Chapter One LIAM
Chapter One
L IAM
Present day
For a guy who didn’t want a family, it was nothing short of laugh-your-balls-off irony that I ended up as the father figure to an entire fucking team of idiot football players.
“You can’t spend all your money on betting and women, Richards,” I told him.
He gave me a look, one of those stupid puppy-eyed looks that made me want to punch him in the throat. “Why not?”
“Because it’s stupid,” I barked. “You won’t play forever, and trust me when I tell you that the money dries up faster than you can imagine when you’re tossing it at every set of long legs that opens in your general direction. And there will be lots of those if you keep this up.”
One of the veterans, also just out of the shower in the locker room, sent a smirk in our general direction. “Might as well listen to him, Richards. He doesn’t spend his money on jack shit, so he’s probably got more in the bank than the rest of us combined.”
Richards eyed me, and for a brief moment, I saw just how much he didn’t care that my bank accounts were full, considering they all knew my bed was empty of female company.
Football was my mistress—had been since the age of eighteen. She was demanding and harsh, beat the shit out of me on the regular, and I kept coming back for more. There was nothing left in the tank for anything outside that.
I leaned in. “Listen, rookie, you’ve got one career. If you’re lucky, it’s a long one. But that’s no guarantee. You’ll have plenty of assholes who want to take every single pretty penny out of your pocket, and it’s up to you to make sure that your future—whatever it looks like—is taken care of when your body decides you’re done.”
“I just don’t think it’s that serious. I’m having fun.” Richards shrugged. “You should try it sometime.”
Someone whistled. A couple of other players in the locker room laughed quietly. But they sure as fuck weren’t laughing at me .
They knew better.
Richards was new to the team, a postseason transfer from Las Vegas, and it was clear he thought I was being a stodgy old fart who only wanted to ruin his fun . But in the past week, the flashy player had already made tabloid headlines for his over-the-top goodbye party in Vegas, where he was photographed leaving with three women, who departed his hotel room the following morning with smudged makeup, tangled hair, and shit-eating grins on their faces.
Those same women shouted from the social media rooftops about the shopping sprees and cars he’d promised them.
In making conversation with his new teammates, he’d mentioned that, despite how much he got paid, he always felt like he was broke.
Richards, as it turned out, was a dumbass.
And anyone who’d played with me knew I didn’t tolerate dumbasses on my team.
When I leaned against the wall, crossed my arms over my chest, and leveled him with my infamous glare, he let out an uncomfortable laugh.
But I wasn’t done.
“You don’t believe me,” I said. “That’s fine. Spend all that money on stupid shit and stupid parties and people who don’t care about you, and see how many people respect you for it. Maybe you have more fun than I do, Richards.” Slowly, I cocked an eyebrow. “Do I look like I’m jealous?”
He swallowed, pink slowly climbing up his cheeks. “No.”
“Fucking right, I’m not jealous. Wanna know why? Because everyone in this locker room respects me. They’ll fight for me, because they know I’ve always, always fought for them. You walk out onto that field your first game here, when the lights are blinding and the fans are screaming and the fireworks are filling the sky, and the men lining up next to you are the only thing that matters. It’s just us in that uniform; we put our bodies through hell every week to play a game, because it’s the life we want more than anything. But all the glitz and the money and the sex ... it’s meaningless at the end of your life, I promise.”
My chest started tightening at the end of my little speech, and the locker room went quiet around us. Richards looked down at the floor, suitably chastened.
Once I was able to swallow past the lump in my throat, I continued. “I know you don’t know me well, but that’ll change. Every week, every day, we’ll be right here, and you’ll find your place on this team. In this family. And we’ll always want our family taken care of, even if that means you say the hard shit, yeah?”
And fucking hell, my voice almost cracked at the end.
Richards looked up. “Yeah.”
I exhaled slowly. “Good. I’m not saying you can’t have fun. We’ve all blown off steam from time to time. But don’t be an idiot about it.”
He gave me a slow nod. The locker room filled with noise again, with low conversation and occasional laughter. Even though it was the offseason, with a couple of months to go before training camp started, we were all at the facilities just about every day, putting in our time in the weight room. On the field for conditioning. Meeting with our coaches.
But more than that—as the hushed sounds in the room reminded me—we’d been there grieving together.
Richards cleared his throat before he walked away. “I’m sorry about your friend,” he said. “I know I came to the team ... after. But I saw it on the news.”
After.
My chest went tight again, like someone had jammed a great bloody fist underneath my ribs and pulled on a crank that I didn’t know existed. My bones creaked with the force of it, and I had to take a long, deep breath before I could speak.
“Chris was a damn good football player,” I managed. “But he was an even better friend. The best husband and father. And every guy you see in here,” I said, gesturing to the players in the room, “they lost someone, same as me. And we didn’t just lose Chris. We lost his wife too. Their daughter lost both her parents.” I held his gaze unflinchingly. “One stupid mistake—someone having a bit too much fun before they got in their car—and we lost part of our family here. Remember that when you go around bragging about the fun you think we should have. We’ve all lost a bit of our taste for it the last couple weeks.”
Luckily for Richards, he was intelligent enough not to take what I said personally.
“Got it,” he said quietly. He nodded again, this time with a touch more deference, and moved over to his locker. I turned to mine, staring at the one to its right.
Chris’s locker.
His bag was still in it. His practice jersey. A picture taped at the back of him and Amie and Mira.
I’d looked for her at the wake, but it seemed they’d kept her away, because she hadn’t been at the funeral either. Probably for the best, given that she was less than three years old. I didn’t even know how aware she was of the way her world had been rocked.
It had been hard enough for me to sit there, shoulder to shoulder with my teammates, and we were fucking adults.
As my eyes burned a hole in the belongings none of us could bring ourselves to remove, a heavy hand settled on my shoulder.
“Got a minute?” Coach asked.
I nodded. Suddenly, I wanted out of that locker room. I wanted away from that locker full of my friend’s things. My hands itched to get a box, throw it all in there, and tuck it away.
When I joined Coach Freedman in the hallway, he had a serious look on his face. But then again, he always did. It was why he and I got along so well. His seriousness was rooted in age and a life spent dedicated to the sport we both loved. Mine was simply because I was an asshole, and somehow people seemed to like me for it.
“How’s everyone doing?” he asked.
I crossed my arms and sighed. “Okay, I think. Might be time to clean out his locker.”
Slowly, his gray eyebrows rose. “You sure about that? There’s no rush, if the guys aren’t ready.”
But what he really meant was if I wasn’t ready.
“They’ll be ready soon,” I said, voice a touch harsher than I intended. “Last thing we need is to keep staring at his goofy-ass smile all the time and thinking about his horrible fucking jokes.”
Coach smiled, sad and understanding. “I miss him too.”
I cleared my throat. “Is that all you needed?”
“No.” He scratched the side of his face, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “I got a phone call patched through the front office. They were looking for you.”
“Who?”
“Chris and Amie’s lawyer,” Coach said quietly. “He needs you at his office as soon as you can get there.”
My stomach hollowed out, but I didn’t drop his gaze. “What for?”
“He didn’t say. But it sounds important. He found some documents relating to Chris and Amie’s will. He said he tried the number on file but couldn’t leave a message.” Coach gave me a knowing look. “I didn’t tell him what happened to your last phone and that your voicemail box has been full for months.”
Finally, I broke his gaze and stared down at the floor.
Kind of him, really. Considering I’d smashed my cell phone against the wall of the conference room where they’d told us about the car accident. Followed by a chair that I’d hurled at a TV screen.
But none of that destruction had helped much. That’s the thing about helpless rage. There’s no place you can put it where it lessens the toll on your body. I still felt it churning in my bones and my blood, with nowhere to go. It was stuck under my skin, day in and day out.
Wordlessly, Coach handed me a slip of paper. On it were the name of the lawyer and an address.
“He said if you can be there at three, he’d appreciate it. Apparently, this can’t wait.”
The longer I stared at the paper, the more the words blurred, and I refused to look into Coach’s face until I’d willed back any hint of moisture in my eyes.
“You sure you don’t know why he wants to see me?” I asked. “Because if you know, tell me now so I don’t feel fucking ambushed in some stuffy office with some stuffy lawyer.”
The side of his mouth hooked up in a smile. “Trust me, if I knew, I’d tell you. I make it a point not to send you into situations where you feel backed into a corner.” He smacked my shoulder. “Call me later if you need to talk about it. Whatever it is.”
I glared at the piece of paper, then shoved it into my pocket.
Fifteen minutes later, I was driving into downtown Denver with a sinking feeling in my gut that whatever the lawyer had to tell me ... I wouldn’t like it.