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“Coach, tell Valentine the sled doesn’t count if he moves before I do.”
Coach Quinn looks between them before turning to me. “Jubal Duvall, this is Burke Whitney and Archer Valentine. Whit keeps the offensive line from falling apart. Archer is usually the reason something else does.”
Archer presses a hand against his chest. “That feels unfair when you barely know me.”
“I drafted you.”
“Exactly. You saw potential.”
Whit ignores Archer’s antics and offers me his hand. His grip is firm without turning it into the contest men sometimes mistake for an introduction. “Nice to meet you. We’ve been waiting to see whether the rumors about quarterbacks getting taller every time they change teams were true.”
“I’m still six-four.”
“Give the media an hour.”
I wait for the conversation to shift the way it always does. People usually want to know how I’m handling the trade, whether I feel pressure replacing the last quarterback. Instead, Archer cuts in beside Whit with a grin and offers his hand like I’m just another guy interrupting the middle of their argument.
“I’m six-two in cleats, if anybody asks.”
“You’re six feet in cleats,” Whit chirps back.
“You don’t support my dreams.”
Their argument picks up exactly where it left off, Archer launching into a passionate defense of why optimism is essential for team morale while Whit looks thoroughly unconvinced. I catch myself laughing, waiting for one of them to circle back to the trade or ask what everyone else has been asking me since I landed in Charlotte. However, the conversation never gets there.
“Didn’t take you for a jewelry guy.” Whit nods toward the base of my throat, where the chain must have shifted above my collar.
My fingers close around the chain, the ring pressing into the pads of my fingers beneath the fabric. “Just holding on to something for someone.”
“Fair enough.”
Archer opens his mouth, but Whit catches the back of his shirt and pulls him toward the field. “We better let you get through media before Valentine ruins your first impression of us.”
They disappear through the door, Whit’s laughter carrying onto the turf as Archer shoves at his shoulder. Coach Quinn watches them for a second before continuing down the hall.
“Unfortunately, they’re always like that.”
I tuck the chain beneath my shirt again and fall into step beside him, passing the quarterbacks’ meeting room. Someone is standing on a chair, trying to adjust a camera mounted near the ceiling.
Coach Quinn stops in the doorway. “James, get down before you give yourself a concussion.”
The man carefully lowers himself until both feet are back on the floor. He’s a few inches shorter than me, his attention shifting from the camera to Coach Quinn with the resigned expression of someone who already knows he’s been caught.
“The camera froze again. IT said they’d get here when they could.”
“And your solution was to climb furniture?” Coach Quinn takes the chair by the back and rolls it away from him. “Jubal, this is Jonathan James, or as we so lovingly call him, JJ.”
JJ wipes his palm against his shorts before shaking my hand. There’s no hesitation in it, but I still wait for the brief tightening around his eyes that usually comes when a backup quarterback meets the man brought in to start ahead of him.
It never comes.
“Nice to finally meet you. Tuck said to tell you he’s glad you made it.”
Riley Tucker. Just hearing his name pulls me back to cramped film rooms and two college kids who thought football would always be the hardest thing they’d ever have to figure out.
“He could’ve told me himself.”
“He said you’d say that.” JJ smiles, and I can’t help smiling back.
