Quarterback Sneak (Red Zone Rivals #3)(12)

“I think it would have brought on fun,” Uncle Kevin said, smirking.

“That’s because trouble and fun are synonymous in your book,” I pointed out.

He shrugged, as if it should be that way for everyone.

“Can you grab the asparagus out of the oven and start plating?” Nathan asked him, and my uncle hopped up from his barstool, smiling at his daughter as he passed by where I sat. He reached out and ran a hand over her soft baby hairs.

My Uncle Kevin was just eighteen years older than me. My dad, his older brother, was only twenty-one when I was born. Now that I was twenty-one myself, it was impossible for me to wrap my head around that fact. I couldn’t imagine having a serious girlfriend right now, let alone a child to raise.

But my father had been different from me in that way.

Where football was everything to me, my mom had been everything to him.

They were high school sweethearts, and Dad used to tell me all the time how all he’d wanted was to marry her and have a family. He wanted it so much so that he couldn’t even wait until after college to get started. They were married their junior year, and by the time they graduated, I was born.

My sister came two years later, and they had what they’d always wanted. They had a house with a yard, two kids — one boy and one girl — and each other.

The All-American Family.

For years, it really did seem like we were living the dream. I was too young to appreciate it, to understand that not every kid had two adoring parents who actively participated in their lives. I didn’t know how lucky I was that my father spent every evening after work with me and my sister, playing with us in the yard or helping us with our homework.

On the weekends, he and Mom never made plans with their adult friends. It was all about us as a family. If we weren’t taking a road trip or camping or going out on the boat, we were hanging around the house, watching movies on rainy days or spending the sunny ones in the pool.

My sister and I both had our own special connection with Dad.

My favorite weekends were the ones he spent working football drills with me in the park down the street while Mom and my sister, Hannah, painted their toes or read books together under one of the big oak trees.

Hannah’s favorite weekends, though, were the ones when Dad took her out sailing.

While sailing never grabbed me the way my father hoped, Hannah’s eyes lit up the first time she was carried onto that boat as a baby. As she grew older, she also grew thirstier for the knowledge that every good sailor needed to survive. She didn’t just want to help Dad by learning how to tie the right knots — she wanted to be his first mate.

And eventually, she was.

Every weekend, Dad would spend one day with me — usually doing something football-related — and he’d spend the other day on the water with Hannah.

Mom would join us, of course, but as we got older, it became clearer and clearer that she preferred the low-key days around the house to the adventure-seeking on the water. And so, sailing became Dad and Hannah’s special time together, and Mom and I had our time while they were gone.

Everything in my life was perfect. Perfect parents, perfect sister, perfect grades at school, and perfect opportunity to play football for life. I was good, even when I was young, and as I inched closer to playing in high school, I could feel it in my bones.

I was destined to play pro ball.

I didn’t realize it then, how fortunate I was to have all that comfort and energy to focus on football because I had the best support system in the world.

Not until my entire life crashed down around me when I was thirteen.

It was a normal summer Sunday morning the day it happened, our kitchen loud and chaotic as Mom whipped up breakfast while also simultaneously packing a lunch for all three of us. I had football camp, and Dad and Hannah were headed out on the water.

They didn’t usually sail much in the summer, because in Florida — where we lived at the time — it stormed almost every day. But the forecast was clear and the water was calm and there was a perfect ten-to-twelve knots of wind blowing through the bay, so they decided to make the most of it.

“Sunscreen,” Mom had warned Hannah as she scrambled up the eggs in the pan. “And bring your SPF shirt, too.”

Hannah hadn’t even whined or complained. She was so excited to have a morning on the water that she hopped off her barstool where she was drinking her orange juice and sprinted upstairs to get her shirt.

Dad had chuckled, wrapping his arms around my mother from the back and kissing her neck. I’d smirked and looked away, out the window to where the clouds were breaking and the sun was streaking a ray of light over our back yard. I couldn’t wait to get outside and play football.

Mom made sure we were all fed and had plenty of snacks and drinks to take with us before we all spilled onto the driveway. Dad and Hannah went in the truck, Mom and I took the SUV. I gave my sister a wet willy on my way to the car and she screamed and swatted at me all while Mom and Dad shook their heads before kissing each other goodbye.

That was our last perfect moment.

Because that morning, Dad and Hannah went out on the boat.

And they never came back.

“I think you should ask her out on a proper date,” Nathan said, his words snapping me back to the present.

“Retweet,” Uncle Kevin said from where he was plating dinner. He looked even more like my father from this angle, his profile showcasing the sharp edge of his jaw, the thickness of his brows.