10
WAR
5:37 p.m.Damn. I was running late.
I slid my cell into my sweats pocket. Sports bag in hand, I hurried out of the Cheetahs’ training facilities where I’d spent the latter part of the afternoon in a vigorous training session with my strength and conditioning coach.
At least my strained left shoulder was starting to feel a little better. But hell, every step taken, and my burning thigh muscles protested violently in payback, making me grimace. Yeah, a brutal workout would do that.
The day had turned out better than expected. Earlier that morning, I’d signed the deal Miles had nailed down with the representative and their lawyers for the shampoo endorsement.
I couldn’t get over that one. It was a surprisingly remarkable deal. Apparently, it was my overgrown, shaggy hair they wanted, and I wasn’t allowed to cut it until three months after the commercial was filmed and aired.
There’d been a lot of back-and-forth with them, but Miles was a shark in these things. He’d given me a furtive look, a warning to stay on the straight and narrow since the company, run by an old-fashioned, fatherly dude, believed in family values.
Well, mine had none, except for death and violence, and we were all fair game as punching bags—
The old scar on my biceps twinged with remembered pain. Memories seeped free…knife flashing, blood pooling, so much blood—
Fuck! I bolted shut those dark thoughts that would haul me back to those nightmarish times. As if I ever wanted to remember. It often left me feeling as if I stood on the precipice of another crash down. I couldn’t slide back to the way I’d once been. I had too much to lose. Everything I’d worked damn hard for, and Charli.
Inhaling deep, calming breaths through my nose, I crossed the road to the near-empty parking lot, where a new gray Lexus parked alongside my truck.
The lanky man leaning against the car door straightened at my approach. He swept his palm over his close-cropped gray hair. Lines dug deeper furrows in his tan brow, but his dark brown eyes were the same. Warm and gentle. Not that I realized this back then.
Those eyes that saw everything and understood so much, even without words.
Caleb Harris, my foster father and the man who’d taken a self-destructive thirteen-year-old and given him a sense of worth and a home. A man who also introduced me to hockey and taught me how to channel the anger and pain within toward something better. From the little things Caleb had let slip back then, yeah, he knew about my past, but he never probed. Guess being a foster parent, he had to know some things.
“Caleb—”
“Eli, my boy.” He strode over and hugged me, the same warmth flooding me, soothing the old anger and pain, which back then usually ended with me smashing my fist into someone’s face.
A pang struck me in the gut that I rarely saw him. He didn’t live that far, andhemade time to see me. Unlike me. Guilt stirred. Sending him tickets to every home game was a poor attempt to alleviate my conscience.
I eased back and unlocked the Escalade.
His gaze skimmed my face. “I know you’re busy, but I was in town and wanted to see you.”
“I’m never too busy for you.” I tossed my sports bag into the back seat, shut the door, and leaned against it.
He smiled and patted my arm, then slipped his hands into his pockets and stepped back.
Caleb didn’t talk a lot, but he saw everything.
Hell, he saw too damn much at times. I guess it was why he made such a good foster parent. But there were shadows in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. I would break knees if anyone dared harm him.
“It’s nothing. Justin—”
“What the hell did he do now?” My foster brother, and Caleb’s son, was a pain in everyone’s ass.
Caleb sighed and scrubbed his jaw. “He quit his job and is back home.”
And being a burden again?
The idiot was the same age as me, twenty-seven, and he still moved from job to job. We never saw eye to eye after the initial clashes, but we managed to survive through the years, tolerating each other. Besides, back then Caleb tolerated no nonsense from anyone. Hell, when not in school or training for our respective sports, we had to pull our weight around the house, taking care of it. Any fights led to more chores.
