My mind flicked back to when we’d said goodbye in the parking lot outside the country club this afternoon.
“You going out with us tonight?”I’d asked as I hoisted our golf bags into my trunk.
“Are you kidding?”He’d laughed as he’d adjusted the strap on his helmet.“We have to get back to work soon. I’m going to take all the going out and relaxing I can get.”
“Is that why you weren’t at the gym this yesterday?”
Despite his sunglasses, the roll of his eyes was unmistakable, and he flipped me off with a glove-covered hand.“Fuck you.”
I chuckled.“All right. We’re meeting around eight.”
“Sounds good. I can take the kids off Rachel’s hands for a few hours before I go.”
I made a gesture like I was cracking a whip.
He just snorted, fired up the engine, and rode out of the parking lot.
Sitting here now in this waiting room… Had that conversation been our last?
No. No, of course it hadn’t. It couldn’t be.
From what I’d been able to piece together from Rachel, he’d been on his way to meet us when he’d started getting dizzy, so he’d pulled over. He’d sat for a few minutes, hoping it would pass. It didn’t, so he’d called Rachel and said he didn’t feel safe on his bike, and maybe he needed to go to the hospital. Then he’d texted that he suddenly had a massive headache, and hedefinitelyneeded to go to the hospital.
When she’d arrived minutes later, his bike stood abandoned beside an ambulance as EMTs frantically loaded Leif into the back. He’d collapsed, and a bystander had called 911.
He’d made it to the hospital and into surgery. Brain bleed, they said. An aneurysm. People survived those all the time, didn’t they? There might be a long recovery ahead, but he’d pull through. He was too goddamned stubborn not to.
I couldn’t say how much time went by before the waiting room doors opened again.
But then they did.
And just like I had in the moment I’d seen Rachel’s name on my phone…
I knew.
CHAPTER 2
PEYTON
September.
The first day of Pittsburgh Whiskey Rebels training camp was easily the most surreal thing I’d ever experienced.
As with any training camp, there were prospects, players from the farm teams, pros on professional tryouts, new acquisitions from trades and free agency, and the veterans who’d been on the roster the previous season. At every camp I’d ever attended before, there was always an electric vibe. Everyone was ready for the new season—time to shake off last season’s lows and try to replicate its highs. The younger guys were eager to learn from the veterans, and they all held out hope this would be the season they were selected for the roster. The PTOs and new acquisitions who’d played elsewhere in the League were ready to find their footing within their new team’s systems.
It was an exciting, stressful, and exhausting time for everyone.
But this year, the usual optimistic vibe of camp was MIA. The younger guys and us new additions were quieter than we should’ve been. No one knew quite what to say. How exuberant we should be.
Because holy shit, the men who’d been on Pittsburgh’s roster last year were… God, it was like they weren’t even here.
Most of the new guys and prospects changed in the facility’s other locker rooms, but since I was expected to be on the roster, I already had a stall in the team locker room. As we all put on our gear, the room was so absolutely silent, I could hear every rip of tape being pulled off a roll. Every zipper. Every creak of padding.
Cautiously, I stole a few glances at my teammates. I’d known most of these men for a long time, even if I hadn’t played with them. Mike Mitchell, who everyone called Eminem, had been on my major junior team a year ahead of me. Willie had played in Detroit the first two years I was there before he’d signed with Pittsburgh. I knew every face on sight.
And as the silence hung over all of them, I was painfully aware of the empty locker stall four over from mine. No one had dared put anything there, and no one had needed to be told; the nameplate made it clear that was a sacred space for now.
Sooner or later, someone would fill that spot. There were only so many stalls in here, and it wouldn’t stay empty forever. But right now, while his teammates were still grieving—while they wore their pain on their sleeves as plainly as they wore the patches with his number on their chests—no one used that locker.
