Quitting the Quarterback (The Nash Brothers #4)

CHAPTER 54 Tanner Banks

Doubt Equals Hope

I slept in.

It’s not my usual style. On a typical day, I’m up and at ‘em bright and early to get in a workout before workouts.

But on a typical day, I’m not mourning the loss of whatever it was that Cassie and I had along with not being able to play football. I guess this is my new normal, and I hate the fuck out of it.

I drank too much last night. Stayed up too late. Spent too much money. Ran into an old buddy I played with in college, and somehow we ended up at a club together. It was innocent enough, and it was nice to get out and blow off some steam with an old friend.

But I’m paying for it this morning. I’m not the same guy I was the last time I drank with the buddy from last night, that’s for damn sure.

Grayson told me to come to the bakery for lunch today, so I head that way after a long shower that mostly helps with the headache. I park behind the back door and knock, and Grayson opens the door a minute later .

For just a second, something washes over me. Cassie didn’t know who I was—or who Grayson was—but she’d heard his name, and that’s who she thought she was sleeping with the night we were together here in Vegas.

It feels like a lifetime ago. So much has happened over the last four months.

“Hey, man. You look rough,” Grayson says candidly. He gives me a quick hug with a pound on the back, and I dish it back.

“So do you.”

He laughs. “Asher said to make you a box of Nash’s Nibbles, so it must be serious. What’s going on?”

“Something cookies can’t solve,” I say dryly.

“Oh, shit. Must be really bad.”

“He told you, didn’t he?” I ask.

He nods and slings an arm around my shoulders. “Yeah, man, and I’m sorry. Bring her a box of Ava’s cookies. It’ll fix everything.”

I laugh. “If only it were that simple. I will take a box of cookies on my way out, though.”

We head through the bakery and toward the break room, where I spot Missy, Grayson’s mom.

I’ve met her a couple of times, though we really haven’t had the sort of conversation that meant much to either of us. It’s awkward. I’m the product of a relationship my father had with my mother while he was married to this woman, and frankly, she deserved better than the hand she was dealt. By all accounts, Missy Nash is a force to be reckoned with. She’d have to be. She raised the four Nash boys, and they all turned out pretty damn great.

“Tanner, so good to see you,” she says as she lifts to a stand. She gives me a quick hug, and she sits back down to her sandwich. “You have to get one of these. They’re amazing. ”

“One of what she’s having,” I say to Grayson, and he chuckles.

“Be right back.”

It’s just Missy and me for the moment, and I sit across from her. “How have you been?”

“Me? Oh, I’m fine. Never better. But tell me about you, honey. How’s your knee?”

The way she addresses me with a term of endearment and so much genuine care tells me whatever awkwardness I feel between us is of my own making.

I slide into the chair across from her. “The knee is progressing. Surgery was seven weeks ago, and the swelling is gone at this point. Things are going well.”

“And how are you doing? I’ve seen firsthand how hard it is to sit and watch the game when you want to be out there in the thick of it.” She gives me the kind of sympathetic look I wish my own mom would give me, and I find myself opening up to her.

“I can’t honestly think of a time I’ve felt worse.”

“Oh, honey,” she says, and she reaches across to squeeze my hand. “Things will get better. Just get through the season, and you’ll be back out there in a few months.”

“It’s not just that,” I admit.

Her brows rise as she waits for it.

“It’s a woman.”

Her lips tip up in a smile. “Always is. I watched all four of my boys go through it, and trust me when I say a mother can always tell. What happened?”

“Are you sure you want to talk about this? Isn’t it weird, you and me connecting like this?”

She shrugs as she shakes her head. “It’s not weird for me. Is it weird for you? ”

“A little. I just mean…knowing what I know. About where I came from.”

She twists her lips. “Look, Tanner. Some football players were built differently back then, and so were some football wives. I swept more under the rug than I should have. It’s not like I didn’t know what he was doing, but for a long time, I thought it was what I’d signed up for. I wasn’t exactly innocent in all of it. He did his thing, and I did mine, and we stayed together for the kids until it no longer made sense. For what it’s worth, I told him to be honest from the start. But he had this vision of what he wanted out of his life, and I took a step back to let him have it. And your mom…she and I had a conversation once, and I learned that she didn’t know he was married. She’s not to blame in any of this, and I really hope you’re not holding any of it against her.”

“I have been,” I admit.

“Imagine being a woman, twenty-one years old, still in college with twin boys relying on you for their every need. She did what she had to do to survive, and it’s as simple as that.”

I never thought of it like that, but she’s doling out quite the truth bomb. And it doesn’t end there.

“Now about this woman who has your heart,” she says once she’s satisfied that she’s getting through to me. “What’s going on with her?”

“She was my PT, and her boss found out about us. Fired her, she ended it with me, and here we are.”

“Can you get her back?” she asks.

I shrug. “Doubt it.”

“Doubt is uncertainty, and uncertainty means there’s hope left. So to me, doubt equals hope.”

Doubt equals hope . I feel like that should go on a T-shirt or something. But more, I feel like I should take that advice to heart .

Is there hope left where Cassie and I are concerned?

Everyone around me is telling me to fight for her, and I thought I was doing the right thing by backing away and giving her space. But maybe they’re all right.

Maybe I was meant to skip town and get far away from everything to try to look at things from a different perspective. Well, this is certainly perspective, and I think after lunch, I need to head to the airport, get back to San Diego, and start fighting to get Cassie back.

The door opens, and I’m expecting Grayson to walk in with my chicken salad sandwich. It’s Grayson, but his hands are empty.

And his face is blanched.

“Grayson?” Missy says tentatively. “Are you okay?”

He shakes his head a little, and his eyes seem to come into focus on his mom. “Asher just called.”

She seems to stiffen, and I glance over at Grayson.

“It’s Dad,” Grayson says. “He’s dead.”