Chapter 21 #2
"If the District Attorney believes these cases can move forward, formal complaints will be filed."
"And afterward?"
"The women have agreed to stand together publicly."
That caught me by surprise.
"They're willing to do that?"
"They told us they spent years believing they were the only ones."
He paused.
"The moment they realized they weren't alone, everything changed."
I sat there quietly, letting those words settle.
Mars had carried her pain by herself for years.
So had these women.
None of them had deserved that.
Whitaker closed the final folder.
"We're tentatively planning a press conference for Monday morning after the District Attorney completes the initial review."
Monday.
Two days.
I slowly leaned back in my chair.
"I can't wait to see that smug smile disappear."
Whitaker offered a small smile of his own.
"It usually does when people stop whispering and start telling the truth."
I stood and reached across the table.
"Thank you."
He shook my hand firmly.
"You don't need to thank me."
I frowned.
"Why not?"
"Because this stopped being your fight the moment we realized Mars wasn't alone."
...
After leaving Whitaker's office, I drove straight to the team facility.
Practice had already wrapped up, so I kept my workout light.
I stretched.
I loosened my shoulder.
I reviewed a few plays.
None of it held my attention.
Every quiet moment brought me back to Mars.
I kept hearing her voice from the balcony.
I kept seeing the tears she tried so hard not to let me see.
By the time I finished, I wanted nothing more than to get home, shower, and see her before heading to the stadium.
I grabbed my bag and pushed through the locker room doors.
Someone was waiting outside.
At first I didn't recognize her.
She stood near the entrance scrolling through her phone as though she belonged there.
When she looked up, I immediately remembered.
The waitress from the lounge.
My eyebrows pulled together.
"How did you get back here?"
She smiled.
"I know people."
That answer irritated me more than it should have.
Access to this part of the facility wasn't supposed to be easy.
Players.
Coaches.
Authorized personnel.
That was it.
I made a mental note to mention it to Coach before walking toward the parking lot.
She fell into step beside me.
"You're just going to leave?"
I kept walking.
"Yes."
"I thought famous quarterbacks were friendlier than this."
I didn't answer.
When I reached my SUV, I found her casually leaning against the passenger door.
She had positioned herself carefully enough that anyone driving past would assume we had arrived together.
That realization immediately put me on alert.
"What are you doing?"
She smiled sweetly.
"I thought maybe you wanted some company."
"I'm not interested."
She tilted her head.
"You didn't even let me finish."
"I don't need you to."
I unlocked my driver's side door.
She didn't move.
Instead, she leaned back against the vehicle with an exaggerated smile.
"I could make things interesting."
I looked at her for a long moment.
"No," I said evenly. "You couldn't."
Without another word, I walked around the front of the SUV, climbed inside, and drove away.
I never looked back.
...
An hour later, after showering and packing my bag for the stadium, my phone rang.
My publicist.
I answered immediately.
"What's up?"
Her voice came through faster than usual.
"Jalen, we have a problem."
My stomach dropped.
"What happened?"
"A photograph of you is everywhere."
I frowned.
"What photograph?"
"You leaving the practice facility."
The waitress.
I closed my eyes.
"You're kidding."
"I wish I were."
She sighed.
"The headlines are already running with it."
My phone immediately buzzed with one notification after another.
I didn't even open them.
Instead, I ended the call and tapped Mars's name.
She answered every call I made.
Every time.
The phone rang.
Nothing.
I called again.
Nothing.
I sent a text.
**Mars, please call me.**
No response.
I called again.
Voicemail.
Another text.
**Please answer. I can explain everything.**
Nothing.
I called again.
Then again.
Then one more time.
Silence.
I stared at my phone until the screen slowly faded to black.
For the first time all day, fear settled into my chest.
Not fear about football.
Not fear about Darren.
Fear that the one person whose trust meant more to me than anything else believed I had broken it.
Because I knew exactly what it looked like.
I had seen the headlines. Read the comments.
Watched strangers create an entire story from a single photograph.
And if Mars had seen it the way the internet was spinning it, then I knew exactly what she was thinking.
She thought I'd lied. She thought I'd played her.
Worse, she probably thought everything we'd built over the last few months had been nothing more than another publicity stunt.
The thought settled heavily in my chest because for the first time since meeting her, I wasn't worried about what the media believed. I was worried about what Mars believed.
The thought made my stomach twist.
By the time I pulled into the stadium parking lot, the knot in my chest had settled into something heavy and uncomfortable.
Football required focus, precision, and control, three things I normally had no problem finding the moment I stepped onto a field.
Today was different. No matter how hard I tried, my mind kept drifting back to Mars, the unanswered calls, and everything that had happened over the last twenty-four hours.
I sat in the driver's seat for a moment after turning off the engine, staring at the stadium looming in front of me and hoping that once practice started, football would be enough to drown out everything else.
Three things I normally prided myself on.
But as I walked through the tunnel and the bright stadium lights exploded above the field, my mind was somewhere else entirely.
With Mars.
The crowd roared as we ran out for warmups, the noise vibrating through the stands like thunder. Usually that sound grounded me. It sharpened something in my chest.
Tonight it felt distant.
Muted.
Like I was hearing it through water.
I rolled my shoulder once, bouncing lightly on my feet as we moved through drills. The ball felt fine in my hands, but my mind kept drifting back to the phone sitting in my locker.
The first quarter started.
We lined up for the opening drive.
I took the snap, dropped back, and scanned the field.
The receiver broke open exactly where he was supposed to.
A throw I could make with my eyes closed.
I released it.
The ball sailed just slightly off.
Incomplete.
The receiver turned and looked back at me, confusion written all over his face.
“Shake it off,” he said as we jogged back to the huddle.
I nodded.
But the truth was my head wasn’t clear.
Every time I stepped behind center my mind kept flashing back to the image Mars must have seen.
That waitress leaning against my car.
The headline.
The speculation.
And the look on Mars’ face when she believed it.
Second quarter.
The defense was coming harder now.
Pressure collapsed the pocket faster than expected.
I dropped back again, adjusting my grip on the ball as a defender broke through the line.
I tried to release the pass quickly—
The ball slipped from my hand.
It hit the turf.
Fumble.
The stadium groaned in unison.
My chest tightened as I scrambled to recover it, but the damage was done.
Coach’s voice cut through the sideline noise.
“Focus, Carter!”
I nodded again, but frustration burned in my chest.
I wasn't playing like myself, and I knew exactly why.
Every time I looked down the field, my mind drifted somewhere it had no business going during a football game.
I kept seeing Mars.
I saw her laughing in the kitchen while we argued over who had stolen the last fry.
I saw her curled against my side on the couch while we watched another ridiculous reality show.
I saw the way she looked at me that morning before I walked out her front door, smiling so easily because she trusted me completely.
The thought that she might be sitting somewhere right now believing I had betrayed that trust hurt more than anything I had ever experienced on a football field.
Every missed throw reminded me that she still wasn't answering my calls.
Every time I looked at the scoreboard, I wondered if she had seen the headlines.
Every timeout gave my mind another opportunity to imagine her looking at those pictures and believing they told the whole story.
Coach spoke to me on the sideline more than once, but I barely heard him.
I nodded because I knew I was supposed to, but my thoughts were somewhere else entirely.
The third quarter had barely settled in when everything happened at once.
The protection broke down almost immediately after the snap, and before I could step fully into my throw, two defenders crashed into me from opposite directions.
The impact drove the air from my lungs, and a sharp pain shot through my shoulder the instant I hit the turf.
For a few seconds, all I could see were the bright stadium lights hanging high above me while the roar of seventy thousand people blurred into a distant hum.
I closed my eyes for a moment and forced myself to breathe through the pain.
A pair of trainers hurried onto the field and dropped beside me.
"Stay down for a second," one of them said.
I slowly pushed myself onto one elbow.
"Let me look at your shoulder."
He carefully tested my range of motion while I fought to keep my expression neutral.
"You need to come out," he said firmly after a few moments.
I shook my head.
"No."
"You took a hard hit."
"I've taken harder."
He looked at me for another second before trying again.
"Jalen, you're hurting the team if you can't make the throws."
I looked him directly in the eyes.
"I'm finishing this game."
He glanced toward the sideline where Coach was watching the conversation unfold.
"We strongly recommend that you sit this one out."
"I appreciate that," I said as I reached for my helmet, "but I'm not leaving this field."