But I don’t talk about my feelings, and I especially won’t expose any of my weaknesses.
“I’m not gonna give the front office more of a reason to trash my contract.”
“They’re not going to break your contract.” Although his voice isn’t as sure as when he calls plays in the huddle. When he knows we’re gonna score.
I scrub my hands over my face, thinking about how Coach Roberts wouldn’t even acknowledge me after the Bowl game. The phone call from my agent informing me I’d been dropped from all my endorsement deals. And, of course, there was Malcolm.
He’d given me a reprieve for the last few days to “adjust” to my new life, but he’s been texting daily to make sure I’m not doing anything stupid.
He doesn’t need to. Ever since that phone call weeks ago, I haven’t done much of anything besides stare out of windows, remembering my parents’ parting words to me.
“We didn’t raise you to be this way,” my mom said two nights before the accident. “We didn’t raise you to throw away everything you’ve worked so hard for.”
“We’ll always love you, son,” my dad added. “We just wish you’d remember we love you for beingyou, not someone else you think you need to be.”
I haven’t been sleeping well, haunted by those words.
By the person my parents thought I was, by the persona the world believed was true, by the future I couldn’t seem to see.
I can’t find a way out of any of it.
“Training camp starts next month…” I meet Erik’s eyes. “What am I supposed to do with Paisley?”
He considers this for a while, splitting his attention between the hall that leads to Paisley’s room and his three-month-old son. “What does she want to do?”
“Fuck if I know. Go back in time to ask my parents not to go out that night?”
He winces, and I plow my fingers through my hair. “I’m not cut out for this. I can’t do it. My aunt offered to take Paisley, and I think?—”
“Are you kidding me?” Erik’s voice rises enough that it sets me back on my heels. He has a wicked temper, though it very rarely shows. “I knowyouare having a hard time with this new reality, butsheis your sister. She needs you. She needs to feel loved and supported and not to be shipped off to yet another place she doesn’t know. At least here she has her brother. So don’t you dare fucking finish that sentence.”
As much as I need my best friend in my corner, I’m not about to be lectured by somebody who has two living parents and a bunch of siblings. I cut my hand through the air. “Fuck you and your high horse, assuming it’s so easy. I don’t have anyone. I’m not like you. I don’t have a huge family to rely on. I have noone.” I slam my fist on the island, hoping to rid the stinging in my eyes and nose, the sudden pain in my chest. “I don’t have anyone to help me. I don’t have anyone I can call at the drop of a hat. Fuck, I don’t even have…”
My voice wavers, and I lower my gaze to the floor, clearing my throat at the sudden realization that I don’t have anywhere to go for holidays anymore. I won’t have anyone in the stands cheering me on. Even if they were disappointed in me, my parents still picked up the phone when I called, but I can’t do that anymore. I don’t have anyone to call.
Erik rounds the island and tows me into a hug, careful of the baby between us. He holds the back of my head, like he does on the field, slapping my helmet. “You have me. You have the team, the coaches,andthe front office. We will get you the help you need. You just can’t give up. Not on yourself, and not on your sister. She needs you most of all.”
I nod, blinking away my blurry vision.
Erik pats the back of my head. “I love you, all right?”
I nod again, my throat three times its normal size.
“And I got your back. Always.”
I sniff and clear the boulder in my windpipe with a cough. “Yeah, thanks.”
“You don’t have to say it, but I know you love me too.”
That pulls a rough laugh out of me. “Yeah, you fucker.”
Really, if I hadn’t had Erik with me during that weekend of the funeral, I don’t know what I would have done. He stayed when no one else did. Not even Valerie. She came for the service and left almost immediately after. Something about a shoot.
Made me not feel so bad about the Key West girls.
Which only proved my parents’ point.
Who the hell had I become?
