look, and when he spoke, the fun-loving guy I’d seen so far disappeared. “He and my dad played together. They were big buddies, but I earned…”
I stopped, gripped his arm, and said, “I wasn’t insinuating you didn’t earn your spot here or anywhere else. One thing I’ve learned with Mikal adopting me is that his name can be a blessing and a curse. It might open some doors, but that tiny bit of help comes at a price.”
“You called them Anya and Coach during move in. I didn’t realize they were your parents.”
“They are,” I said, “I just don’t want everyone to make the same assumption about me that you thought I was making about you.”
“Is that why you go by Mercer still?”
I nodded, then shrugged. “I was a Mercer all my life. I didn’t meet Coach and Anya until I was fifteen. And before that, I wasa runaway foster kid who lived on the streets. I’m used to doing things on my own. They understand that I want to blaze my own path and kick down the doors and walls blocking me from my goal without using their name to do so.”
“And what’s that?”
“Same as you, if I had to guess.”
He held out his fist with a smile, and I bumped it.
There was only one difference between my goals and Trey’s… the Raptors drafted Trey already. He just hadn’t been signed yet.
At the end of the tunnel, Trey scanned his ID and pushed the door open. I shook my head. We were inside the barn just outside the player lounge, if the signage was anything to go by.
The renovations had kept me out of the arena when Muncy recruited me, but he’d shown me the plans and mock-ups, so I’d seen what it was supposed to look like, and they’d told me it would include a huge communal clubhouse-type space. But when Trey pushed open the doors, I bit the inside of my cheeks to keep my mouth shut.
This space was all that and then some. The room had the same carpet as the tunnel, and the ceiling’s paint was identical to the corridor. But the rest of the room looked like a mega fan had gotten hold of some billionaire’s bank card and gone on a shopping spree. Because if it were possible to brand The U’s logo and mascot on something, they had done so.
There were arcade-type video games, four massive televisions hung on the walls in front of an extra-large black leather U-shaped sectional with an enormous ottoman in the middle..Embroidered on every seat back was a big black M, the threads shot through with red.
Then there was the enormous kitchen and eating area where the color scheme continued. An island with bar stools and a long, solid black dining table encircled by enough translucent red chairs for every guy on the team to have a seat dominated the space. The island was the same red as everything else, with the base cabinets along the wall painted a matte black. The countertops, what I could see of them, were black with tiny red flecks that looked like they glowed, and the backsplash was the same with the red flecks getting denser as they converged on the big red M inlaid in the sea of black. And that M definitely glowed.
Every kind of food imaginable covered the countertops. One side of the island included all the Italian food you could think of. The other side had Mexican dishes lined up side by side. There was also a cheeseburger and baked potato bar, plus all the fruit and salad you could imagine.
“What the… where did all the food come from?”
“I told you. It’s tradition. Every year, the local restaurants ply us with a veritable smorgasbord of food and drinks.”
