CHAPTER 1 Liam Bradley
Not a Selling Point
It’s been two months since Pittsburgh decided to move in another direction.
That’s the nice way of saying they chose not to bring me back. My rookie contract ended, and the team chose not to re-sign me.
I guess I can’t really blame them given the fact that I spent more time in Chicago over the season than I did in Pittsburgh.
My allegiance was always to my team despite them relegating me to backup quarterback, but between my father’s brushes with the law and my mother’s quick illness that led to her death in December, I was the only one of the seven Bradley siblings who was somehow expected to show up.
I’m based in Chicago in the offseason, and everyone else has moved away.
Committed to different teams, different hometowns—except Ivy, my youngest sister, whose college graduation is next week.
She was finishing her final year in college, so even though she was the closest in proximity to everything going on, she wasn’t expected to be there.
I’m not sure how it fell on me. I took it on, I guess. But traveling every spare moment I could manage and showing up late for practice because my flight was delayed was too big a transgression for my coaches, so, as my agent so delicately told me, they decided to move in another direction.
I blow out a breath as I look out the window of my apartment in a luxury high-rise located in Chicago’s Gold Coast. I can see the Lakefront Trail, North Avenue Beach, and Lake Michigan from where I stand.
If it’s been two months since Pittsburgh made their decision, that also means it’s been two months of waiting.
Waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for a team to show interest.
Just…waiting.
I’m tired of waiting.
I’m tired of being a backup, a second choice.
Luckily this place is paid for and I have money in the bank, or I’d really be in trouble.
I need to get out of here. I need to find something to do. Usually around this time of year, I’d be getting ready to report for organized team activities, or OTAs. But since I don’t have a team to report to, I’m working out and staying close to my phone just in case someone calls.
It’s as I’m staring out the window that a text comes through.
My chest tightens when I see it’s my agent. He was encouraging at first. Positive. Hopeful. But when two months have gone by with zero offers, the texts and calls along with the hope all quieted down.
Scott Price: San Diego has offered an official visit.
San Diego?
San Diego has a quarterback. Tanner Banks is young at just thirty-two—a mere six years older than me. It’s another place where I’ll be relegated to a backup, where I’ll never get the chance to prove myself.
Me: Why would they want me? They have Banks.
Scott Price: Word on the street is their backup is out for the season after an injury at workouts.
I stare at his words. I’d never wish an injury on anybody, but at the same time, an injury just opened up a chance for me.
Even if it’s another backup position.
Me: I’ll take the visit.
It’s a door, and at this point of total uncertainty, I don’t want to close any without stepping through them first.
I guess this calls for celebration…or a drink, anyway.
I decide to head to Boulevard Tavern, the bar around the corner from my place.
It’s just a local dive bar where I can get a burger and a beer, and I used to head there a few times a week.
I became friends with many members of the staff, and I usually found someone to bring home with me for the night…
but I’ve stayed away, mostly because of a waitress I may or may not have gotten tangled up with a few times.
When I walk in, I spot someone I recognize…decidedly not someone I’ll take home.
I march up to her table. She’s sitting at one of the rounded booths by the bar, smack in the middle of the circle.
“Penny?” I say to the woman who’s typing something furiously on her phone, and as she glances up in surprise, I can’t help but notice how different she is from the women I tend to take home from here.
She’s more…mature. Settled in her career.
Smart, but sexy all the same. It prompts the question, “What are you doing here?”
She’s my older sister’s best friend, a mom of two young kids, and she’s currently going through a divorce. A glass of wine sits half empty in front of her, and a to-go cup of coffee sits beside it.
“Liam!” she says, and she scoots out of her booth to get up and give me a hug.
It’s one of those warm, tight hugs from an old friend, and as she pulls back, she asks, “How have you been? Oh my gosh, come sit with me. Let’s catch up.
” She slides into the booth and signals one of the waitresses, and I slide in beside her.
The booth is smaller than it looks, and I’m a tall guy at six-three, so my knee bumps into Penny’s, and there’s nowhere else for it to go.
“Are you meeting someone here?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I just came down to grab dinner and a drink.”
“Same. I was working a little late, and the kids are with my mom, so I came to unwind before I head home.”
“You work over here?”
She shakes her head. “I met with a client whose office is this way, and it’s on my way home. You live around here, right?”
I nod. “Just around the corner, actually.”
Our waitress happens to be Izzy, the one who I’ve been avoiding.
She’s a girl in her early twenties who works here at night and attends college during the day, and the last time I saw her was probably six months ago.
She looks…different. She’s usually dressed in shorts that show off her ass and a shirt that shows off her stomach and sometimes the underside of her tits, but today she’s in joggers and a sweatshirt under the bar apron that holds her order pad and a few pens.
“What can I get you?” she asks. She won’t look at me, and I think it’s because we never exchanged numbers, and I haven’t been around in a few months.
In my defense, I was with her in between fielding calls from my siblings about my mother’s illness a few months back. Life got hectic.
“I’ll take a Goose Island IPA and the sliders.”
She purses her lips at me before she looks at Penny, and she sort of narrows her eyes at her since she’s here with me. “Can I get you anything else?”
“I’ll take an order of the sliders, too, please.”
Izzy nods, and when she walks away, Penny leans in toward me. “She was much nicer to me before you showed up. What’s the story there?”
I chuckle. “No story. She came home with me a couple of times. I fell off the radar.” I shrug.
She flattens her lips and rolls her eyes. “Liam Bradley,” she scolds.
“What?” I hold both hands up. “It was mid-season, I was running back and forth between Pittsburgh and Chicago, trying to keep everyone updated on my mom. Nobody cared that I wasn’t actually based in Chicago. Then she died, the funeral, my dad was indicted…blah blah blah. You know the story.”
She raises a brow. “Okay, fine. Forgiven. But did you tell her all that?”
“Izzy?”
“The waitress,” she clarifies.
“Izzy,” I confirm. “No. It wasn’t going to become anything, anyway.”
“She thought it would,” she points out based on the way she just treated me.
“I’m not in that place. I don’t even know where I might land next,” I admit.
“I heard about Pittsburgh. I’m so sorry, Liam.” She reaches over and covers my hand with hers. “So you don’t know where you’ll play?”
“Between you and me, I was just invited for a visit in San Diego. It’s the first team that’s reached out.”
“San Diego? That’s great! You’ll have family close by.”
I huff out a chuckle, though she’s right. My oldest brother, Madden, is based in San Diego now, and he actually played a season with the very team I’ve been invited to visit before he retired to run our family’s real estate development company. “I’m not sure that’s a selling point.”
She laughs. “At least it’s not Vegas.” Three more of my siblings are there—one of whom is Penny’s best friend. Which reminds me…
“Are you all set for Everleigh’s wedding?” I ask.
She nods and smiles brightly, and I never noticed how her smile lights up her whole face. “Maid of honor at your service. T-minus twenty-four days until wedding day. And only three days until her Vegas bachelorette party.” She wiggles her eyebrows. “What does she have you doing?”
“I’m not in the wedding. I’m not even an usher.
She said she and Mav didn’t want to interfere too much with our schedules, so they decided to keep the wedding party small.
But since I’m in town, she has me checking on the house basically every two days.
” She’s getting married at the Bradley Mansion, the house where we were raised that’s currently going through renovations to become a wedding and event venue.
She laughs. “Full disclosure, she’s had me drive by at least once a week, too.”
I laugh and shake my head. “That’s Ev. Covering all the bases.”
“Are you going to the bachelor party?” she asks.
I nod. “Maverick invited me as a way to get to know me, or so says Ev. I think she made him, but it’s an excuse to go to Vegas and hang out with my brothers, so why not? When are you heading out there?”
“I’m not getting in until late Friday night. My mom’s watching the boys, and I can’t afford to take a day off work right now.” She purses her lips and shrugs.
My brows dip together. “Can’t they stay with their dad?”
She purses her lips. “What a great question. They could, but as it isn’t his court-mandated weekend, he won’t.”
“Sounds like a dick.”
“You wouldn’t believe it. He’s not the same man I marred. I think the court isn’t thrilled with the way he keeps delaying everything.”
“He’s dragging shit out?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“How?” I ask. I have no idea how any of this works. Izzy drops my beer off, and Penny asks for another glass of wine.
I take a sip while she explains the divorce proceedings.