For catching me?
For trading Vale’s polished basketball almost for a football player with hedge fund blood behind him?
Trent cut into his meat with unnecessary force. “NFL future is a lottery ticket. Most of them don’t last.”
I looked at him.
He didn’t look sorry.
“Daddy,” Isa said.
“I’m being practical. He knows it.” Trent pointed his fork at me. “That’s why Stanford matters. Gives you something to fall back on when the body stops cooperating.”
“My body is cooperating fine.”
“For now.”
I smiled.
Barely.
Isa’s hand covered mine under the table.
Her fingers were cold.
That calmed me more than warmth would have.
She was uncomfortable too.
Trent leaned back. “Your father probably has the right idea. Get the degree, get the contacts, come back to Miami, wear a suit, and stop letting boys from Oregon State try to give you brain damage.”
“My father has a lot of ideas.”
Trent’s eyes narrowed. “You disagree?”
“Usually.”
Mrs. Calloway touched my arm again.
Under the table, Isa stiffened.
“Oh, I like that,” her mother said. “A young man who doesn’t just follow orders.”
Her fingers dragged lightly along my sleeve.
I shifted back and picked up my wineglass, forcing her hand off me again.
Her smile did not dim.
It made my skin crawl.
I’d had girls flirt with me in stadium lots, campus bars, classroom rows, DMs, hotel lobbies. I knew how to laugh it off. Knew how to redirect. Knew how to be charming without offering anything.
This was different.
This was Isa’s mother.
This was a woman who had kissed her daughter’s cheek at the door and was now looking at me like dollar signs had shoulders or worse, like I was a man first and her daughter’s boyfriend second.
