The Crush (40)

Coach and Don shared a look.

Coach held his hands up. “We know. You look”—he shook his head—“stronger than you ever have, Emmett. My linebacker coach asked me last week if you were trying to make his guys look bad because usually, the QB doesn’t bench more than his line.”

I was trying not to lose my mind. Every day, I trained like I was pissed at the world.

And I wasn’t. Not exactly.

I just felt like I left something vital behind, and nothing I did chased that feeling away, no matter how hard I worked.

The more time that went by, my calculated risk was starting to feel increasingly like a death knell.

I missed her so fucking much. It was insane. I came back to Florida after my weekend in Oregon, thinking that I could return to some semblance of normal. But it was gone.

Coach and Don wanted me to return to normal too. But they knew by now it wasn’t happening. And despite how much they hated my weekly drop-ins, there was nothing for them to say. As the on-field leader of the team, they had nothing to complain about. Nothing they could cite as a lapse in my ability to produce a winning season.

There were no whispers anywhere that I wanted to leave because I hadn’t told anyone. My agent knew. These guys. And Ned.

No one on SportsCenter reported that Ft. Lauderdale’s star quarterback had his eye on the West Coast. I hadn’t breathed a word of it to my parents, my sisters, or my teammates. For all they knew, this newfound intensity was just another facet of my competitive nature.

I was working harder because I wanted to win.

And I did.

But now I wanted something else just a little bit more. And the only way I could even think about getting it was to try to move closer. Bring the game that I loved within reaching distance of the woman I couldn’t stop thinking about.

Coach and Don, they tolerated my weekly intrusion because it was their job to listen to what I wanted. My agent thought I was insane, but it wasn’t his job to change my mind. It was on him to make it happen in a way that made sense.

Don sighed. “Yeah, you’re working hard. We all see it. And every guy in that locker room respects you for it. It was a rough end to the season. All of us were shaken by what happened to Malcolm. Coming back with strength and resolve is admirable, Ward. But we can’t magically make Ned agree to listen to offers, just like we can’t magically make Washington produce a viable offer for you.” His eyes softened. “They may not want you.”

“I know,” I managed.

I didn’t need it to be Washington. The thought of playing there elicited such mixed feelings, and there was no hope of separating them. My dad had never been in the role of coach to me, and because we were both hardheaded and stubborn in different ways, I wasn’t even sure it would be good if I played for him.

The way I learned from him had been in our backyard, tossing the football back and forth. It was in watching games with him every Saturday and every Sunday, seeing the things he saw in the game because he explained them to me from the time I was old enough to understand. It was sitting on his lap as a child while he watched film in his office, and he’d ask me questions about what I was watching on his computer screen.

Learning football in that way from the man I admired most was one of my favorite parts of my upbringing. And it terrified me to imagine adding a different dynamic to our relationship, one that might cause friction.

Over the past four months, I learned a lot about what I really wanted.

I wanted to play football. My love for the game hadn’t lessened.

I wanted to be closer to Adaline. Going four months without hearing her voice hadn’t changed that. I knew, and respected, all the reasons she couldn’t leave. And I’d never, ever be the one to take her away from her family for the majority of the year.

But one of those things was more important. It edged its way up on my priority list because it was the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about.

I’d never paid too much attention to all the places in my life that were empty and quiet because I managed to fill them with my job.

But now, it was those quiet corners—the beginning and end of my days—that seemed the loudest. I couldn’t stop thinking about the simplest of things that I wanted.

Sharing a meal with her before we began our day. Bringing her coffee in bed so she could sleep a bit longer. Having someone there with me while I flipped channels and tried to decide what to watch when I had no plans for the evening.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

A couple of times a month, I allowed myself to check her social media. The pictures had become more infrequent, yet the longing hadn’t decreased because I couldn’t see her.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about what might have been different if I’d been capable of thinking in shades of gray when my career began.

Before it was so much easier to think in black and white.

This is what I need to do to prove myself.

This is what I can’t allow.

This is a distraction.

This can’t have space in my head if I want to be the best.

What was harder was admitting that I might not know any of those things after all. What might be a distraction for one person could be the thing that kept another player grounded. What seemed like a certainty in cementing my legacy might change as the landscape of my life changed.

Because now, I found myself answering in a different way when the idea of legacy came up at all.