Chapter 7 Lucas
Lucas
Sweat poured down my entire body as I ran cone drills, my cleats cutting across the turf like I could outrun the crap in my head.
We didn’t waste stadium turf on practice.
Coach Chapman wanted that pristine for game day.
Out here, there was nowhere to hide. Just a wide-open field, burning sun, and drills that felt like they would never end.
My old man’s release from prison had wrecked my focus for sure.
But now? I couldn’t shake Mazzie from my brain.
Erik had found out that her mom and sister were fine, but that the mom could be in deep trouble. He didn’t know much more than that.
“Lucas!” Coach Chapman shouted. “Get your ass over here.”
Mumbling swear words, I tore off my helmet and jogged over to Coach on the sidelines. I’d been playing like crap this season, and if I didn’t shape up, Coach would bench me.
He removed his hat, wiped the sweat from his brow, and gave me that usual pissed-off practice face. “You’ve lost your mojo. Do you want to get benched?”
I swallowed down the panic. “No, sir.” I could give him every excuse in the book, but when we were on the field, nothing mattered but football. “Please, Coach,” I begged, “I’ll do better.” I needed football. This game was my future.
He stuck his hands on his hips. “I know you’re worried about your father, but he doesn’t belong on the field. You have two days to shape up. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me just yet,” he said. “Get your head out of your ass.” Then he blew his whistle. “That’s it for today!” he shouted to the team then stalked off and met the assistant coaches who were packing up the equipment.
I set my helmet on the bench as Ryker came over, wiping sweat from his face. “I’m going to run some laps. Want to join me?”
Ryker’s routine was always running laps after practice. The man was a machine when it came to staying in shape, especially for game day.
I shrugged but nodded. I was ready to stand beneath a shower of cold water. But I could use his advice.
“What did Coach have to say?” Ryker asked as we started around the field along the narrow track.
“He might bench me.” I gritted my teeth at the thought that I might not play. “I’m sorry that I’m playing like crap.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” he said, not even huffing and puffing.
“Do something about it, man. Look, you know better than anyone I had a hard time after the funeral. But what got me out of my funk was football. The field was the only place I was happy. My problems didn’t exist when the ball was in my hands. ”
My feet pounded hard on the track. “But you’re good at compartmentalizing things.”
He pulled me over to the side. “All of us have problems. I know your father’s release is messing with you.
You’re scared for your mom. I get it. But she needs to see you succeeding.
So channel that fear into fuel. Hit harder, run faster, play like her well-being depends on your success on the field.
Because in the end you want to see her happy.
You want to be able to financially help her, right? ”
I was nodding as he was talking.
Over the years, Ryker and I had discussed all the things we would do if our dreams of playing in the NFL came true, and one of my top priorities was to help my mom live comfortably.
Hell, he’d turned down a free ride to a California powerhouse at a Division 1 school so he could stay close to family and me.
Everyone knew he would make it to the pros, no matter the jersey.
Me? I had to fight twice as hard to prove I belonged.
Winning last season’s bowl game finally gave me that chance.
As we stood eye to eye, he ran his fingers through his black sweaty hair.
“Don’t allow your father to have power over you.
And I’ll be straight with you. Your weakness in the last game and even in practice is you’re slow on the snap.
” He gripped my shoulder. “I need you to be quicker. I need the old hellion back if we’re going to win games. ”
I cleared the perspiration from my face with my jersey, feeling like a loser.
Feeling as though I was standing before Mr. James after a high school game or even our first game in our freshman year of college where afterward Ryker’s dad told us everything we’d done wrong.
I hated disappointing Mr. James, and I had that same feeling now with Ryker.
I looked up to my best friend. He’d been through a worse hell than me, and there I was allowing my father, who was alive, to live rent free in my head.
Ryker crossed his arms over his chest. “You’ve been quiet. What are you thinking?”
I shrugged. “About your dad. You sound just like him.” I glanced outward and squinted at the setting sun, which was hotter than the Sahara Desert. “Remember that game in high school when I busted my shoulder catching a pass from you?”
Ryker chuckled. “You blamed your injury on Natalia.”
“That was so wrong.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I watched the team jog by. “But she broke up with me right before the game. Anyway, your dad sat me down and told me that no matter what was thrown at me, I was in charge of my actions.”
He bobbed his head. “My father didn’t accept excuses. ‘Be a man,’ he would say. ‘Own your shit.’”
We both laughed.
“Thank you for this,” I said. “I will do better. I have to do better.”
We resumed jogging.
“Not only in football, Lucas, but your studies as well. Have you found a tutor yet for the history class you’re struggling in?”
“I’m working with my professor on that.” Historiography was kicking my ass, but it was critical for my History degree.
As we rounded the track, I came to an abrupt halt.
Ryker followed my line of sight. “What’s your mom doing here?”
“She must have news about Kurtis.”
She never came to my college practices unless it was an emergency.
Ryker backtracked. “Wow! Is that your dad? He looks like he’s aged thirty years.”
I hadn’t seen my father since he’d been arrested.
After what he’d done to Mom and me, I had no desire to visit him in prison.
Yet Ryker had hit the nail on the head. The man with thinning brown hair, who was lean in the chest and dressed in black pants and a white button-down shirt, appeared older than his forty-something years.
“Do you need me to stay?”
“I got this.” It was time to own my shit, as Ryker’s dad had said.
I ran over to my mom, keeping my attention on the man behind the chain-link fence that wrapped around the track.
“Now, Lucas, don’t get upset. Your father showed up at the house today. He wanted to see you. But I told him interrupting your practice was not the right time.”
“Obviously, you lost that argument.” I stared at the man who was supposed to be my father, but all I saw was a stranger. “When did you get out?”
“A week and half ago. But I couldn’t get here sooner. I had to check in with my parole officer.” My father’s voice sounded as if he’d been smoking cigarettes for eons.
Silence dropped over us like a dark cloud on a stormy day.
Kurtis Allen was standing before me, hands cupped in front of him, fear in his brown eyes.
“You’re tall, Lucas,” he said. “You get your height from your mother’s side.”
For so long, I thought about this day and what I would do when it came—lash out, scream, shout, even punch him for what he’d put us through. Yet as I sized him up, I felt nothing, not even the urge to yell at him.
“Where are you staying?” I asked evenly.
“A hotel, for now,” he said.
“You have money?” My voice rose in pitch as I regarded my mom.
“I didn’t give him any,” Mom said to me.
I would’ve gone ballistic if she had.
“I would never ask your mother for money. I worked while I was inside.” Kurtis edged closer to the fence, seemingly more courageous. “I don’t expect you to believe anything I say. I know actions speak louder than words, and I need to prove to you that I’ve changed.”
“And how do you plan on doing that?” This, I had to hear. Before he’d been arrested, he wasn’t the father who doted on his son or showed up for football practices or games. He was sitting at a gambling table, throwing away hard-earned money that my mom had contributed to the family.
“I wasn’t there for you when you were a kid, and for that, I’m sorry. But I thought I would start by coming to one of your games.” If he was sorry, he sure as hell didn’t show it either in body language or tone. I didn't hear an ounce of remorse from him.
Maybe that fear still oozing off him was masking his apology. Yet I didn’t care for any apology.
“It’s not me you need to grovel to. It’s your wife who suffered greatly. Besides, you can never make up for the years lost.”
“Lucas.” Her tone carried that motherly snap as her hazel eyes glinted in the daylight. “Can you give him a chance? Maybe the three of us can have dinner.”
“Dinner isn’t going to heal the wounds,” I spat venom more at Kurtis than my mom. He needed to know building a relationship wasn’t that easy.
“Lucas Allen,” Mom warned, “have you thought that it’s as hard for Kurtis as it is for you?”
I clamped down on my tongue. She was forgetting the depression she’d been in, the financial predicament, the years of struggle. Sure, he might be nervous, and I shouldn’t automatically think he would return to his old ways. Maybe he was a changed man as he stated. Only time would tell.
“I don’t have time for dinner.” That was the honest truth. “I have to study and prepare for the game on Saturday.”
I couldn’t turn my emotions on and off at the flip of a switch.
Ten years was a long time to be estranged.
More importantly, what he’d done couldn’t be forgiven in an instant.
If he showed he was a different man and could be the father I never had, then maybe he and I could talk.
But right now, I didn’t have it in me to open the door for him.
I leaned over the fence and kissed Mom on the cheek. “I have to go. Are you going to be okay?”
She broke out with a genuine smile as if she’d reconciled the demons that had plagued her since Kurtis’s arrest. “I can handle myself.”
I glared at Kurtis. “Ruin our lives or bring us into a situation like before, and you’ll never become part of this family again. Are we clear?”
He held up his hands as though I were arresting him. “Message received.”
I pivoted on my heel and kicked my legs into gear.
“Lucas,” Kurtis called at my back.
“Let him go,” my mom said. “He needs time.”
But time wasn’t what I needed. I needed proof.
Ryker was waiting for me outside the athletic building adjacent to the outdoor practice field. “Are you cool?”
I lifted a shoulder. “For now. The ball is in his court. Surprisingly, my mom is handling his release well.”
He slapped me on the back. “Your mom isn’t the type to make the same mistake twice. Plus, you don’t give her enough credit. She’s stronger than you think.”
I felt less tense now that this initial meeting was over.
The anticipation and trepidation of when my father would show, what he would do, and how my mom and I would react had taken up too much of my psyche.
Yet I still had a knot in the pit of my stomach.
I couldn’t help but think that once a gambler, always a gambler.
As we headed into the locker room, my brain slowly began to switch gears. I was hungry, needed a shower, and I wanted to call Mazzie. I needed to know how she was doing after her mother’s car accident.