He glanced away, not meeting my eyes. An uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. “Something has come up, and with the season in full swing, I’m thinking it might be best for us to cool things down a bit.”
I stared at him, giving him a look that said I wasn’t buying this nonsense. “Do you mind telling me what happened between Saturday night and now?”
The muscle in his jaw tightened. “Becca, I’m sorry, I…”
“Don’t,” I said, surprised by how calm my voice sounded. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence? There is something you’re not telling me, and I’m not leaving until you do.”
There was clearly something very wrong. I had never seen him like this before.
He didn’t answer right away, and that only made me more concerned.
“I’m trying to protect you.”
I reared back. “Excuse me? Protect me from whom?”
His fingers tightened around the bottle. “My ex-agent, Brian, showed up tonight.”
I frowned immediately. I had so many questions. “What did he want?”
I racked my brain trying to figure out why a visit from his old agent would cause him to want to put some distance between us.
He hasn’t talked about him. His name never came up during our interview sessions. Not that I didn’t want to ask, but there was an NDA involved that limited what he could talk about.
He rolled his neck from side to side, bringing his hand up to rub his right shoulder. “Money.”
“Do you owe him back pay, or is there something else?”
“I wish it were that simple.” He stared down at the floor. “He’s been blackmailing me for weeks.”
I blinked. Surely, I heard him wrong. “Forgive me, but I’m so confused right now. Your ex-agent is blackmailing you for money?”
He set his beer down on the coffee table and leaned back against the couch. “I really don’t know how to tell you this because, honestly, I’ve been trying to deal with it myself, hoping it would go away, but obviously, it’s not going away.”
He was starting to freak me out. “What is he holding over your head?”
He exhaled a heavy breath through his nose and dragged a hand over the back of his neck. He still hadn’t looked at me yet.
“Last year, during the playoffs, I was injured.”
I frowned. “Guys play injured all the time.”
“Not like this.”
“How bad was it?”
“Bad enough to where I shouldn’t have played.” His eyes fluttered shut for half a second. “I got hurt during practice, and my shoulder was worse than anyone knew.”
I glanced at his shoulder, trying to remember if he had complained about pain or hinted at an injury, but my memory was coming up short. I would have remembered.
“How did you injure your shoulder?”
“We were getting ready for the New York matchup. I got hit pretty hard. I tried to brush it off, but every time I would outstretch my arm, I could feel the stress in my joint. It was obvious that I was in pain, and my mechanics were off. Everyone in the locker room saw the hard tackle, plus I had a little bump on my shoulder.”
I tilted my head to the side. “Are you saying you played with an AC joint sprain?”
He nodded. “It was minor. I thought I could handle it, but the swelling got worse. When a few people questioned it, I downplayed it. Told them I had a headache and wasn’t feeling great, which wasn’t a total lie.”
That should have surprised me, but players did that all the time. They pushed through pain and convinced themselves they were fine when they weren’t, but there was obviously more to the story.
