“Just while you rehab,” he adds. “The house is ten minutes from the hospital, tops. Your place is forty.”
“I can manage forty,” I say.
He finally glances over, unimpressed. “My man, you can’t manage stairs without cussing like a drunk sailor.”
My lips quirk. “That’s fairly normal.”
Cameron chuckles and cuts the engine before hopping out. I look out my window at the basketball hoop over the garage, which is almost perfect—backboard clean, net new, pole nice and straight.
Both Rhodes kids play college basketball, and their dad coached the high school team for years. Fundamentals mattered here. Do it right. Take care of things and fix things that are broken.
Maybe even people.
I tighten my grip on the crutches wedged between my knees.
The brace on my right leg is locked, plastic and metal hugging the joint like it doesn’t trust me to stand on my own. Three torn ligaments will do that.
ACL. MCL. Meniscus.
A triple tear.
One bad cut in a routine play on the field in my fourth year at Pacific Coast University. A pop so loud the whole field went quiet. One moment where my future went from when to if.
“You’re doing that thing,” Cameron says.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you act like you’re fine while silently plotting your escape.”
I snort. “You always think you know what I’m thinking.”
“I do,” he says easily. “Because you’ve been doing the same shit since middle school.”
Well, can’t fault him on that one.
Middle school was when my mom stopped pretending she had it together. When nights got longer and meals got smaller and excuses started stacking up faster than bills. When Cameron’s dad noticed I was over at their house more than mine, he asked a few questions he already knew the answers to.
Coach Rhodes didn’t make a big deal out of it. He just welcomed me with open arms and told me I could stay as long as I needed.
I swallow past the lump of nerves forming in my throat.
“I don’t want to be a burden any more than I already have been,” I say quietly.
Cameron exhales through his nose like he’s been waiting for me to make that excuse.
What can I say? I stick to my behavioral patterns just about as well as my routes.
“You’re not, man.”
“Cam—”
“You lived here for six years,” he cuts in. “You didn’t leave because you wore out your welcome. You left because you got a full scholarship at PCU.”
That part is true.
PCU offered me everything. A full ride, a better football program, a real shot at going pro. CSU couldn’t compete with that—not in facilities, not in funding, not in exposure. Cameron understood, even though it sucked when we both became well-known athletes for rival colleges.
Football was once my way out. My way to carve out a future that wasn’t surrounded by the mess of pills left behind by my mother’s addiction.
