CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Lucas
I don’t remember leaving her office.
Or the long stretch of the hallway I walked down. Or the noise of the facility pressing in all around me.
I remember breathing but feeling like I was suffocating.
Like my heart was racing but feeling like it had stopped.
Like the world around me imploded and yet people were walking through the Rebels facility like nothing had happened.
Stop playing.
Like it’s that fucking simple.
Like football isn’t the thing that had formed every part of me when no one else other than Brendan believed in me.
She knew.
That’s the part that won’t stop replaying.
She knew when she smiled at me. When she drank wine with me. When she curled into my chest like I was safe.
She knew and still let me believe otherwise.
That’s what that look in her eyes was. The one I couldn’t decipher. She knew what she had to tell me and was too chickenshit to do it.
I shove the door open to the parking lot and head straight for my truck with my shoulder throbbing now that the adrenaline is gone.
“Hey,” someone calls out. “You good?”
I don’t slow down and try to mask the fury rioting through me. “Yeah. Fine.”
The word “fine” tastes like acid.
I sit in my truck replaying the entire fucking conversation in my head. Reliving her words, the look in her eyes, and how not once, did she say she’d try and help me.
My hands grip the wheel so hard they ache. My eyes stare straight ahead but burn with tears of frustration I refuse to shed.
If I stop now, I’m done.
Not just football, but everything that comes after it. The credibility. The future I’ve been quietly trying to accept is going to happen.
Who the hell am I without this?
If you keep pushing you could lose your chance at a normal functioning arm for the rest of your life. You could lose everything.
What if I’ve already lost everything?
The thought hits like a punch to the gut.
Mark Jensen sat in my living room the other night in agony. The look on his face. The utter desolation as he bemoaned the reality of how thin the line is between staying and being sent packing.
I bark out a laugh. Funny how I just found out first fucking hand.
I press my forehead to the steering wheel and breathe.
She says my shoulder is breaking down.
When has it not been?
I can come back from this. I came back from shoulder injuries before. I proved how fucking strong it is now by making the final cut. The coaches think it’s strong so what’s it to them what’s underneath so long as I can deliver on what they need?
I am not done. I’ve always punched back. I’ve always gotten back up and kept fighting.
Except this time, the fear is louder than the confidence, and I’m not sure which one is lying.
“If you keep playing, you risk permanent, irreparable damage. Loss of considerable, practical function. Chronic pain. As your doctor, my clinical opinion would be that you stop playing football.”
I start the engine and pull out of the lot, not knowing where I’m going.
I can’t go back inside. Not yet. Not until I figure out where to go from here.
Because where do you go when the woman you trusted just told you that she won’t be fighting with you?