Chapter Four
Braden
“Watch this, Uncle Braden!”
Sebastian waved his hands frantically until he was sure he had my attention, and then he was climbing up the yellow slide. Not the stairs that led to the slide. No, the slide itself, going up the way he was supposed to come down.
His tongue jutted out in concentration as he used his feet and hands to wedge himself and slowly crawl.
He grunted and giggled the higher he got, letting out a full-on belly laugh when he almost made it to the top before losing his footing and sliding back down.
The kid landed in the wood chips at the bottom with a thunk and another loud laugh.
“Wow, now that’s impressive,” I remarked, smirking at him as he hopped up and dusted off his jeans. “Bet you can’t make it across the monkey bars, though.”
“Can, too!” he argued, and then he sprinted off in their direction, climbing up the platform and leaping onto the first bar.
He hung by both hands, swinging his little body until he had enough momentum to let go with his left hand and reach for the next wrung.
I was glad he was content to play by himself, because after just a half hour of chasing him around the playground, I was already beat.
Babysitting a seven-year-old was better stamina training than any offseason drills our staff could conjure up.
It was a perfect spring day in Seattle, the kind that could fool you into thinking summer was closer than it really was. The morning had been a crisp forty-five degrees, but now, it was sunny and seventy-two.
My best friend, Kyle Robbins, and his fiancée Madelyn had brought home their brand-new baby girl from the hospital a couple days ago.
I didn’t have any kids of my own, but I knew from our other friends’ experiences how hard the first couple of weeks with a newborn could be, and how any help was appreciated.
So, I’d brought over a week full of pre-made meals, helped clean around the house, and offered to take their oldest, Sebastian, to the park.
Not that Kyle and Mads really needed that much help. Kyle’s rookie contract with the Seahawks had been a fat one compared to mine, and he had hired help to do everything around the house — clean, cook, mow the lawn, etc.
Still, I liked to help. It was how I showed I cared about that cocky bastard.
Besides, Sebastian was the easiest kid to watch over. In fact, he was more fun to hang out with than most of my teammates.
And, at least, he didn’t rib me about the new cheerleader.
Emily Huxley.
Just the thought of her name had a visual dancing in my mind. A blink, and I remembered her lean brown legs and tight, toned stomach. Another blink, and I saw that daring smirk, that twinkle of challenge in her dark eyes.
It had been a couple weeks now, but I could still remember how she’d looked in the soft light outside the stadium that night when she toed the line between us, could still feel her fingernails sliding into the hair at the nape of my neck and gripping just tight enough to make my cock react.
I’d never had to use so much restraint in my life.
It had been impossible to shake this girl since that night.
Not that I sat around thinking about her by any means — I had other shit on my plate.
But almost every day, she’d sneak her way into my thoughts.
I’d be in the shower and remember her smoky laugh.
I’d be on a run and recall the confident way she toyed with me, how she was begging me to play back.
A random girl in a coffee shop with jet black hair would have me turning my head in a double take, wondering if it was her.
Emily was the kind of girl who sank her claws into your flesh and planted roots.
And she’d certainly broken the skin with me.
Even so, I wasn’t sure how I felt about her. She was a knockout, that was easy enough to decipher. She was obviously a talented dancer, since she’d made the team. She was a confident and alluring woman.
But she was also a menace.
She’d made a scene when I gave her the rose at the audition — a scene my teammates were likely never going to let me live down. And to top it off, I’d caught her smoking a joint outside the stadium at the end of the night like some fucking high schooler.
It didn’t matter that it was legal in our state, or that I had plenty of other friends who recreationally used. She was a cheerleader, just like I was a player, and we had standards to uphold. There were rules we had to follow, plain and simple.
She was the kind of girl who broke all the rules, who tested every boundary to see just how much she could get away with.
And for that reason alone, I knew I had to stay away from her.
This was a huge season for me. Coming off a decent rookie performance, this year was my chance to really break out, to become a starting receiver that Coach and our quarterback could depend on.
I wanted to surprise people. I wanted to be picked up after a few weeks in every fantasy league around the nation because I was the talk of every sportscaster.
I wanted to solidify my spot, secure a giant contract, and set myself up for life.
Set my family up for life.
As if the thought had conjured them, my phone buzzed in the pocket of my joggers, Mom’s face lighting up the screen when I pulled it free.
Just like it always did, my heart ached at the sight of her smiling face.
It was a picture I’d snapped the weekend I convinced her and Dad to let me take them all out to a lake house in Montana.
Mom’s honey-gold eyes were tired in the photo, her smile a bit strained from the hassle of traveling.
It wasn’t an easy feat with all the machines and comforts we had set up at home.
But she was beautiful. She was strong. And with the sunset burning a brilliant orange and pink behind her, she looked like the angel I felt she was.
Yeah, I was a mama’s boy. But any man who had a mom like mine would find it hard pressed not to be.
“Hey, Mama,” I answered, keeping my eyes on Sebastian as he jogged over to another little boy around his age and asked if he wanted to play with his rocks. Sebastian always had a bag of rocks on him.
Weird ass kid.
God, I loved him.
“Hello, my handsome son. You have a second to chat?”
“You know I always have time for you.”
She paused, and I didn’t have to see her to know she was smiling, to know her eyes were likely glossing with tears.
I didn’t know why in the hell she thought I’d ever reach a point in my life that I’d be too busy for her, that I wouldn’t put her, Dad, and Ginny first. It was like it always surprised her, like she was waiting for me to just up and move on into a life that didn’t include them.
“Your sister just hit level four in Baldur’s Gate and is very excited. She wanted to show you…” Mom paused, and I knew she was trying to recall what likely sounded like another language to her. “The below shadow world? Oh, no, sorry, that is clearly not correct.”
I chuckled at the sound of my sister in the background. It wasn’t her voice, but the one from the speech-generating device she had. And I could tell by the way she kept hitting the button to make the voice repeat itself that she was annoyed with Mom for mucking up the terminology of the game.
“Geez, Mom, get it right,” I teased.
“Hush, you.” She listened again, and then corrected herself. “The underdark before the mountain pass. Whatever that means.”
I smirked. “Can you hold the phone up to her ear?”
Mom let me know when she had, and I let out a low whistle before putting my phone down in my lap long enough to slow clap. “Damn, sis,” I said when I picked it back up. “I guess you got tired of owning all those newbs on Apex Legends and had to give yourself a real challenge, huh?”
Just wait. I’ll be at level twelve by the end of next month.
“I don’t doubt it,” I replied to the artificial voice.
I wished I could hear hers, wished more than anything that I could give up my own ability to speak if it meant she could get her voice back.
I wondered what she’d sound like now, as a young woman instead of a little girl.
It killed me that I couldn’t even remember her voice before she lost the ability to use it, that the memory had been stolen from me over time.
I’d trade it all for her if I could — the money, the fame, the high of playing a game in a sold-out stadium.
But the universe, or God, or whoever was running this show didn’t present that as an offer, no matter how hard I prayed for it.
Ginny was eight years old when she was diagnosed with acute flaccid myelitis. It was Labor Day weekend, and what had just seemed like a cold quickly turned into a respiratory illness, and then into something none of us could have ever prepared for.
My sister went from a kid with a cough to almost completely paralyzed in the span of hours, a three-letter acronym for a neurological disease hitting our family like a semi-truck.
I was fourteen.
The year following had been a blur of hospital stays and rehab, and we learned the hard-to-swallow truth.
There was no cure.
Our way of life changed so drastically I couldn’t even remember what it was like before.
Mom quit her job as an administrative assistant to be a full-time caretaker for Ginny.
Dad picked up a second job to make ends meet, balancing as best he could between his nine-to-five insurance gig and bartending in the evenings.
And still, even with insurance, the medical bills piled up.
I felt helpless.
But that was my freshman year of high school. That was the year I started playing football seriously, not just for fun. And when my coach saw how much playing saved my mental health, he threw his all into me just like I threw my all into the team.
And I made a vow to myself and to my family that year.
I vowed that I’d work my ass off to be not just good at football, but great. I promised I would play in college, get Name, Image, and Likeness deals, and one day sign a contract with a team in the NFL.