Chapter 5 Sloane
SLOANE
The Rampage had a ten-minute open window for media, and that was it.
No fans allowed. Two camera crews hovered near the tunnel, staying in their lane, catching some warm-up footage, and jotting notes for pregame reports.
Then the whistle blew twice, and a staffer ushered them out.
From that point on, the field belonged to the team.
Jordan adjusted without argument. He didn’t joke or flash a grin. He reset his feet, tucked his chin, and dropped into stance with nothing but pure determination and focus on his face.
I watched him closely. His posture was clean.
Breath steady. He pivoted hard on the next rep, cut at the cone with a sharp turn, and planted clean.
His shoulders didn’t twitch, and his eyes stayed forward.
I made a note: Jordan Mann – posture neutral, emotional control solid.
Breath rhythm matches reps. Grief not impacting field processing at present.
A flicker of pride ran through me, watching him be present and not let his grief affect him right now. The game tomorrow might be different, and I already set up a time with him in the morning to chat about possible ways to overcome grief if it hit mid-game.
I adjusted my bun and played with my necklace, emotion catching in my throat that this was real. I was here, doing this.
Ivy jogged past me, her voice raised slightly as she spoke into her radio with an air of authority. “Tell Jenkins to ice his ankle between reps. And flag me if we lose a shoulder wrap again. I swear, these guys are allergic to tape labels.”
This was where I saw the cracks before they widened.
Jordan looked steady today. His footwork was sharp, and he kept in sync with the callouts. But his shoulders carried tension that wasn’t there before the funeral. His recovery breath after drills was shallow. Not out of shape—just holding something tight.
I noted it: Jordan Mann – movement light, breath restricted, emotional control high.
Ivy passed behind me and murmured about Quinn’s quad again.
I adjusted his log to flag another torque imbalance.
She worked on the physical end, and I tracked the mental.
It was a system that worked, and neither one was more important than the other.
That was what people didn’t get. If we caught the signs beforehand, we could save careers.
God. My brother would’ve killed to be here on this field.
He used to pace the sidelines with me in high school, him in his uniform, me on the sports medicine team.
He’d shout stats at me like a one-man analytics department, making sure I was watching the team and learning.
I could still hear him yelling, “Control what you can, Sloaney!” whenever I started overthinking.
Back then, control was our shared language. Now it was what kept us apart.
He would’ve stood in this heat without flinching. Run these drills until his legs gave out. Hit cones, take hits, do it all again for one shot.
He didn’t get one.
Two ACL tears by twenty-one, lots of medicine. A backup role in a program that used him for depth. No combine invite. No draft day call. When the rejection came, he didn’t throw anything. He closed his bedroom door and stayed there for three days.
I called. I knocked. I emailed him articles about overseas leagues and off-season contracts. I gave him bullet points and mindset strategies and reminders to drink water. I told myself I was helping.
I wasn’t.
He came out on day four, didn’t look at me, packed a bag, and drove to Arizona. Left his school, his apartment, his team. He left himself. That version of him never came back.
Now he lived in my parents’ guesthouse in LA.
He didn’t work. Didn’t train. Said he was “figuring things out,” but it’d been six years, and all he figured out was how to duck accountability and weaponize silence and pain meds.
He didn’t speak to me unless it was to remind me that I “studied all this shit and still missed it.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I was halfway through my clinical rotations. I had the scores. The credentials. The DSM memorized, but I didn’t help him. I didn’t help him see past the physical and emotional pain, and I couldn’t help but agree with blaming me.
My parents never said it directly, but they didn’t have to. They also blamed me. I was the smart one. The one with a solution for everything—except him. Every time we talked, I could still hear it in the pauses. It wasn’t right that I made it to the NFL but my brother didn’t.
I couldn’t fail them, this team, the coaches, myself.
That was why I watched these men like they were tethered to me. I wanted to belong here, wanted to prove myself to them, and not let any of these kids spiral into the life my brother had. Because one bad day, one bad injury was all it took to go from potential to destruction.
And as I lifted my gaze across the field again, my breath caught. Oliver.
Oliver lined up in the backfield, two steps behind the quarterback, eyes fixed on the defense. His stance looked textbook. No wasted movement. Shoulders tight, knees bent, arms loose but ready. To anyone else, it was clean. But something was off.
He shifted his weight twice before the snap, enough that he broke rhythm. His left hand flexed after the motion fake, and he tapped it quickly against his thigh. He didn’t wince. He didn’t pause. He realigned like nothing happened. It was subtle, but I saw it.
Ivy caught it too. Her eyes flicked to mine, and I nodded once, making a quick note on my tablet.
“James!” Coach Booth barked across the field. “You’re staying in! Red zone tempo install. Full mental reps, ten in a row. I want to see you handle pressure. Make it look clean.”
Oliver didn’t hesitate. He jogged back to the huddle without saying a word, adjusting his gloves at the wrist and bouncing twice on the balls of his feet. His face didn’t move. No expression. No tell.
But that bounce wasn’t part of his warm-up routine. I’d studied the tapes, watched film of the guys Mac told me to analyze. Oliver’s routine shifted without being told to.
Booth turned toward the sideline briefly, eyes scanning the perimeter. He didn’t make eye contact with me. I wasn’t on the list of voices that mattered once install started.
Mac appeared next to me, moving with that fast, silent pace. His jaw flexed as his gaze shifted to me, a dark, intense stare boring into me. He had a tablet in one hand and tension radiating from his shoulders.
“Where’s the report on Oliver I asked for?” he asked, his voice low and sharp.
“I haven’t written it yet,” I said, keeping my tablet clutched to my chest. “I’m still observing. Today’s part of that.”
Mac turned slowly, his eyes narrowing. His expression was calm, but the irritation rolled off him in waves. “You were supposed to have actionable feedback yesterday. Tomorrow is game day, Mercer. I need more than a hunch.”
“I needed more time,” I said, meeting his eyes and hating how my voice wasn’t as confident as I wanted it to me. “His symptoms are subtle. They don’t meet removal criteria yet, but—”
“Subtle isn’t useful,” he snapped. “Subtle doesn’t clear someone or bench them. You were assigned Oliver because you said you could see what others couldn’t. Right now, I see a guy running clean reps.”
Before I could answer, William Benson walked up, coffee in one hand and his smug little smirk already in place. He didn’t bother hiding the amusement in his voice.
“She’s watching tendencies,” he said to Mac, not me. “Body language, mood shifts, behavioral tells. No diagnostics. No actual metrics. That’s not evidence. That’s guesswork.”
“They’re not guesses,” I said, voice steady. “They’re physiological deviations. His hand is twitching. His posture is off. His gait shifted between sets. You don’t need to like how I find the pattern, but the signs are there.”
“Vitals are stable,” Benson replied. “I’ve checked them twice.
His recovery rate is within acceptable variance.
Maybe he’s tense. Maybe he’s focused. Maybe he’s nervous, and hell I would be too.
The guy has fought hard for this role, and he doesn’t want to mess it up.
Just because a feelings specialist is worried doesn’t mean we sideline the starting RB. ”
Mac let out a breath through his nose, the kind that meant he was trying not to lose his patience.
“I’ll have something in writing by tonight,” I said, firm. “But if he goes down mid-rep and you ignored my flag, that’s on all of us.”
“You’re telling me you want him pulled?” Mac asked, his voice rising. “He’s finally earned the starting spot, and you want him pulled because what—he twitched and broke eye contact?”
“No,” I said. I hated how my pulse picked up, how my throat tightened at the sharpness of his tone. “I want you to let me do my job.”
Mac stepped closer, voice low again. “And what is your job right now, Sloane?”
I swallowed. “I’m protecting the player, the entire player, not only the athlete.”
William snorted behind his coffee. “You don’t know what’s wrong, do you? You’ve got a file full of guesses and nothing actionable. That’s what this is. You're afraid to admit you don't have a call to make, so you're stalling until he either collapses or doesn’t. Which again, his vitals are strong.”
“I know he’s off,” I said, sharper now. “I don’t know why yet. But I’m not going to pretend everything is fine because the vitals you keep bragging about haven’t tripped an alert. We’re not going to wait for a measurable disaster to say we should’ve done something.”
“Jesus, do you hear this, Mac? She’s here one season, yeah?”
Mac raised a hand. “Enough. Both of you.”
We stood there, all three of us, tension heavy in the air while Oliver reset his stance at the 10-yard line, waiting for the next snap.
Mac looked back at the field, jaw working again. “Tonight,” he said. “Hard data. Symptoms. Timeline. Risk percentage. If I don’t have it before the staff debrief, I’ll remove you from the case.”