Chapter 1 #2
By the time I walked to the showers, the three of them were busy studying the floor.
I thought about how some QBs ran their locker rooms — loud, physical, present. Jett Santo played that way.
That was the difference.
Not me, I didn’t need to scream for the locker room to get in line.
After a quick shower, I enjoyed my sauna, then headed for a post-workout massage for my shoulder.
It may have been two weeks ago, but I still felt every knock I’d picked up in the final game. My throwing arm was my ticket to going pro, and I couldn’t afford for it to fuck my chances up.
Another reason I was happy to wait another year for the Draft. I’d get so many medicals at the combine that my Draft position could drop significantly if I were carrying an injury.
I didn’t head to the players’ dining hall after practice. Instead, I veered left, into the quiet wing of the athletic building where the coaches’ offices and therapy rooms were. The hum of fluorescent lights replaced the chaos of the field, the hallway echoing the sound of my sneakers as I walked.
I checked over my shoulder once. Empty. I slipped into a room at the far end of the hall, one marked Maintenance, my ears straining to pick up the sound of anyone moving around. I had a very tight window where none of the coaches were in here.
Wrighton University was a D1 college. It had a lot of sports, a lot of great athletes — and it was a goldmine of information if you knew when and where to look.
I dipped into the old section of the facility. In the old locker room, I reached into the back of the shelf on the end locker, grasped the padded envelope, and brought it out of the dark, my fingers running over the seal to make sure it hadn’t been tampered with.
I stuffed it into my bag.
On my way out, I dipped into the football coaches’ offices and flicked through Coach Sutherland’s desk calendar. Sutherland still kept his schedule on paper, which made things a hell of a lot easier for me.
I checked the upcoming week’s schedule. Seeing it clear of any upcoming tests or physicals, I pulled the brown envelope out of my bag.
I opened it quickly, the pain in my shoulder a constant reminder of the injury I carried, and dropped the orange pill bottle into my hand. I shook a pill free and swallowed it dry. I closed my eyes for ten seconds and took a deep breath.
I’d asked the team for the same pill. But it was a limited supply, so it didn’t affect performance, and it wasn’t enough. I didn’t need that kind of attention it brought to me or my shoulder if I asked for more.
So I got the rest another way.
I rolled my head from side to side, knowing I’d need more before the end of the month, which meant another call to that fucker. I shoved the pills and the envelope back into a secure pocket in my bag.
When I was clear of the building, I pulled out my phone and dialed. No greeting when the line clicked open — just a voice waiting.
“Don’t bet on the basketball game this Saturday.” Silence. “Point guard’s still favoring that ankle. Backup’s quick, but he’s sloppy under pressure.”
Another beat of silence, then a breath on the other end — like they were about to speak. I ended the call before they could.
The text came seconds later.
Fucker: U forgot to say thank you for your package. Tell your sister I said hi
I read the text, and a flicker of my sister Jiana’s face flashed in my mind. She’d been through hell. The fucker was going to be a problem. But I’d deal with him later. When he was no longer useful.
I slid the phone back into my bag, the conversation already forgotten.
Back outside, the late-winter air bit colder than I expected, the kind of Southern chill that didn’t look like much but still got into your bones. The stadium loomed just as it had minutes ago, its steel ribs and empty seats standing quiet now, but still heavy with the echo of the championship.
Two weeks ago, the cameras had been on me, waiting to capture the ‘championship hero.’ I’d given them exactly what they wanted.
My phone rang, and I dug into my bag to find it. If it was him, I wouldn’t answer. Phoning the dick at all pissed me off. I didn’t need to hear his voice.
I checked the screen and saw it was Coach Sutherland. Shit, had he seen me?
“Yo,” I answered. “I did all the things.”
“Yo?” He let out a loud sigh. “You have a meeting with the academic advisors at seven-thirty tonight,” he said, bulldozing right over my bullshit.
I bit back a groan. “I already did all that preseason.” No reason they needed me again. “My grades are fine. I’ve been to every class.”
“Well, they want an appointment, so you have an appointment. Meeting room . . .” He paused, and I knew he was reading it from an email. Jesus, I must have just missed him. “Meeting room twenty-one, library.” He hung up before I could say anything else.
I checked my watch. Twenty-five minutes. Postseason workouts still ended late — weights, drills, sauna, massage therapy — and I’d gone straight from all that to the coaches’ wing. No time to eat, and now I was walking into a meeting I hadn’t seen coming.
And I was fucking hungry.
“Shit.” I started to jog back to the residence hall, hoping I’d have time to grab a snack and a change of clothes.
Wrighton University housed all its athletes in two large residences. The dorms were split into two and three-bed apartments with a shared living area and kitchen. The perk of being a junior was that our apartment had a cleaner who came in three times a week and did our laundry.
Dustin and I had roomed together since freshman year.
It worked. Our other roommate, Noah, had transferred in from a D2 school last summer and slid right into the linebacker slot at the beginning of the season like he’d been built for it.
The move had paid off — he’d played a big role in our championship run — but off the field, we still didn’t know much about him.
Kept to himself. Didn’t cause trouble. Truthfully, I didn’t need to know more than that.
I took the stairs to the third level two at a time and unlocked the apartment door.
“Just me,” I yelled, pausing to hear if there was any reply. Silence. Good. I wouldn’t need to explain where I’d been while the team ate dinner.
I pulled my shirt over my head as I opened the fridge door. Perfectly packaged and labeled food faced me, and everything would take too long to heat.
Opening the cupboard beside the fridge, I dipped into Dust’s protein bar stash that he kept ‘hidden.’
Two bars from Dustin’s hoard later, I was changed into jeans, a T-shirt, and an Alabama Lions hoodie, and out the door again. The ache in my shoulder was ebbing as the painkiller took effect.
The Den dominated the campus athletic section, blue-and-white banners hanging limp in the still, gray air, as I cut behind it to get to the library.
I arrived with little time to spare, then had to find meeting room twenty-one because the only reason I came to the library was to get my enrollment card in my freshman year.
“Dante?”
I turned to the two girls who were smiling widely at me.
“Hi.” They were going to ask me questions about the game, or worse, flirt. “Do you know where meeting room twenty-one is?”
They exchanged a look. “We can show you.”
“That would be great.”
I let them chatter on the walk, smiling when they looked at me, and neither encouraged nor discouraged the flirting, but my head was already on the meeting. I thought about the calendar I’d just flipped through. The phone call I’d just ended. I didn’t think about them too long.
Did the school know? How? I’d been so fucking careful.
“This is it,” one of the girls said as she smiled at me, and I realized I would never have found it on time without them.
I gave them my signature quarterback smile. “Appreciate it.”
The room was empty. I hesitated, a little annoyed that I was here on time and my ‘advisor’ wasn’t.
The hum of the AC filled the silence, and the second hand of the wall clock ticked too loudly.
I sat down and waited.