Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(49)

Tristian stood next to my mother just within the kitchen doorway, a bottle of OJ in one hand and a ham sandwich in the other. He quirked his eyebrow up and suddenly seemed disinterested in his snack.

“Ransom, you have got to get yourself together. You are never going to get Aly back if you keep lashing out.” Mom’s voice was softer now, but there was still a bite in her tone.

“Who the hell says I’m trying to get her back?”

Mom stared at me, mouth open. “If you don’t, you are a damn fool.” She stepped closer, shaming me with one look. “If you love someone, you don’t intentionally hurt them, no matter how shitty your life gets.” She shot a glance at my father but kept silent, letting that one look topple him. Since we’d returned from Miami, the silence between my parents had doubled. It had happened three nights ago with Kona’s cell going off repeatedly and him outside on the patio. I’d crashed on the sofa with my foot propped up and old episodes of Merlin running in the background. An hour later I’d woken from my doze to hear my parents bickering. It wasn’t a fight, but the hurried, heated conversation had kept me up. “You don’t win battles on your own, Ransom. That’s not how real relationships work.”

She ignored my hand as I reached for her and looked at my father as though she wanted him to say something. We he didn’t, Mom grabbed Tristian’s arm and they disappeared to the back of the house toward her studio.

“Are you ever going to tell me what the hell is going on?” I asked my father, not bothering to keep my voice free of the irritation I felt.

Kona didn’t answer. Instead, he came around the sofa, slouching as he rested his elbows on his knees. “Keiki kane, you are f*cking up.”

“Come again?”

My father moved his head, squinting as he glanced at me. “Richie Dole. I ever tell you about him?” I shook my head, watching Kona closely. I wondered what NFL war story I’d get now. “Thirteen years I’ve been using my NFL career as some cautionary tale for you, just to get you not to make the same mistakes I did or the same mistakes guys I knew did.”

“Yeah. And?”

Kona stared at me, stretching back against the sofa. “Richie Dole was a third round Draft pick. All conference all four years in high school and college. Fastest running back ever to come out of Ohio State. Good dude. Sloppy drunk that ate too much red meat, but he was a good dude.”

Knowing I’d not be free from his lecture anytime soon, I rested my head against the sofa cushion and looked at Dad, accepting that I was about to hear yet another warning. “What happened to him?”

He moved his head, popping his neck like he needed to be free from the stiffness there before he leaned back, copying my relaxed slouch. “Four concussions in three seasons. He had a wife and two little girls. But by the end of his career, by the time that fourth concussion had landed, Richie had already displayed some pretty erratic behavior: getting lost in a town he grew up in. Forgetting his name, forgetting to pick his eight-year-old daughter up from school.” Dad shook his head, glancing at me before he continued. “Asshole couldn’t handle his body failing him and he didn’t want to burden his wife with what he was feeling. Started drinking. Started drinking and driving.”

“He kill anyone?”

At my question Kona exhaled, head shaking. “Yeah. Himself. Swallowed a bullet two hours before his oldest daughter came home from a sleepover. Eleven years old and she found her dad in the garage with a 9 mm in his mouth.”

“Jesus.”

Kona nodded, eyes focused on me. “Yeah. It was a mess. Dole was a good dude, like I said. He practiced hard, he played harder. He had a good woman. He had a beautiful family. And when it was over with, when the autopsy came back, the coroner said it was a miracle he’d survived as long as he had. CTE. There was already so much damage.”

I’d heard it a thousand times. Aly had done her research before trying to get me to retire. After the first concussion, she wanted the facts. She’d spewed them at me like it was my inevitable future. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy can only be discovered after death. It’s a buildup of protein that spills out of your cells thanks to blunt force trauma. It suffocates your neural pathways, affecting things like memory, judgment and fear. Paranoia can kick in, that’s the worst. Take a 240-pound linebacker who already has a temper and lifetime anger issues, and couple that with irrevocable brain damage, potentially paranoia and the inability to think straight, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Or tragedy.

It was there, right in front of me. The warnings. Those facts and the idea that I’d let my own goals outweigh the things that really made me happy. The things that mattered. My father had done that. So many times over the years he’d shake his head, thinking about one thing or another and toss a look at my mother or me and my siblings, finally muttering something like “I wasted so much time” or “I don’t deserve you guys.” I was starting to realize why that guilt ate at him. Finally, I started to understand what sacrifices we make to play the game we love and how sometimes in the end those sacrifices mean nothing. Not when the loss outweighs the gain.

I didn’t want to spend sixteen years in misery like my father had and I damn sure didn’t want to end up like Richie Dole. “Dad…”

My father looked outside, to Koa and Mack chasing each other, being annoying as only they could and the smallest smile moved his mouth. “This,” he said, waving around the room, nodding toward the sound of Koa and Mack’s laughter, to the music trickling from the studio at the end of the hallway, “this is what I wanted for so long. That first night I met you, out on the patio and you and your Mom sang Dylan, in that exact moment, I knew I wanted you and your mother and conversations about nothing and giving you advice about your life, your woman, anything, all of it. I wanted Koa and Mack before they were even a thought in my head. I wanted all of it because I’d missed so much. I wanted…” he closed his eyes, rubbing them with the palms of his hands before continuing, “I wanted her so much that night. More than I ever had before.”