Chapter 8
Austin
The American Footballer’s Million-Dollar Foundation
Zoya laughed into the morning air after reading the online article on her phone. “You’re relevant again, this time in the
society section.”
I held my hand up to my brow and watched the field. It was freshly cut and the air smelled like grass. “I don’t know why you’re
laughing. Auctioning myself off was your idea.”
The event was a huge success and the items that the Mistry foundation auctioned off sold for higher than anything else. The
foundation made nearly five million dollars altogether after the first item went for a million. I had a few more interested
donors and what seemed like a last-ditch effort to keep it alive started to blossom into something bigger.
“It was for the foundation, and I was right.” Zoya took a sip of her coffee, looking out into the field ahead of us—the one filled with kids running back and forth, in some degree of order, as they played what was supposed to be a soccer match.
“It did help. Although, no offense, a million dollars is a little high.”
“It’s a dumb idea, isn’t it?” I said, thinking about the deal I made with Isa a couple nights ago.
“No.” Zoya smacked my arm with the back of hers. “You’re going to the Amari wedding. Do you realize all the important people
that will be there? Getting an invitation to that wedding is probably more lucrative to the foundation than anything you’ve done in the last few years. You know that, right?”
Nope.
It was shit like that that made me sure I needed help with the foundation. My best friend, Theo, was always the one who handled
the financing aspects of running a business. The foundation needed money, but it also needed someone with more vision and
charm than I possessed.
“You can keep the field, the building, and not worry about it for years,” she chirped. “If you want to.”
“I know.” I smiled, thinking that this was a chance to, at least, keep the dream alive.
It would probably never happen—having a functioning training academy that fed into a vibrant American league—because our best
players left the country. But as long as that field was there, a part of me held on to the idea that it could.
“I’m sure Jesse was thrilled,” Zoya added.
“He was.”
I had already gotten three calls from Jesse. He’d set up two meetings with football clubs for coaching opportunities. One was in Paris, FC Remy slotted in during the wedding week perfectly. The other was Farnham, my old team in London. He wasn’t going to waste my trip there.
“It’s nice to see you being, I dunno, human again.”
“Gee, thanks. I was injured,” I drawled sarcastically while watching one of the kids smack the ball with his hands like he
was playing volleyball. I yelled out to field, “Hey, what did I say about using your hands?”
I looked back at Zoya, who tapped her fingers along her coffee cup. She gave me a knowing look, with one eyebrow raised. “You’ve
been a little insufferable lately. The last time you got like this, even Theo was worried.”
My heart twinged at the memory.
I was always a little lucky. My only other serious injury happened right in the finals seven years ago, so I recovered back
home in the offseason. It was when Theo and Zoya got engaged, and I spent the entire summer being a pain in the ass.
But they picked me up because that’s what best friends do, and I got back to playing.
“I still can’t believe you’re going to the Amari wedding,” she complained aloud. “You already got a decade of being the American
Footballer. Haven’t you had your fair share of fun?”
“It wasn’t that great,” I lied. At the time, it was.
Aside from the paps being insane in the UK whenever I went out, that type of fame came with a lot of short-lived thrills.
“Liar.” She rolled her eyes. “Why can’t I run into a sexy surgeon who needs a plus-one?”
This time I raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say she was sexy.”
Isa was beautiful. A fact that stuck out in my mind since the auction.
Although that’s as far as I let any of those thoughts go since this entire plan was giving me a migraine.
But being a fake boyfriend for a week would be easy.
If anything, I was curious to see the guy that fumbled someone like her.
Clearly, Isa wasn’t over it, and I wondered who the hell this guy was.
“Oh, come on. You don’t need to be a two on the Kinsey scale to know that team doctor is hot.”
“That’s more than I ever wanted to know about you.” I grimaced. “And she’s not the team doctor.”
I was going to take this chance to get the foundation ready to go and my career onto the next stage. That was all. As Zoya
pointed out, this was a good opportunity. I wasn’t going to waste it.
“But seriously.” Her voice distilled to something more serious. “I’m glad you’re moving forward with coaching.”
“Yeah . . .” I needed to adapt. Move along. I couldn’t hide out in the States forever. “Now, you can stop bothering me about
it every five minutes, Mom.”
“See?” She snapped her fingers. “All snippy and insufferable.”
I rolled my eyes. “Between you making sure I have an activity scheduled and Jesse trying to push me into different jobs like
a real-life career day on steroids, I’m really trying to be a little less snippy.”
I could see the change in myself over the last few months and I wanted to get back to steady—having some sort of purpose—I
just didn’t know how.
Before she could say anything, a loud cheer from the field erupted when one of the kids scored a goal. They weren’t actually playing a match, but it was sweet.
“Good job, Jo!” Zoya called from the sideline, and her daughter, Joseen, high-fived the other kids.
One of the nice things about playing in the States, outside of being home, was that nobody cared who I was. Not many people
outside of certain spaces even recognized me. Struggling to survive as a kid to being a professional athlete, this was a kind of normal I never really had.
The kids began to gather up their things on the sidelines.
“Austin Cade, fancy billionaires, and a surgeon,” Zoya mused. “Take pictures.”