CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cole
I drop back and the pocket holds.
My eyes move through the read—left, middle, right—and it’s all there. Everyone’s exactly where they should be. I’ve run this play a thousand times without thinking.
Steward breaks open toward the back of the end zone.
“That one mess up your odds?”
My fingers tighten on the laces.
“Glad I could help, you fucking cheater.”
I hitch my shoulder. It’s barely anything but my brain stutters when it shouldn’t.
“Yeah, we all know you did it.”
I know this throw. I can do this throw in my sleep. But something in me pulls back a fraction and that’s all it takes.
The ball’s in my hand, and my dad’s on the porch watching. Always watching.
“Again.”
My shoulder burns. My arm feels like it’s about to fall off. I’d rather be out with the other fifth graders riding my bike. Not here. Not with him.
“I said again,” he demands.
I don’t want to go again. I don’t want to miss. Don’t want to see that look on his face when I don’t get it right. So I hesitate, then throw it wrong on purpose.
Because if I mess up, then it’s my choice.
And he can’t control that.
“Valor!”
The shout slams me back to present. To the field. The game. To the pocket still holding around me. To the time I don’t deserve anymore.
Again.
Throw the fucking ball.
I force it, and I know it’s off as soon as the ball leaves my hand.
“Fuck,” I mutter a split second before the defender steps in front of the route like he knew exactly where I was throwing.
Interception.
Noise crashes in all around me. The groans of my teammates and the boos from the crowd.
I stand there for half a second too long, watching it happen, watching the momentum flip like a switch.
Move, Cole. Fucking move.
I jog off the field, fingers curled around the face mask, desperate to pound the goddamn helmet into the ground.
“Shake it off,” someone yells.
“We’re still up,” says another.
And yeah, we’ll win—technically—but for me, it doesn’t feel like a win.
The sideline blurs. Coach speaks, and I nod like I hear him, like I’m tracking the adjustments he’s talking about, like I’m still in the thirty seconds left of this game.
But I’m not.
Because that wasn’t the defense forcing my error. It wasn’t pressure from their line. It was me. The hesitation. The doubt.
What the fuck?
Fifty-five plus minutes of solid, textbook football, just for the yips to come back in the last five.
That’s what sticks, what I won’t let go, as I do the after-game back patting with the other team and sideline interviews before walking down the tunnel and off the field. Disappointment. In myself. In my performance. In how I can’t seem to turn this the fuck around.
“Valor!”
Fuck.
I don’t stop at the sound of Kate MacMillan’s voice.
“C’mon, Cole, one question.” Her heels click as she tries to keep up, her recorder already out like she’s been waiting for this exact moment. “Can you comment on the late-game interception?”
I keep walking.
“What about on the large player prop bet placed right before that play?”
My head whips her way and my steps falter for half a step, but she sees it and pounces.
“Yes. My sources are saying there was a significant live money bet on that interception. Do you have any response to that?”
I stop and look at her, eyes sharp with the kind of hunger that says she doesn’t give a shit about anything except the story.
“Do you think—”
“Leave me the fuck alone.” The words come out low, controlled, but there is no mistaking the edge.
She blinks, clearly not expecting that.
Good.
I turn before she can recover, before she can push harder, and before I’ll say something that makes everything worse.
Guess I failed the crisis PR course. Sorry, Josie.
“Fuck,” I mutter as I stalk into the locker room.
Don’t want the looks.
Don’t want the questions.
Don’t want the goddamn phone lighting up with messages I don’t have the energy to answer.
So I keep moving through the noise, through the space, down the hall, and into a rehab room.
Gym mats on the floor. Exercise balls for rehabilitation. Peace and fucking quiet.
I drop my helmet on the floor and sink into the first chair I see.
And it’s like everything drops with me. The noise. The adrenaline. The anger. All of it gone.
But it leaves behind something much worse. Something I can’t shake from the silence.
I had it back. The control. The confidence. I felt like myself again.
And then . . . it was gone.
Dr. Hawley’s voice from our second session echoes in the back of my head.
“The tremor seems to come when you convince yourself it’s there. Pressure will exacerbate it.”
“Are you saying it’s all in my head?”
“Well, I wouldn’t use those words as I don’t want to dismiss what you’re experiencing. But if there’s no empirical evidence to suggest the contrary, then this is most likely a problem that can be resolved mentally.”
I drag a hand down my face, utterly defeated, and squeeze my eyes shut to prevent the tears that burn from ever seeing the light of day.
“This is most likely a problem that can be resolved mentally.”
“No shit.” I thought I had.
But acknowledging it doesn’t make it easier to fix so what in the hell am I supposed to do?
I stare at the floor, jaw tight, frustration coiling low in my chest. Everything is out of fucking control.
The throw replays over and over. The hitch. Wasinski’s words. The hesitation. The second everything fucking slipped.
“What about on the large player prop bet placed right before that play? My sources are saying there was a significant live money bet on that interception. Do you have any response to that?”
How the fuck is that possible?
And who the fuck are her sources telling her that quickly?
How?
“Fuck.”
The word echoes in the empty room but it doesn’t give me an answer.
I’m not sure if anything can.