Page 1 of Hard to Score

PROLOGUE

DREW

I PULL MY HELMET OFF, lean my face up to the sky, and welcome the cool air against the sweat plastering my hair to my head.

And really, I’m just buying time. Giving myself a minute to still my nerves that have been humming beneath the surface for the past few hours. Allowing myself a moment for this to sink in.

That I’m here at the NFL Scouting Combine, and I just gave the performance I needed to give.

“That was one incredible show.”

I turn to face the man with the slightly southern accent who’s bearing down on me. He’s tall with broad shoulders and a double chin, but his eyes are the same as the younger version of him I saw in picture after picture from my youth. And he’s wearing a polo shirt with an emblem on the left breast that would make any football player salivate.

The Tennessee Tigers.

Super Bowl champions four out of the last eight years. One of the most loved, and therefore often hated, teams in the NFL.

Of all the coaches in this damn Combine. Of course, he’s the first to seek me out.

Goddamn fate.

“Thank you.” I nod. “I got lucky today.”

The man—Roger Molleman—barks out a laugh. “Seems to me someone might be lying through his teeth, because that’s a talent that’s hard to hide.”

“Thank you,” I repeat as he stops a few feet from me and angles his head to the side as our eyes meet—hold.

“Your name again?” he asks, despite knowing damn well it’s written on the sheets pinned to the clipboard he has sandwiched between his arm and torso.

And everything I’ve worked for over my short lifetime comes down to this one moment. To selling this one lie.

“Drew Hemmings.” The name still feels foreign on my tongue all these years later. “Or Drewski. I answer to just about anything.”

“Where’d you go to school?” he asks. “It says something on the stat sheet but—”

“Butler University.”

“Can’t say that I’ve ever heard of anyone going pro who played at that college. Hell, I don’t even have the slightest idea of where it is. But by golly, son, why haven’t we heard about you? Why haven’t you been playing at a PAC-12? How do I know the numbers you gave today weren’t flukes?”

“You don’t.” I shrug.

“For a man trying to get drafted by the NFL, I don’t see you trying to sell yourself.”

“I’m confident in my abilities. Someone will pick me up.”

He laughs again and looks around at the five other coaches standing about ten feet away, arms crossed over their chests, and apparently waiting to talk to me.

My pulse races at the sight, but all Roger sees is cool, calm, and unaffected.

“You’re cocky. I like cocky.”

“Quarterbacks have to be.”

He angles his head to the side and studies me with a quiet scrutiny. “The way you play . . . you remind me of someone, and I can’t seem to put my finger on it.”

Do you know you held me when I was a baby?

Do you remember the man you used to call a best friend was my father?