The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(87)

I was watching the game with Danny in his suite. Just the two of us, no guests tonight. I had called him in the morning to tell him about Billy’s condition. He’d asked if there was anything he could do and I told him yeah—he could think about prayer.

“This is on me,” I said now, after Billy was nearly intercepted again. “I knew who he was before I signed him.”

“Who he was and what he was.”

“The thing is, we wouldn’t have made it this far without him.”

“Now I’m wondering if he was hungover for the last two games, too, as badly as he played,” Danny said.

I slid deeper into my chair.

“This isn’t the way the story is supposed to end.”

With two minutes left before halftime, the Patriots led, 21–3. Billy had just thrown his third interception, but at least it hadn’t led to a Patriots score this time. When our offense came off the field and our defense went on, he ran past our bench and straight to the locker room. I just assumed he was going to be sick again.

But he was back on the field by the time our offense got the ball, and somehow he seemed to rouse himself. He completed three passes in a row, finally scrambling away from the Patriots’ rush and in for a score with fifty seconds left in the half. So at that point the Wolves were trailing only 21–10.

“I want this game so much it hurts,” I said to Danny.

“You sound like Dad.”

“Don’t be mean.”

It was different from the way I felt on the field with my kids from Hunters Point during the championship game. At least I had some control there, just because I could call the plays. I felt as if I were in the game, even though I was coaching it and not playing in it. This Wolves game was different and occasionally making me feel a little sick. I felt helpless. After all the fighting I’d had to do since my father had left the team to me, everything was in the hands—literally—of a guy who had been falling-down drunk at my house last night.

When the Patriots went running off the field at the end of the half, I was sure Ted Skyler stopped just long enough to look up at Danny’s suite, as if he somehow knew I was in there.

Then he waved.

I thought, Thirty minutes of football left before I might not just lose my season but also lose it to that guy.

I didn’t leave my seat during halftime. Just sat there and remembered the night when Cantor and Ryan and I had saved Billy McGee’s ass in Chinatown.

Last night and tonight were how he’d repaid me. And his coach.

It was still 21–10 for the Patriots when my ex-husband, being chased around his own end zone, stopped and threw a dumb desperation pass deep down the middle of the field. Andre DeWitt, the defensive back who’d smart-mouthed me in such a funny way the day I’d introduced myself to the team, intercepted the ball.

After ten yards he had broken a couple of tackles and suddenly had all this open field in front of him.

Now I got out of my seat again.

“Let’s go!” I yelled in Danny’s suite.

The last person between him and the end zone was someone who actually used to refer to himself as Touchdown Ted. Now he was trying to prevent one. He had no chance, even though he clumsily tried to throw himself in front of Andre DeWitt.

Andre ran right over him, knocking Ted’s helmet sideways.

Suddenly the Patriots led by only four points with a quarter of football still left to play.

“We’re not out of this,” Danny said.

“Don’t talk.”

It was still 21–17 when Billy McGee somehow started to look like a real quarterback and not a total shit. It was on a drive that started at the Wolves’ ten yard line, with four minutes left. He completed two straight passes to get us away from our own end zone. Then two more.

Just like that, we were driving.

It was finally third and ten, three minutes to go, at the Patriots’ thirty-eight yard line. Billy dropped back and was under pressure again from a Patriots blitz. They’d been blitzing him all game long once they saw he was a couple of steps slow.

Only this time he got loose, heading for the sideline and the first-down marker.

At the last moment, it was a question of whether he would get to the marker before the Patriots’ star outside linebacker, a monster of a player named Anfernee McCarron, could get to him.

Billy could have run out-of-bounds. He’d still have one more shot at the first down if he didn’t make it.

But he didn’t run out-of-bounds. Billy McGee was a player now and not a punk, almost laying out as he lunged for the marker.

He didn’t make it.

Anfernee McCarron hit him as hard as I’d seen any quarterback—whether standing in the pocket or running in the open field—get hit all season. Somehow Billy, even short of the first down, still had the ball in his right hand when he hit the ground.

I realized I had moved to the front of the suite now to get a better look at what everybody in Wolves Stadium, suddenly very quiet, could see down on the field.

Billy McGee was lying motionless on his back.

He stayed that way for the next several minutes, Dr. Ron Barnes and Ryan Morrissey kneeling next to him.

Finally, I saw the flatbed cart making its way slowly out of the tunnel and heading for the sideline, where Billy McGee still hadn’t moved.

Then the trainers were getting Billy onto a stretcher and securing his head and neck, lifting the stretcher onto the injury cart.