8. Chapter 8
Darius
The ball hits my hands and slips right through them — a perfect spiral wasted because my eyes are locked on the tunnel Claire walked through twenty minutes ago.
Jaylen Cross's laugh explodes from the sideline, loud enough for half the field to hear.
"Bro, what the hell was THAT?" he calls out.
Jaylen doesn't say anything right away. He just stands there with his arms crossed and his shoulders shaking, and that's worse than if he'd said something.
Our QB, Torres, jogs over and picks up the ball without looking at me.
"You good?"
"I'm good," I say.
He trots back to the line.
Jaylen is still laughing.
***
Jaylen finishes his rep, slaps Torres on the shoulder, and walks straight over to me. Whatever he's about to say, he's already enjoying it too much.
"You've got a problem," he says.
"My route was clean."
"I'm not talking about your route."
"You've got a problem," he says again, grinning now. "And it's not your hands."
I frown. "Then what are you talking about?"
"Do I have to spell it out?" He tilts his head like he's genuinely considering whether I'm this slow. "I saw you in the facility yesterday. Sneaking something onto her desk like you were leaving a love note in fifth grade."
"I wasn't sneaking."
"You looked over your shoulder twice." He holds up two fingers right in my face. "Twice, bro. And that's just yesterday. You want to talk about the equipment room? How you always seem to be finishing up in there right when she comes down the corridor?"
He shakes his head, fighting a smile.
"Or we could talk about last night. Eleven-thirty. Coffee run. To her apartment."
I pull my gloves tighter. "It's part of the arrangement."
Jaylen stares at me for a long second. Then he nods, slow and deliberate, like I just said something deeply reasonable.
"Sure it is," he says.
He jogs back to the line, catches a bullet from Torres without breaking stride, and doesn't look back.
I stand there for a second, gloves biting into my palms, trying to figure out what the hell he's talking about. Over my shoulder? Equipment room timing? Coffee runs?
I wasn't doing anything.
At least… I didn't think I was.
And that's the part that throws me — not that Jaylen noticed something. But that I don't even know what he thinks he saw.
***
Donnelly pulls me into the film room after the morning session, and for a second I brace for corrections. Footwork, timing, something I screwed up.
But he's not watching routes. He's watching me.
He sits across from me with the tablet angled in his hand, tapping the screen with the blunt end of his pen. He doesn't say anything at first, just studies the numbers like he's waiting for them to confess something.
Finally, he nods once.
"Your sprint output was the fastest on the field today."
I blink, not sure I heard him right.
"That's not training," Donnelly says. "That's you giving a damn."
The compliment hits like getting an A on a test I barely studied for. One of those moments where you're shocked, relieved, and weirdly proud all at once. Donnelly almost never hands out praise, so hearing it now feels like someone just turned on a light I didn't realize I needed.
After the last few months, after the trade, after being treated like a walking disaster, it feels good. Better than I want to admit. Like someone finally noticed I'm trying.
My shoulders loosen. My chest unclenches.
For the first time in a long time, I feel like a player instead of a problem.
"Mental error rate is the lowest it's been since you signed here." He sets the tablet down. "Whatever that publicist of yours is doing — it's working. On and off the field."
He stands, tucks the tablet under his arm. "Don't blow it."
He's at the door before I can respond.
"Webb."
I look up.
"I mean it," he says.
Then he's gone.
***
The working lunch is already on my calendar when I get back to my locker. Claire scheduled it three days ago: Next Play Foundation Youth Event Calendar — Planning Session. Conference Room B. Noon.
I'm two minutes early, which is not a thing I do.
Normally I'd find a way to work that into conversation. Today I just shut up.
She's already there when I walk in, and for a second I just stand in the doorway like an idiot. Her hair is down today, tucked behind one ear, and she's bent over her notebook writing something in the margin with this small focused frown she gets when she's thinking hard.
There's a printed event calendar spread across the table next to a wrapped sandwich she hasn't touched.
The afternoon light coming through the conference room windows is hitting her just right and I'm aware, suddenly, that I've been standing here for three full seconds without saying anything.
I sit down.
"There's a clinic slot in week nine that's still unscheduled," she says. "I want to use it for an underprivileged youth initiative, but I need to know if you have contacts at any Houston-area organizations before I start reaching out cold."
I pull the turkey wrap from the bag and unwrap it before I even think about it. Turkey, no tomato, extra avocado. Exactly right.
I don't know how she knows that. I haven't told her. It's not in any file.
And yet here it is, sitting in front of me like she's been paying attention to things I didn't realize I was showing her.
I gaze at her across the table. She's still writing. Completely unbothered.
This woman is something else.
"I have one," I say. "Coach Mercer at the Northside Community Center. He runs programs for kids in the system."
She looks up. "How do you know him?"
"He coached me."
She holds my gaze for a beat. Not the professional warmth — something quieter than that.
"I want to add a foster care component to the clinic," I say. "Not just general youth. Specifically those kids."
I pause. There's more to say and I don't say it. Just: "It matters to me."
The table goes quiet for a second.
I watch her face for the follow-up question — the where did that come from, the were you in foster care, the whole sympathetic lean-in that women do when they smell a backstory.
Every woman I've dated has done it. The moment I let something personal slip, suddenly they need the whole history.
Like my wounds are a thing they get to unwrap.
Claire writes it down.
That's it. She just writes it down.
"Coach Mercer," she says. "I'll reach out to him this week."
She moves to the next item on the calendar without missing a step.
I sit back in my chair.
Something in my chest loosens in a way I wasn't expecting. I've spent years keeping people at arm's length because the minute you let them close enough to see the cracks, they start asking questions you're not ready to answer.
Claire didn't ask.
I don't know what to do with that.
She writes it down, but she's smiling a little when she does it. Like she's pleased in a way she didn't expect to be.
We spend the next forty minutes building out the calendar, and somewhere around the halfway mark it stops feeling like work.
Claire pitches an idea about pairing the foster-care clinic with a back-to-school supply drive, and I feel myself lean in before I even realize I'm doing it.
I add a mentorship angle. She counters with something sharper. I counter back.
Before long we're both bent over the same printed page, shoulders almost touching, talking over each other in that easy, excited way people do when they're building something together instead of trying to win.
Her hair slips forward when she leans in to circle a date, and I catch the faint smell of her shampoo.
She taps her pen against the margin, thinking, and I swear I can feel the vibration of her focus like heat.
Then her pen rolls off the edge of the table.
We both reach for it.
My hand closes over hers for half a second — warm, soft, real — before either of us registers what happened.
We both go still. The room does too.
Her eyes flick up to mine for just a few moments — and there's color rising in her cheeks before she looks away. She pulls her hand back, pen in her fingers, and clears her throat quietly like she's resetting. Tucks her hair behind her ear. Looks down at her notebook.
I sit back in my chair. Neither of us says anything for a beat.
"Okay," she says finally, voice back to business. "Week nine. Foster care clinic. I'll build the run of show."
"Yeah," I say. "Sounds good."
But my hand is still warm where hers was.
***
My phone rings during the lunch break when I'm in the parking lot getting some air. Evan Carter. My agent. The man who has spent the last six months treating my career like a bleeding balance sheet and me like the liability causing it.
He talks fast, always, like he's always in the middle of three other calls and you're the one he squeezed in. Most days, that makes him very good at his job. Today it makes me wonder whether I'm still a client or just a problem he's trying to solve.
I let it ring once more than I usually would, then pick up.
"Talk to me," he says. "I need you to stay calm."
Which is never how you start a conversation with someone you want to stay calm.
"I just got the AFC media summit guest list."
"Camille Pierce just got credentialed for the AFC media summit. She's on the guest list, she's got a speaking slot, and she'll be in Houston."
A pause.
"Same building as you and Wells. For two days."
He delivers it flat. No buildup, no hesitation. Like a man reading off a grocery list. Not surprised. Not concerned. Just: here is the information, do with it what you will.
I don't know why that bothers me until I'm back inside.
***
The parking lot goes quiet in a way it wasn't a second ago.
I sit there for a full minute after Evan hangs up. The sun is cutting across the windshields and somewhere across the lot two equipment guys are hauling bags to a van and the whole afternoon feels completely ordinary except for the thing sitting in the center of my chest.
I let out a slow breath and tip my head back against the headrest.
Of all the summits, in all the cities, she ends up at this one.
Then my phone buzzes.
I look down at the screen and almost laugh. Because of course. Of course she texts me right now, like the universe has a sense of humor and it's not funny.
I heard you're doing the good-boy redemption tour. Cute. Call me before it backfires, sugar.
My whole body goes tight at that last word.
Sugar.
I told her once not to call me that. She laughed, said "okay," and walked off like it was a joke. And now she drops it into a text like she's flicking a match at gasoline.
On purpose. To provoke me.
But it's the line before it that hits lower.
Call me before it backfires.
What the hell does that mean? Is that a warning? A threat? A promise? With Camille, it could be any of the above.
Heat crawls up my spine, fast and ugly. I've been going to church, watching my mouth, trying to keep my temper on a leash… and she knows exactly how to snap it.
I lean my head back against the headrest and let it rip.
"Fuck!"
It echoes off the windshield. I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles go white, breathing hard, furious at myself for letting her get to me. Again.
I sit there for a full minute, jaw clenched, phone facedown like it's radioactive.
Then I go back inside.
***
Claire is at the whiteboard when I walk back into Conference Room B, a new timeline drawn in green marker, tighter than the original twelve weeks. She steps back, caps the marker, gives the timeline one approving nod.
Then she turns.
And stops.
Because whatever's on my face, it's not the version of me she's used to.
Her eyes widen just a fraction, like she's registering the heat rolling off me.
"Wow," she says softly. "Someone must have really pissed you off. Sit down."
I drop into the chair, still buzzing, still trying to swallow the anger clawing up my throat.
"She called me sugar," I snap. "I'm a grown ass man, Claire. I told her not to call me that."
For a second she just blinks at me, taking in my fuming, my clenched jaw, the way I'm practically vibrating.
Then it happens — this tiny, surprised laugh that slips out of her before she can stop it.
I stare at her, confused, and then it hits me how ridiculous I sound.
And suddenly I'm laughing too, the tension cracking clean in half.
But the laugh fades as fast as it came. I pull out my phone and slide it across the table toward her.
She reads it slowly.
"That 'before it backfires' part," I say. "That felt like a threat."
Claire's expression shifts. The humor softens into focus.
"I think she's trying to get something out of you," Claire says. "And it worked. For a minute."
She meets my eyes, steady and sure.
"But two can play that game."
Something in my chest loosens. Because she's not scared of my anger. She's not overwhelmed by it. She's not treating me like a problem.
She's already planning the counterplay.
And suddenly the idea of walking into that summit with Claire on my arm — letting Camille see exactly who I'm standing next to now — feels less like strategy and more like justice.
"She needs a villain." She sets the phone on the table. "Camille is looking at a divorce, a board review, and a reputation that depends on everyone believing she was the wronged party in Atlanta. The only way that story holds is if you're the one who pursued her. If you're the bad guy."
She taps the phone screen.
"This text is her testing whether you're scared enough to cooperate. Or angry enough to blow up."
She looks at me pointedly.
"She's hoping you fire back. Post something, text something, give her anything she can screenshot and take to a reporter. The old Darius would've. And she knows it."
I feel my jaw tighten. "So what do we do?"
"We don't call her back." She turns to the whiteboard and starts drawing a new line on the timeline. "We make you so undeniable that by the time she walks into that summit and opens her mouth, nobody's listening."
"We've done two public appearances," I say. "A clinic and a church visit. That's not exactly a love story."
"I know." She caps the marker. Turns around. "I wasn't going to play this card yet. It's fast and the public might raise an eyebrow, but Camille just moved up the timeline and I don't have the luxury of being cautious anymore."
She pauses.
"I need to pull out the big guns."
"Meaning what?"
She holds my gaze for a second, like she's bracing for my reaction. Then she turns back to the whiteboard and writes two words in the bottom right corner.
Ring shopping.
My brain stalls. I just stare at it, like maybe if I blink hard enough it'll rearrange itself into something less insane.
She sets the marker down, picks up her notebook, and says — calm as a surgeon — "I'll send you the updated schedule tonight."
And then she walks out.
I'm left sitting there, jaw hanging open, wondering what the fuck I just got myself into.