Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(45)

That summer, I’d saved up enough allowance for my own pee wee pads and wore them in the tub, to bed at night, and at the kitchen table with my mother fretting over where those pads would lead me. She never mentioned that her worry concerned my father and how, at even that young age, I was already so much like him. That confession would come later. Since that summer, football equipment of some sort was always near or on my body.

Today I thought it might be last time. Today Aly’s long-ago uttered curse came true.

There was no light in the room except for the low watt bulb in the bathroom to my right. My ankle was wrapped and icing. X-rays had been completed and the doctors had examined me. The worse news came first—another concussion and the possibility of IR whispered in low tones as my coaches and Kenny, my agent lingered outside in the hallway. Injured Reserve. I knew what that meant. It was the beginning of an end and with how muddled my head had gotten after this third concussion and how jacked up my ankle was with the torn ligament, the beginning of the end was coming fast.

“Damn it, Aly.”

It’s a risk we all take the second we sign contracts. As a player, you give up your body to the beast. You sacrifice your health, your freedom and parts of yourself you don’t want anyone to have just for time on that field and the potential of the legend you hope to become. My career had demanded my blood, sweat and effort. It had cost me plenty.

It had cost me Aly.

I never understood how she could be so callous. How she could walk away with no promise of coming back. To her, it was just a game. To me, being the primitive champion the game demanded, I was invincible, unstoppable. That made it so much more than a game.

Only, I wasn’t invincible or unstoppable. Not anymore.

If this went the way I suspected it might, then I’d become a failure. I’d be a statistic that no man ever wants to read about. My body, my size, the years I spent practicing, learning, growing, improving, would all fall by the wayside because of one bad tackle from a rookie offensive lineman eager to rack up his stats.

The room was cold and the shiver on my skin moved around my limbs, coating me in chills, giving me the sensation of a fever that would not break. Outside the room, there was no noise at all. I was in a hospital that catered to an NFL team. Yet there was nothing outside that door. No more coaches. No teammates. No doctors. Nothing but my godfather and his partner, pacing and fretting until the doctors confirmed what was on that X-ray.

It was then, in that silent, freezing room, that I realized how much I’d entangled my life with this game. My job, my home, my service projects, my friends, they all centered around my team. Even my damn housekeeper came to me from the team support staff. A kid called Jeff who made sure our towels were clean and our water bottles were filled had sent his auntie to me. She needed a job and I needed a housekeeper. Everything, absolutely everything I was, connected me to the team. It hadn’t always been that way. Once, not so long ago, Aly had been the center I returned to. She was the anchor that kept me from drifting too far from shore. Now even she was gone.

Nearly three hours I lay there, thinking about how damn bad my head hurt, how my ankle throbbed like a blister, how I wanted to be home, how I might not have a home to go back to if I couldn’t play anymore. And if I couldn’t…then what? Who would I be away from that field?

It felt like a death. Maybe it was. Maybe I felt weak, wounded because I had been injured far worse than I ever had been before. Maybe because I was older, I wouldn’t heal as fast. Maybe I stood outside myself and watched the beginnings of illness, like a corpse who had not yet died but damn sure was on his way to it. My career was now a malnourished body, too wrecked, too damaged to fight the illness killing it

Jesus, I sounded pathetic.

Still, I knew, despite what I’d told her over the years, all those times she tried to tell me what the game would do to me, Aly had been right. It was her warning that I ignored and it was my ignoring it, disregarding her worry, that made her leave.

So all of this, how I sacrificed her, was f*cking pointless. In the end, I’d be without a Super Bowl ring, without a championship and, worst of all, without my woman.

Fuck.

“Sweetie?”

Eyes tight, I didn’t want to open them. If I did, the truth would topple me. My mother’s voice was soothing, but still scared me. If she was there, in Miami, then things had gone as bad as they possibly could.

“Baby?” she tried again and I moved my arm from my eyes, tilting my head to watch her as she walked further into my room. That suspicion of things being bad was confirmed when Kona followed behind her.

“Aw, shit,” I mumbled, covering my face with my hands.

“Keiki kane,” Dad started, leaning over me with Mom at his side when they made it to my bed. He rested his hand against her back and she didn’t look annoyed by that touch. At least they were getting along now.

“What’s the verdict?” I asked, letting my mom look me over, dote on me like I’d lost a limb and not stupidly let myself get knocked out into another concussion.

“The doctor’s coming in with Kenny and your defensive coach.”

“That’s not good.”

“It could be worse.” Mom sat at the foot of my bed with a death grip on my hand. “But Ransom.... this is the third one.”

“Yeah, Mom. I’m aware.” She sounded like Aly. Well, what I imagined Aly would sound like if she were there. There would be no reason for me to ask why she didn’t come. Why would she?