Cream of the Crop (Hudson Valley, #2)(62)

Taken out of his seventh professional game when he was injured. Spent the next year rehabilitating his knee after surgery for those injuries. His contract was dropped when he failed to regain the speed he’d once had, and his football career was over at twenty-three.

Oh, Oscar.

I stopped reading and watched him coach his team the rest of that morning, not wanting to know the rest of his story until he was ready to tell me. When practice was over, I walked out to him on the improvised field in the middle of the town square, a million miles away from where I’m sure he intended to end up but seemingly happy. He looked up from his clipboard with a genuine smile, also seeming happy that I was here, with him, in his world. As soon as I could, I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him. Just once, soft and sweet. And when he kissed me back, he lifted me against him, his arms so tight around my waist, the autumn sun dancing around us, and I felt very happy to be here with him.

When we got back to the truck, he threw his gear inside and looked at me expectantly. “Feel up for a walk?”

“Sure,” I said, letting him slide his long arm around my shoulder and tuck me into his side. We headed down Main Street, turning right on Elm, and walked with what seemed no real direction, no real hurry. Just walking. We went right again on Maple, right on Oak, then finally right once more on Main, having walked all around the town square. He started talking when we made the next turn onto Elm.

“Football was everything in my family—you should know that first.”

I exhaled, relieved that he was trusting me enough to tell me his story, and pleased that he wanted to. I tightened my hold on his waist, my hand resting along his hip under his jacket, warm and cozy.

“Football. Got it.” I nodded and looked up at him. The sunlight was encircling his head a bit like a halo.

“My father played football—never was a star, mind you, but played in the NFL for almost five years. Third string for Indiana, then half a season in Detroit, and he played out his last season close to his family home in Green Bay. When his contract wasn’t renewed, he moved us all to the farm and worked with his father at the dairy they owned.”

A family of dairymen; interesting.

“But football was still part of his life, all of our lives. I played, my brothers played, he coached, and if we weren’t out working the cows or milking them in the barn, we were on the field.”

“Sounds like fun,” I replied when he seemed to stall in his story.

He nodded with a faraway look. “It was. As we got older, it wasn’t as much fun. I loved football, loved the game, the sport, the community, all of it. But if you were good, and I was, it could take over everything else. That’s what happened for me and my brothers. Everything became about training, everything became about the game that weekend, what plays we could have run better, what block could have been harder, what tackle should have been a sack. We literally ate and slept and breathed football. When the season ended, we kept on drilling at home, year-round.”

He paused somewhere in the middle of Oak Street, scrubbing at his face. “He wanted us to have that edge, to be better than anyone else. It started to not be so fun anymore.”

“Did you ever want to quit?” I asked, and he shook his head immediately.

“Not an option—quitting is never an option. Eventually, it became just such a part of everything that it seemed normal. We were a football family, and that’s what we all did. Even my mom—she ran the boosters, organized bake sales when we needed new uniforms, all that.”

“Family business,” I mused, and he squeezed my shoulder.

“That’s exactly right. My older brother, he ended up getting a partial scholarship to a regional school there in Wisconsin. He played for four years, and that was it. But me, I started getting scouted when I was a sophomore in high school. I was really good, and my family knew if it was going to happen, it was going to happen for me.”

“Were you still working for the dairy?”

“Yup, football and cows, that was literally my life.”

“And Missy,” I said quietly, knowing that by now in this timeline, she’d made an appearance.

“And Missy,” he agreed. “She was as much a part as everything was back then. She was a cheerleader, she was right here for every game, on the sidelines or with my parents. We used to sit out back at nighttime, in one of the pastures, and talk about what things would be like when we were older. I’d play professional, I knew that now, and I knew I’d be afforded a life that I couldn’t turn down. No one from a tiny town in Wisconsin whose only other prospect was a lifetime at a dairy wouldn’t go for it guns blazing.”

I kept quiet, sensing that there was a turn coming in this tale.

“My knee started acting up my senior year at USC. At first I thought it was nothing; we all got banged up pretty good each game. My knee held, we were winning games right and left, and it was all starting to fall into place. After graduation, I got drafted, Missy and I got married right after that, and we were off for Dallas. To this day, I’ve never seen my dad more proud.”

He chewed on his lower lip, lost in thought.

“And then?” I prodded, and he cleared his throat.

“And then it was just how life was. We bought a house, we started talking about kids, I was playing, it was all good. Then my knee started getting really bad, but I thought, I really thought, I’d be able to stick it out. But . . . seventh game of the season, I was driving hard and the turf was loose. I went one way, my leg the other, and I could literally hear my knee pop. Worst pain I’ve ever felt.”