CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Cole
“Cole. Good to see you again.” Dr. Hawley’s greeting washes over me.
Her voice is quiet. Neutral. No doubt designed to make me feel like nothing in here can hurt me, which is ironic considering every time I walk out of this damn place, I feel worse than when I walked in.
Because words can most definitely hurt. Even when they’re your own. Maybe even especially so.
I sit back in my usual patterned chair across from her, one ankle hooked over my knee, and arms loose like I don’t have a care in the world. It’s a practiced posture I’ve perfected over the years, and it serves me well now.
Truth is, I’m still not comfortable with someone digging around in my head thing. It’s . . . fucked. But so is the way I’m continuing to play, so here I am. Again. Hoping she can fix whatever needs to be fixed without looking too closely.
Yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds. I’m also well the fuck aware that our sessions aren’t going to discuss anything remotely close to the mechanics of throwing a perfect spiral.
And yet that’s exactly what needs to happen. Getting my arm back. My aim back. My fucking precision back.
I’ve done the bullshit exercises she’s suggested—box breathing, visualization, meditation, mindfulness—and my game performance is living proof it works for shit.
So here I am yet again.
Showing up for my appointment determined to give her a bit more so she can unravel whatever has me fucked up, but the second I walk through her damn door, I shut down and close up like a goddamn tomb.
It’s a total mindfuck.
And one hundred percent my fault since I’m not giving her the access she needs to help me.
I run my fingers over the patterned fabric, needing something to do with them while I try to quiet my head.
“Rough week?” she asks, her eyes taking in my fidgeting despite my practiced posture.
I huff out a laugh. “That obvious?”
She tilts her head. “You tell me.”
I shrug. “Just noise. It comes with the job.”
“Is this the same noise you’ve brought up in our previous sessions?”
I blink. “Obviously.”
“Maybe we need to think about redefining your definition of noise,” she says. “Could noise possibly mean pressure?”
“Same thing.”
“Let’s agree to disagree on that,” she says calmly.
I don’t argue with her opinion because I’m not here to debate semantics, but she does that thing where she lets the silence stretch so it’s uncomfortable.
It’s got to be part of Shrink 101 school or something.
“When did it start?” she asks.
I watch my fingers trace patterns on the arm of my chair. “When did what start?”
“Respect my intelligence and time, please.” There’s a smile in her voice that doesn’t reflect the tone. It draws my eyes up to meet hers. “The tremor, Cole. When did it first start?”
“I told you before, a month or two ago?”
“That’s not what I asked.”
How can she sound so pleasant when she knows what she’s asking might cut me to the core?
I sigh as I shift in the chair and glance toward the window. To anywhere but her.
“It’s nothing,” I say with a shrug. “Just stress like you said. Game-to-game stuff that will go away.”
“If you believed that, you wouldn’t be here.” She pauses. “You yourself said you don’t believe in this shit but that you were desperate.”
“I know what I said,” I snap at her. “I feel weak enough walking through these doors, so can you not try to rub it in?”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
Oh my God. Enough with the fucking touchy-feely questions.
“No. Yes. I don’t fucking know.” I press my fingers to my eyes, frustration owning me.
And still she doesn’t move. She doesn’t push further. She just waits, which is worse.
“Cole,” she finally says, her voice even.
“I know this is the last place you want to be, but I assure you, it doesn’t make you weak.
It makes you educated. Equipped. You’d be surprised the great players I’ve had sit across from me who’ve needed help now and again.
Worst-case scenario, our appointments give you the tools needed for future instances.
Best-case? We figure out your trigger and face it. ”
That’s what I’m afraid of.
“Sure. Fine. Noted.” I’ll say anything to get this over with.
“So . . .” She pauses and waits until I finish smoothing my sweaty palms on my pants and meet her eyes. “In most instances like this, your body doesn’t improvise under pressure, Cole. It responds to behavior it already knows and recognizes.”
“Doc, with all due respect, I don’t think my hand has some kind of memory.”
“It does though, and it’s clearly telling you it won’t be ignored.”
I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding and lean back like that extra distance might help. “Look. I’m fine. I just need to get through a couple of games, settle back in like I did last year and—”
“And what, Cole? You’ve said that every time you’ve sat in that chair. A couple of games have passed, but you’ve yet to settle in, and you’re still struggling,” she says as I grit my teeth. “Maybe it’s time to reevaluate whether your current approach is working.”
My tongue is thick in my mouth and my pulse races. “Fuck.” I exhale.
“I guess that’s better than a denial,” she says with a smile, clearly trying to make me relax. “Tell me about the woman.”
The comment comes out of nowhere, a major switch of topics, clearly to throw me off guard. “What?”
She watches me carefully. “You mentioned her last session. The woman you had spent the night with. Who you said you kept thinking about but weren’t sure what it all meant.”
I said all that? Shit.
“She has nothing to do with my shit on the field or the tremors.”
“And yet you felt the need to bring her up.”
I shake my head and sit forward now with my elbows on my knees. “Yeah, so? Maybe I wanted to talk about a topic that wasn’t all doom and gloom or that would fuck with my head even more.”
“And that’s what I’m doing? Fucking with your head?”
I chuckle derisively. “Well, it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.”
“This is where I’ll reiterate that these things take time to figure out, and that I’m not taking offense to you feeling like this is doom and gloom.
” She pauses and reads her notes before looking back up and holding my gaze.
“My only point, Cole, was that she mattered enough for you to mention her.”
I emit a short laugh. “You’re good at this, you know that?”
“I am,” she agrees. “So try again. Tell me about her.”
Fuck.
Unable to sit still, I move again and drag a hand through my hair. “She’s . . . complicated.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“She’s not supposed to be in my life,” I state matter-of-factly, “and she is anyway.”
Dr. Hawley nods once. “How does that make you feel?”
I snort. “Like I should focus on football.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She’s not going to let me out of this one, is she? And yet I remain seated in front of her, of my own free will, subjecting myself to this nonsense.
“How does she make me feel? Off-balance,” I admit finally. “Like I don’t have a handle on things the way I usually do.”
“And control matters to you.”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation.
“Why?”
I shrug subtly. “Because when you don’t have it, things go sideways, and it feels like a lot of fucking shit is going sideways for me right now.”
“Control isn’t the goal,” she says. “It’s the shield. And you have to have had an experience that created that shield at some point.”
Right back to where she got me angry last session. Like fucking clockwork. “You’re really desperate to dig into my childhood, aren’t you?”
“You’re the one that just connected a woman you like to control to . . . your childhood?” She swallows. “Even I couldn’t make that jump.”
“But that’s what you’re asking of me, isn’t it?” Panic flutters in my throat.
“Only if that’s where the answer is.”
“I had a normal one.” I pause. Lie. “Childhood, I mean.”
Her silence and the tilt of her head says she doesn’t believe me. Either that or maybe she just knows I didn’t.
“Now when you feel that loss of control on the field, what does it remind you of?”
Dublin.
Childhood.
On the field.
She’s switching so fast. Is she trying to trip me up on purpose so I finally give her honest answers?
“Nothing.” I say too quickly if the slight narrowing of her eyes is any indication.
“That answer came fast.”
“Because it’s true.”
She doesn’t respond but rather lets the quiet settle. After some time, I decide to fill the silence.
“My dad.” The words are a whisper.
Motherfucker. You just opened the door for her to walk right through.
And in true shrink fashion, she doesn’t react. Inside I’m rioting. She doesn’t pounce on that nugget she’s been trying to wrench out of me for the past however many sessions I’ve been here. She just waits.
“What about him?”
I shake my head once. “It’s nothing. He was . . . intense. Nothing was ever good enough. Not really. That’s all.”
Understatement of the year.
“Intense how?”
“Like”—my jaw tightens and hands grip the arms of the chair—“like he expected a lot.”
“Would you say those expectations were practical in nature or over the top and out of reach?”
“I’m here in the NFL, aren’t I?”
“Yes.” She nods and it’s clear she’s choosing her words carefully. “But you had a lot to do with that. Your talent. Your drive. Your attitude. Your opportunities that you made for yourself.”
Because nothing less was ever fucking acceptable.
And yet it’s the first time someone has put all of those things in a row, lined them up like shiny trophies on a shelf, and told me that I made that happen for myself. Or is it the first time I’ve actually heard it?
“Hmm.”
“So when you didn’t meet those expectations, what happened?”
My spine straightens with the lie. “Then I didn’t meet them,” I say, void of emotion.
“That’s an incomplete answer, isn’t it?”
“It’s the only one you’re getting, Doc.”
She studies me for a long moment, head tilted with those assessing eyes. It’s like being stripped naked and put on display.
“You don’t need to be ashamed of anything your parents did to you.”
The words land harder than anything she’s said so far. Because I wasn’t—I’m not . . . I don’t even know.
“Funny,” I mutter.
“So you mentioned your dad. What about your mom?”
Yeah. What about her, Valor?
My sigh should say it all, but of course, this is the doctor and she’s not going to let it be just that.
“She was there. Present but her silence said she was always on his side. When I was a kid, I used to think she did what she could to help me in her own way, but now that I’m an adult, I think she could have done more.
” I pinch the bridge of my nose and shake my head.
“I get cards on holidays. I get texts out of the blue to see how I’m doing. I have no real expectations from her.”
“Are they still together?”
“Fuck if I know.” I snort. “I mean . . . growing up she was there. When I left for college, they split for a while then got back together, rinse and repeat. I made it a habit not to ask so that I wouldn’t get more upset with her or lose respect for her.”
“But you did anyway,” she says quietly and without any judgment.
Our stares hold as I nod ever so slightly. “Of course, I did. I get the whole you’re supposed to back your spouse thing, but between the two of us, I’m the one who carries her genes, so shouldn’t she have backed me a little more?”
“Very valid point from all sides.”
“I don’t know.” I run a hand through my hair. “I needed her when I was little and she wasn’t there enough, so I made a point to not need her as an adult.”
“That had to be hard.”
“Being hard and needing to survive on my own go hand in hand.”
She nods. “Agreed, Cole.” She falls silent for a beat, as she flips the page on her pad. “Like I said before, your parents’ actions don’t define—”
“Bullshit they don’t,” I bark out.
“What I was getting at was that you don’t need to be ashamed of anything your parents did or didn’t do to you.”
I shift in my seat, suddenly restless. I gave too much. Said too much. I need to get out of here.
“I’m not ashamed of anything,” I say.
“And yet your posture is suddenly defensive.”
“Because you’re reading into something that’s not there.”
“Or because I’m getting close to something that is and it’s making you uncomfortable.”
I push to my feet before I can think better of it. “I think we’re done here.”
She doesn’t argue or try to stop me, but she watches as I pace once and then grab my phone off the console by the door where we have to leave them.
“Cole,” she says, and I pause with my hand on the door. “I’m not here to make you uncomfortable. I’m here to help you understand yourself better, because once you do, you’ll be able to unlock what’s happening and why.”
A humorless laugh escapes. “Yeah, well, you’re doing a great job of the first part.”
Her expression softens. “The tremor is your body reacting to an event or behavior your mind, your subconscious, won’t acknowledge.”
And there it is, folks. The parting line. The one that sticks and will fuck with my head until next time.
“I came here to fix my head.” I glance back at her. “But every time I leave, it’s worse.”
“Sometimes that’s what has to happen. You have to dig through it before you can make sense of it.”
I let out a breath that’s half laugh, half . . . something else. “Feels like everyone’s digging into me lately.”
“Maybe,” she says. “Or maybe you’re finally letting them in.”
I don’t respond. I just open the door and step out into the hallway. Her words follow me though.
You don’t need to be ashamed.
I don’t even know what that means. But if I’m honest, there’s a hint of clarity there. Maybe there’s a way through this. A way to fix this fucking hand and come out on the other side of it.
Things are looking up, right? GIA knows I didn’t have any part in the bets being made. We won the last game—and the W still holds even if the win wasn’t pretty.
And then there’s Dublin.
She’s not supposed to be any part of this. Not the case. Not the mess. Not me. And yet she’s the only thing that feels steady right now.
That doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t make sense. But it’s there anyway. And if she’s willing to stand in this with me, knowing what it could cost her, then maybe I’m not as far gone as it feels.
I flex my hand as I walk. There’s no tremor. It’s still . . . for now.
But I know better than the lie I told Doc.
This isn’t new.
It never was.
And someone clearly knows that and is willing to ruin my career over it.
The question is the same one it’s always been—who?