Quitting the Quarterback (The Nash Brothers #4)

CHAPTER 39 Tanner Banks

Not Ready to Introduce You to My Mom

When I open my eyes, she’s standing in front of me.

At first I think it might just be an illusion, something left over from the grogginess of anesthesia, but she gasps when her eyes connect with mine.

The anesthesia has long worn off. Everything hurts. I just took the hydrocodone pill my brother offered me, and it hasn’t kicked in yet.

But having her here is helping in a way nothing else today has. It’s helping my spirit , which felt pretty damn smashed as they put me under earlier.

I’m reclined on the couch after my brother helped me into place, and I don’t think I’ll be leaving here anytime soon.

I know I’ll have to. They can bring me food, but they can’t use the restroom for me, and I’ll need to start rehab in a few days.

But for right now, I’m not moving. “Come here,” I say softly, and Cassie moves around the couch, taking a good, long look at the wrap around my knee before she sits beside me. I move my arm around her, and she leans into my chest as she tosses one arm over my stomach. I lean down and press my lips to the top of her head.

“I was thinking about you all day,” she says.

“I was dreaming about you while they had me under,” I joke, and she laughs as she lightly hits my chest.

“You were not.”

I crane my neck to see my brother standing nearby, so I lower my voice. “I was thinking about the first time in the pool.”

“I totally heard that,” Miller says.

I smirk, and Cassie’s cheeks flush. Honest to God, that’s what I dreamt about when I was under.

It was vivid, and I can only imagine talking in my sleep while I was under anesthesia. Is that a thing? I might’ve made it one today.

The next few days are somehow both never-ending and a complete whirlwind at the same time.

Everyone I know calls to check on me, but much like how I felt immediately after the injury, I don’t feel like talking to anyone. The pain pills make me sleepy, but if I don’t take them, my knee screams in pain.

It sucks. Plain and simple. I’m back to the grumpy asshole I was when it first happened, and every single day, I have to admit that Cassie is a goddamn saint for dealing with my cranky ass.

I have Miller field my calls when he’s home. I mute my phone when he’s not.

Cassie reviews all my post-op reports, and Dr. Hayward continues to send her to see me even though I can’t get started on rehab right away. We’ll start slow and work our way up, and according to their plan, I’ll be ready to go by next season.

Still, it’s only mid-October right now. Organized team activities start in May, and they don’t think it’ll be safe for me to participate. Training camp isn’t until the end of July .

That means it’ll be nine entire months before I get to play football again.

Since I started, I have never gone nine months without playing.

My mom always had us in one camp or another. She was damn near obsessive about feeding our passions, and she saw from an early age that football was it for both of us.

She put us in soccer. She had us try T-ball. We even did bowling one weird summer, as if she could somehow avoid what was in our very DNA.

Not that we knew it was part of our DNA until more recently.

The fact is she knew.

And that’s why, when the doorbell rings the Friday morning after my surgery and I check my Ring cam…I tell Cassie not to answer it.

“Who is it?” she asks.

“My mother and stepfather.”

Her eyes widen. “Tanner.” She purses her lips at me. “You can’t make them stand there and pretend you aren’t home.”

“I don’t want to see them,” I say.

“Which is probably why they decided to drop by uninvited. She’s your mom. You might be angry, but she just wants to see for herself that her boy is okay.”

“I’m not ready to introduce you to my mom,” I say, going for a light, joking tone, but she’s already on her way to get the door, and I can’t pretend like I’m not totally pissed off about that.

I listen to their introductions. “I’m Cassie, Tanner’s physical therapist.”

I hear my mom’s voice next. “Nice to meet you, Cassie. Sandra Banks, Tanner’s mother, and this is Charles, his dad.”

“Stepdad!” I yell from the couch .

“Come on in,” Cassie says after an awkward beat of quiet. “Tanner is due for another pain pill soon, so he may be a little grouchy.”

I hear the door close behind them, and my mother appears in front of me.

Curly dark hair. Brown eyes. And Charles with his brown eyes, too—neither my brother nor I paid enough attention during biology to question whether that was usual or not.

We were more interested in PE. And, you know…girls.

“How are you feeling?” my mother asks tentatively.

“Like shit.” I curse because I know she hates it.

She purses her lips, and Charles comes to sit beside me. I wish Miller was here to buffer me from this shit. I’m not in the position to deal with any of it, but I’m also not exactly in the position to run away from it. Probably why they chose this moment of all moments to show up.

“We’re so sorry to see you down, but we know you, Tan-man, and we know you’ll power through this obstacle and come out stronger than ever,” he says.

“Is that another lie?” I ask through a clenched jaw.

“Tanner!” That’s Cassie, berating me for not being positive all the time about this surgery. “You will come back from this stronger than ever.” She hands me the hydrocodone, and I set it on the table beside me.

I don’t want pain pills right now. I want to feel the pain because it gives me a clear target to focus on instead of this conversation with my parents.

“Look, I don’t want to do this now,” I say.

“We don’t have to do anything, Tanner,” my mom says. “We just want to be here for you. Regardless of what you’re feeling about us, we are the two people who raised you and love you more than anyone in the world, and I’m not going to take a back seat while you’re suffering. ”

I blow out a breath, and she moves in behind me and plants a kiss on the top of my head.

“I know you’re a big, tough NFL star now. But no matter what, you will always, always be my little boy. The one who got into mischief with his brother from the day he was born. The one who snuggled in my lap before bed. The one I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for every day. The one who fell off his bike when he was eleven.”

“The one who turned into a man with forgiveness in his heart?” I ask through a clenched jaw.

She sighs as her eyes avert to the ground. “The one who turned into a good man who’s struggling with a lot right now but can always lean on his mom and dad.”

“I don’t even know who you are anymore,” I spit. “My entire childhood feels like one big goddamn lie.”

She glances over at Cassie, and I’m sure she’s wondering what my physical therapist knows. I wonder what Cassie’s thinking. She knows all this dirty laundry, so it’s not like we’re airing anything new in front of a stranger, but my mom doesn’t know that.

“Watch your tone with your mother,” Charles says sharply beside me.

I flinch, frankly a little surprised that he decided to pipe in. “And you…” I press my lips together and shake my head. “You pretended to be something you weren’t our entire lives. What the fuck brought you two to the conclusion that we were better off not knowing? What made you think we’d never find out the truth? Would you ever have told us?”

“No,” my mom says simply, shaking her head. “I never planned on telling you.” She presses her lips together as they start to tremble, and she looks up at the ceiling as if she’s warding off tears. When she speaks again, her voice trembles. “We were good parents to you and your brother, Tanner. Whatever you think about us now, we did what we did to protect the two of you. We did it from a place of love.”

“You did it from a place of greed,” I hiss. “You accepted those checks every month to buy your silence.”

“So I could provide a better life for the two of you. Charles and I didn’t meet until you were two. We didn’t get married until you were four. We didn’t have it easy, and we agreed early on that we would use anything we got from Eddie for you. So if you ever wanted to know how we afforded the exorbitant fees of high school football and camps and college and gear…that’s how.”

I’m silent as I seethe. I want to believe the worst. I want to believe that they were rolling in dough because of the extra cash he sent every month, but the truth of it is that I know what she’s saying is true. We never saw them struggling to make ends meet, but my mom was a schoolteacher. Charles worked in insurance. It makes sense that they didn’t have a lot of extra cash each month, yet we never felt that strain. We were never told we couldn’t do something because it cost too much.

They’re silent, too, and I think it’s because they’re waiting on my reaction to that. But what is there to say? We’re at an impasse. It’s been just under a year since I learned the truth, and this is really the first time we’ve had it out like this.

I’d like to say that someday I’ll understand. But I’m not sure I will.

Cassie’s the one that breaks the silence. “I’m so sorry, but Tanner has some stretches he needs to do.”

“Of course,” my mom says, nodding. She turns to me. “Is there a good time we can come back? Maybe have dinner with you and Miller while we’re in town?”

“You’d need to ask Miller that.” My voice is flat.

“Tanner is free most evenings after three o’clock,” Cassie says, and I shoot her a look that very plainly tells her to zip her lips. She ignores me. “You’re welcome to stay now with these stretches, but he’s also quite tired and could use some rest.”

“Thank you,” my mom says to her. She glances at me. “We’ll let him do what he needs to do. I’ll give Miller a call and see if we can work out a time for dinner in the next couple of days.” She squeezes my foot on my good leg as Charles stands.

“Take care, son,” he says, and I lean back on the couch and close my eyes in response.

“I know he’s so angry,” my mom says to Cassie in the hallway, as if I can’t hear her from the family room. “We shouldn’t have dropped by, but he’s been ignoring my calls, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I understand. I’ll talk to him and see if we can work out a good time for you to talk.” I hear a bit of rustling, and then Cassie says, “Why don’t you give me your number so I can get in touch with you?”

My mom says her number, and Cassie presumably types it into her phone. They say their goodbyes, and they leave.

Cassie walks back into the room, her arms folded across her chest.

“What?” I spit.

“Did you have to be such a dick to them?”

“Excuse me?” I ask, royally offended by her insinuation.

“You can’t talk to your mother like that.”

My brows dip together. “What business is it of yours?”

“I’m something to you, something more than your physical therapist, and I love you, so I’m going to give it to you straight.”

I freeze at the words, and I’m not even totally sure she realizes what she just said.

“What?” I whisper.

It’s as if she reviews the words she just spoke in her head, and then she freezes. Her eyes widen as she slaps a hand over her mouth .

“You love me?” I ask, and suddenly it’s as if all the pain evaporates from my knee. It’s as if I’ve taken ten of those pain pills, but instead of the groggy side effects, everything feels about a million times better.

She lifts her chin a little defiantly as she squares her shoulders and looks me dead in the eye, her arms still folded across her chest. “Yes. I love you, Tanner Banks.”

Silence spans between us for a few long seconds before I say, “Come here.”

She obeys, and she sits beside me on the couch, taking the space my dad just vacated.

I take her hand in mine, and I yank her so she falls against my chest. She turns and looks up at me. “I love you, too, Cassandra Fields.” I guide her head up toward mine and press my lips to hers, and for as scary as I thought it would be to say those words, it’s not actually scary at all.

It feels right .

It feels perfect.

She pulls back, and she stares up into my eyes before she pulls back and sits up. “I didn’t mean to say it like that, but I’m glad it slipped out anyway.”

“So am I,” I admit.

“But we’re in the middle of another important conversation, and one I want you to hear.”

My brows dip.

“And it’s not like I’m going to mount you and bang you to celebrate our three not-so-little words a few days after you had surgery.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “Why the hell not?”

She laughs. “Because I have things to say.”

“And then sex?” I ask hopefully.

“No. First of all, it’s work time. Second of all…” She draws in a deep breath. “I just want to say that having kids changes yo u. That’s all. Priorities change, and life changes, and as a mom…I get where your mom might’ve been coming from all those years ago, and I think about the future sometimes as a boy mom and get scared that Luca won’t want anything to do with me someday. I can’t imagine that world. It makes me want to cry. And your mom, she was alone, raising twin boys, and I think of my own kids and what lengths I would go to protect them. I stayed with Alex for months after I found out he was cheating on me because I thought I had done something wrong or somehow deserved to be in the position I was in. I thought it would be better for the kids for their parents to stay together. I thought a lot of things, I guess, but my point is that she did what she thought she had to do to protect her two boys. You had a great childhood, didn’t you? You had everything you could’ve asked for. You had a loving home and two parents who were there for you. Isn’t that all that matters?”

I’m about to say that the truth is all that matters, but she plows forward.

“She was all alone, and she made a decision because, at the time, she thought it was best for her children. And now she wants to be here for you when you’re suffering, and you aren’t letting her. But the truth is maybe you’d heal even faster if you could find it in your heart to forgive them for the lie so you can focus fully on your recovery and your future rather than on your grudge.”

As much as I’m not ready to admit it…I think she might be right.

And truly, I think only the words from someone I love as deeply as I’ve grown to love her could be enough to make me see that.